Enacting Epistemic Respect: Reconciling Care and Respect

Moral philosophy generally holds that we owe a distinct moral obligation to respect persons. This principle of respect stands in tension with care ethics as they appear to offer conflicting moral guidance: While the former promotes deep engagement, the latter appears to dictate non-interference in another’s autonomy. This chapter develops a novel, empirically informed perspective on this received tension between care and respect, drawing on theories in cognitive science and focusing on a specific kind of respect, namely, epistemic respect for persons. Drawing on insights from enactive philosophy of cognition and psychological studies on face-to-face conversations, it demonstrates that epistemic respect is neither a merely cognitive state nor a cognitive state combined with affective motivation. Rather, it is a form of active engagement involving the exercise of skillful know-how to support another’s epistemic performance in interactions. Thus, respecting a person as an epistemic agent is a form of care.