WP7. Epistemic Risk Management

Agents performing in just any practical domain are well aware that the absolute exclusion of risks is simply impossible. We are always forced to act under conditions or risk and uncertainty, which may produce undesired outcomes—no matter how diligent we have been in their prevention. While certain estimations of possible risks and expected benefits will sometimes produce the result that inaction is the best option, such an alternative does also involve some risk, even if only the risk of not obtaining some desirable goals one may aim at. No risk, no reward.

The epistemic domain is no exception. All the different varieties of risk we have catalogued may be confronted with precautionary attitudes and strategies, but their absolute prevention is impossible, at least in non-idealized contexts. Furthermore, a particularly dramatic feature of our topic is that minimizing certain types of epistemic risk may increase others. By attempting to reduce veritic epistemic risk, for instance, we may incur in excessive suspension risk, as an effect of an immoderate fear of being wrong. Out of fear of the risk of epistemic betrayal we may also be at risk of not obtaining some valuable beliefs that it would have been sensible to obtain from some source that was worthy of trust. We thus have to do our best to balance the risks associated to the twin epistemic goals of attaining truth and avoiding error.

Given that our epistemic practices are unavoidably affected by a myriad of epistemic risks, any epistemically virtuous agent will have to learn to manage those risks appropriately, solving the many tensions that may arise between its different types. In WP7, we will explore the idea that epistemic risk management consists in the search for such an equilibrium, which may produce some new insights regarding different ongoing debates in epistemology. By way of illustration, our approach may help deal with the classical radical skeptical strategy of placing the burden of proof on the dogmatist, by holding that suspension ought to be our default epistemic position (see Sosa ms. for a recent reconsideration)— a point that seems to be hard to defend from the perspective of epistemic risk management. The issue, of course, is also closely related to the massive extant literature on pragmatic encroachment (see Kim 2017 for an updated overview), where the contextualist claim may be reformulated as the view that, in our ordinary conception, epistemic risks seem to be affected by the practical stakes of the situation. In other words, epistemic and practical risks may figure, at least in some respects, in the same dimension, and may be balanced against each other. This is an alternative perspective from epistemic risk management that has the potential to shed some new light on quite a well-worn debate.

WP7 thus consists in the sketch and defense of an epistemic management strategy that may be of application in some of the most heated ongoing debates in epistemology, in senses that are still to be determined given how much this work package hinges on the results of previous ones. If anything, the open character of this particular work package is a manifestation of the unpredictable potential of our guiding hypothesis.