Epistemic individualism defined
Sanford Goldberg defines anii-individualism this way:
epistemic anti-individualism.. regards the epistemic justification of a subject's... beliefs as [sometimes] depending on features of the cognitive and linguistic acts of the subject's social peers.
Alternatively,
the ascription of justification and knowledge to a subject S sometimes depends on factors pertaining to the cognitive lives of subjects other than S.3
Epistemic individualism, then, is the thesis that the epistemic justification of a subject's beliefs never depends on features of the cognitive and linguistic acts of the subject's social peers. Alternatively, the ascription ofjustification and knowledge to a subject S never depends on factors pertaining to the cognitive lives of subjects other than S.
It is important to note that this is not a thesis about one's psychological development or training. It would be absurd to think that a person's epistemic standing does not in any way depend on other persons for what she has learned, what intellectual skills she has, etc. Rather, the position is about epistemic standing after such resources have been put in place. The idea, then, is something like this:A person's epistemic standing is entirely determined by how she uses her own epistemic resources, even if her having those resources is not entirely her own doing. Another way to put the idea is this:What a person knows or reasonably believes at some time t does not depend on what others know or reasonably believe at t. Rather, what a person knows or reasonably believes at a time is “up to her alone,” depending only on how she uses her own evidence, abilities, etc.
To better understand the epistemic individualist's position, compare two ways of thinking about testimonial knowledge, or how one acquires knowledge from testimony. On one broad approach known as “reductionism” about testimonial knowledge, a hearer acquires testimonial knowledge by reasoning about whether she should believe a given speaker.
That is, the hearer uses her own evidence regarding whether a person is knowledgeable on a given subject, whether the person is likely to be sincere, etc., and then uses that evidence to determine whether she should accept what the speaker is saying.The view is called “reductionism” because it holds that knowledge gained by testimony reduces to knowledge gained by reasoning from one's own evidence. As such, reductionism can be understood as allowing only a kind of pseudo-dependence on other persons. In this sense, reductionism embraces epistemic individualism. Compare “anti- reductionism” about testimonial knowledge. On this second broad approach, knowledge from testimony cannot be understood, at least not entirely, in terms of what is supported by one's evidence. On the contrary, anti-reductionism insists that the speaker does some epistemic work, and makes some contribution over and above what can be vetted by the hearer's own resources. As such, anti-reductionism embraces a more robust kind of epistemic dependence on other persons.4It is clear enough that epistemic individualism embraces the ideal of self-sufficiency in the intellectual realm. On that position, positive epistemic status is wholly determined by the individual's own resources. Here we may consider an economic analogy. There is a sense in which any business owner “depends” on her workers. On the other hand, let us suppose that she uses her own resources to pay them, and only insofar as she evaluates their abilities and contributions as being adequate for her own purposes. Moreover, let us suppose that she is not bound to those workers in any way that does not depend on her own resources. For example, she can fire anyone who she does not evaluate as adequate, and she can recruit others as needed. This is a kind of dependence. Let's call it “pseudo-dependence,” insofar as it is dependence that in turn depends upon and is subject to the individual's own resources. “Real” dependence, let us say, does not in turn depend on one's own resources. Epistemic anti-individualism embraces real dependence in the epistemic realm.
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