Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij, “Epistemic Paternalism: A Defence” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)

Many of our goals and aspirations in life depend upon our epistemological capabilities.  Our attempts to do the right thing or live a good life can be greatly hampered if we are unable to form true beliefs and resist false ones.  Consequently, we have good reason to seek to be epistemologically healthy. Yet we know that as fallible creatures we are prone to a wide variety of systematic errors and pitfalls.  So we should seek to improve ourselves epistemically.  However, we also know that our reasoning is vulnerable to dysfunctions that we find hard to detect in ourselves. And even if they are detected, these dysfunctions are difficult to correct.  What should we do?

In Epistemic Paternalism: A Defence (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij makes the case that we cannot rely on ourselves for epistemic improvement, but must endorse a general policy of epistemic paternalism.  Epistemic paternalism, he says, is the policy of interfering with an agent’s inquiry, for the epistemic good of the agent, without need of the agent’s consent.  This is an engaging and rigorously argued book.  Let’s turn to the interview.

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