The Ethics of Scepticism: Epistemic Blame and the Social Dynamics of Epistemic Risk-Taking

Abstract

This paper levels a charge of free riding against the figure of the radical sceptic. Due to their persistent resistance to attributing knowledge to themselves and others, the radical sceptic limits their contributions to the social context to “mere estimates” or “mere opinions.” Through these “careful beliefs,” they aim to avoid all epistemic risk—something they can achieve only at the cost of falling short of the expectations we legitimately have of our cognitive partners, namely, that they carefully offer us their “full beliefs” as critical cognitive attitudes that reflect a personal stance on the facts. The implication of these radical sceptical attitudes in the social context is an imbalance in the attribution of epistemic credit, which justifies, on our part, an attitude of epistemic blame.