The epistemic demands of friendship: friendship as inherently knowledge-involving
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The epistemic demands of friendship: friendship as inherently knowledge-involving Cathy Mason1 Received: 30 May 2020 / Accepted: 23 September 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Many recent philosophers have been tempted by epistemic partialism. They hold that epistemic norms and those of friendship constitutively conflict. In this paper, I suggest that underpinning this claim is the assumption that friendship is not an epistemically rich state, an assumption that even opponents of epistemic partiality have not questioned. I argue that there is good reason to question this assumption, and instead regard friendship as essentially involving knowledge of the other. If we accept this account of friendship, the possibility of epistemic partialism does not arise. Keywords Friendship · Epistemic partiality · Iris Murdoch · Epistemic norms · Love
In the recent literature on friendship, various ‘epistemic partialists’ have suggested that there are important norms that conflict with epistemic norms. In particular, the suggestion has been that norms deriving from valuable relationships such as friendship sometimes demand things that conflict with epistemic demands on us.1 It would be disconcerting if there were the kind of conflict between friendship and epistemic norms that the epistemic partialist claims there is. Such conflict would imply that in acting well in one regard (as a friend or else as an epistemic agent) we can be systematically precluded from being a good agent in another respect (as an epistemic
1 This is most fully discussed by Keller (2004, 2018) and Stroud (2006). Keller claims that “sometimes, the norms of friendship clash with epistemic norms” (Keller 2004: p. 330). Stroud makes the more cautious claim that friendship can make demands on us that conflict with the norms proposed by mainstream epistemological theories. Harman (2011) suggests that people can be blameworthy for holding epistemically justified beliefs about their friends. Hazlett (2013) argues that “(a disposition towards) partiality bias is partially constitutive of some friendships” (Hazlett 2013: p. 95).
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Cathy Mason [email protected] Wadham College, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PN, UK
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agent or else as a friend). There would be no way of getting it right overall: it would be impossible to be both a good friend and a responsible epistemic agent.2 In response to this pessimistic thought, sceptics about epistemic partiality have sought to find ways to understand the demands of friendship and epistemic agency such that they are consistent. Usually, they have suggested both that epistemic norms are less restrictive than epistemic partialists assume, and that friendship is less demanding than epistemic partialists assume. Such sceptics conclude that epistemic norms permit the doxastic states or actions characteristic of friendship, and that friendship fortuitously turns out not to require anything epistemically dubious after all.3 In this paper, I will be exploring an alternative response to epistem
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