UC Irvine

The first chapter of this dissertation argues that not all epistemic harms are unjust. I coined the phrase “Epistemic Disadvantage” to capture contexts in which there is no deliberate harm, yet the relationship between knowers is asymmetrical, and that asymmetry is pertinent to our knowledge practices. Cases of epistemic disadvantage occur in environments where access to alternative explanations or better evidential reasoning may be unavailable. In the second and third chapters, I begin to conceptualize how epistemic disadvantage is prompted by proper evidential reasons. In other words, when one knower commits epistemic disadvantage against another knower, the lines of reasoning used are those that, under environmental conditions where they do not cause harm, tend to be thought of as useful. It is only in environments where such lines of reasoning do cause harm that we question the line of reasoning. Chapter two employs epistemic frameworks theorized by W.V. Quine and Ludwig Wittgenstein to describe how beliefs systematically interact with each other. Comparisons have been made between Quine and Wittgenstein, often with an emphasis on the analytic/synthetic distinction, propositions that can be known a priori or a posteriori, mathematical and logical necessity, and naturalism, amongst other topics. This dissertation compares how Quine and Wittgenstein conceptualize the system of beliefs. I argue both frameworks support a version of confirmation holism, the view that justification for empirical beliefs entails appreciation of the full system of beliefs. In chapter three, a Wittgensteinian framework is used to highlight that stereotypes play a normative role in cognitive processes. In the second part of the chapter (Sections III & IV), I suggest that generalizing rules are best understood as hinges within the process of stereotyping. Hinges are most commonly understood to resemble ordinary empirical propositions but in fact play a normative role, in the sense that they play a foundation role bringing evidence to bear onto the justification of empirical propositions. I advance a Colivian hinge epistemology framework, which brings to the surface the normative dimensions of stereotyping in cognitive processes.