Non-Ideal Epistemology

Epistemologists often work with idealized pictures of what inquirers are like, how they interact with each other, and the social institutions and environment in which they do the interacting. These idealizations might be appropriate for the more foundational issues in epistemology, such as the theory of knowledge. However they become problematic when epistemologists address applied and practical topics, such as public ignorance about important political and scientific issues, or our obligations and responsibilities as inquirers. A solution to a problem like public ignorance that might work in an ideal world could be disastrous in the real world. Ways of interacting that would yield epistemic benefits in an epistemically just world might not be so beneficial in an epistemically unjust world.

Author Robin McKenna argues that, to avoid these problems, we need to make space for non-ideal epistemology-a way of doing epistemology that eschews the idealizations typical in much contemporary epistemology. However Non-Ideal Epistemology is not just an exercise in philosophical methodology. McKenna also develops distinctive approaches to a range of important topics in applied and social epistemology, such as what to do about science denial, whether we should try to be intellectually autonomous, and what our obligations are to other inquirers. The result is an illustration of why we need non-ideal epistemology and what it can do for us.

Robin McKenna, Lecturer, University of Liverpool

Robin McKenna is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Liverpool and a Senior Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg. Previously, he worked at the University of Vienna and the University of Geneva. His research mainly focuses on epistemology, though he frequently draws on philosophy of science, social psychology, and social and political philosophy. He has co-edited two books, Social Epistemology and Relativism (Routledge, 2020) and Metaepistemology: Realism and Anti-Realism (Palgrave, 2018), and published articles on a wide range of topics including contextualism, epistemic norms, feminist epistemology, genealogy of knowledge, irrationality, persuasion, relativism, and scepticism.

Preface
1. What is Non-Ideal Epistemology?
2. Ideal and Non-Ideal Theory
3. Anderson and Goldman on Identifying Experts
4. Persuasion and Paternalism
5. Intellectual Autonomy
6. The Obligation to Engage
7. Liberatory Virtue and Vice Epistemology
8. Scepticism Motivated
References