Epistemological Foundations

Abstract This chapter lays the epistemological and conceptual foundations that are needed to build the main argument for the Preemption View later in the book. Most importantly, the epistemic mechanism of higher-order defeat is defended against recent challenges; and the so-far neglected but highly relevant distinction between domain-specific and domain-independent evidence is motivated. A major part of this chapter is devoted to characterizing different social epistemic roles, among them being an expert and being an epistemic authority. Against orthodoxy, it is argued that experts cannot be characterized by having more true beliefs, more knowledge, or better understanding than laypeople. Rather, experts are more reliable than laypeople about a specific domain because they possess better domain-specific reasoning skills and a more inclusive body of domain-specific evidence than the latter. Here it is crucial that, typically, experts will have considered all the relevant evidence that laypeople possess (unless the domain is such that laypeople typically have relevant personal or private evidence). In contrast with experts, epistemic authorities are characterized by their normative power of providing preemptive reasons for laypeople. The key argument in the book aims to establish the claim that experts are typically epistemic authorities.