Tanuj Raut - Epistemology

The exclusion problem in preclinical studies (In Social Epistemology)

Abstract: In biomedicine and neuroscience, researchers exclude female animal subjects from preclinical studies. As a result, they fail to consider sex as a biological variable while testing some drug or treatment. I begin by highlighting the problems associated with this exclusion (section 1.1) and ask whether this exclusion counts as an epistemic wrong, i.e., a wrong committed against someone in their capacity as an epistemic subject. I consider the proposal that the exclusion is an epistemic injustice to women patients and devote section 2 to show that this proposal fails. Moreover, I show that one cannot account for the exclusion as an epistemic wrong under Miranda Fricker’s (2007) framework, given her notion of epistemic subjectivity. To account for the intuition that the exclusion is an epistemic wrong, I briefly outline a broader notion of what it means to be an epistemic subject. In section 3, I explain that the exclusion is an epistemic wrong because it violates the epistemic claim-rights of women patients. In doing so, I use Lani Watson’s (2022) recent account of epistemic claim-rights. In 3.1, I defend the claim that women patients have an epistemic claim-right against researchers excluding female subjects from preclinical studies. Finally, in 3.2, I consider some important upshots of my thesis that the exclusion violates the epistemic claim-right of women patients.

2. Prejudices are not like hinges. (Under Review)

Abstract: According to Miranda Fricker (2007) while we generally believe in others’ testimonies, when an identity-prejudice is present the speaker’s testimony fails to count as evidence for the hearer, because the hearer is malfunctioning ethically and/or psychologically. In light of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, Anna Boncompagni (2021) offers a (strictly epistemic) hinge account which clarifies the epistemic function of prejudice in the structure of testimonial justification. Hinges are norms which govern our epistemic practices. While hinges (e.g. ‘There is an external world’) themselves are neither justified nor unjustified, they provide the justificatory grounds for empirical claims and determine whether something counts as evidence for our beliefs or not. In her view, prejudices are like hinges. I turn to the literature in social psychology on prejudices and prejudice revision to ground two claims: (i) contra Fricker and Boncompagni, prejudices are not immune to counterevidence; (ii) contra Boncompagni, prejudice revision does not require the rejection of underlying prejudicial hinges, and is more complex phenomenon than we are led to believe. More importantly, the hinge account is unable to track the relevant difference between common-sense hinges and negative identity-based prejudices. I highlight some important disanalogies between common-sense hinges and identity-prejudices, in terms of their modal profiles and moral implications. Given these disanalogies, I argue that we should reject any strictly ‘epistemic’ hinge account of prejudices. Negative identity-prejudices, unlike hinges, have distinctively social functions and a strictly epistemic account fails to make sense of them. By accounting for the relevant social functions, not only are we able to track the relevant difference between negative identity-prejudices and commonsense hinges, but also understand why identity-prejudices are so difficult to overcome.

3. Two Structural Problems for Etiological Challenges (In Progress)

Abstract: When one attempts to undermine the epistemic status of an agent's judgment by appealing to its causal history, one offers an 'etiological challenge'. This paper deals with two prominent *structural* problems for etiological challenges: i) the argument by Amia Srinivasan (2015) that etiological challenges are necessarily self-defeating on epistemic grounds, and ii) the argument that such challenges involve the genetic fallacy. I argue that the first problem is not as pervasive as it seems because it only concerns global etiological challenges (that is, those which challenge all our judgments). Then, I discuss and problematize a recent attempt by Matthieu Queloz (2021) to solve the problem of genetic fallacy. The general upshot of my argument is that there are no structural problems for etiological challenges to one's beliefs and judgments.

4. Beliefs under the weight of History (In Progress)

Abstract: Our arrival at beliefs can be explained in terms of their causal history. Often such explanations are used to challenge those beliefs and prompt their revision. In this paper, I offer a novel theory of the epistemic significance of these challenges – which I call ‘etiological challenges’ – and whether we should revise our beliefs in response to them. In §2, I introduce some paradigmatic examples of such challenges and differentiate them from rebutting and undercutting defeaters. In §3, I assess the proposal that these challenges make salient the fact of epistemic luck and show that this proposal fails. Instead, in §4, I argue that if these challenges are meant to show that we lack knowledge, they make salient that our cognitive success can be causally explained by factors other than the manifestation of our cognitive abilities. Nonetheless, we are not required to revise our beliefs in response to such challenges.

5. Burying your heads in the sand: on denialism and the role of intellectual courage (In progress)

Abstract: out some desiderata for a theory of denial, such as the persistence of deniers, their resistance to defeating evidence, and the situation-specific stability of their conduct. In light of these desiderata, I show that accounts of denial as vices, by Heather Battaly and Paul Bloomfield fail. This is because unlike vicious character traits, which are both stable and cross-situationally consistent, denial is only stable but not cross-situationally consistent. As a result, we ought to turn to the resources of virtue epistemology to make sense of the normative impermissibility of deniers’ conduct. I argue that only virtue epistemological theories capable of accounting for normative defeaters can meet this demand. Drawing on Søren Kierkegaard’s reflections on cowardliness in the Upbuilding Discourses, I conclude by highlighting the role of intellectual courage in countering our all-too-human tendency to evade reality.

6. Denialism and the place of emotions

Abstract: By drawing upon studies in environmental psychology of climate denial and the philosophical literature on self-deception, I highlight the role of emotions and affective states in denial. By highlighting the role of affective appraisals of evidence, I show that negative affect has a distinctive place in explaining deniers’ resistance to psychological defeaters. The upshot of this argument is that morally defective motivations lose their salience as the relevant explanans in causing deniers’ conduct. In turn, the view puts pressure on motivationalists about vices to explain the co-occurrence of (i) our normative judgment that the climate denier’s conduct is morally impermissible, and (ii) our hypological judgment that sometimes such deniers cannot be blamed for their conduct.

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