Guillaume Andrieux
University of Glasgow
Epistemic norms of action have received increased philosophical attention in recent years. Singer and Aronowitz (2021) argue through a series of cases that we can have epistemic reasons to act in many ways, including to eat a sandwich. Similarly, Flores and Woodard (2023) argue that there are epistemic norms on evidence-gathering. This raises two puzzles: (1) explaining what it is for a norm of action to be distinctly epistemic and (2) explaining how non-practical norms for action influence what we ought to do simpliciter.
However, there is some scepticism about taking those puzzles seriously. Some, like Arpaly (2023), argue that putative epistemic reasons for actions really are instrumental (practical) reasons to promote epistemic goods sought by agents. Some, like Mantel (2019), argue that epistemic reasons are not robustly normative (they don’t influence the ought simpliciter) when isolated from practical considerations.
My aim in this paper is to show that most of the sceptics’ commitments are compatible with epistemic norms of action being both distinctly epistemic and normatively relevant. To do so, I rely on a two-level framework of the structure of normativity (Maguire and Woods 2020, Sharadin 2023), which has two defining features. First, every standard of correctness generates norms. Second, only moral and prudential considerations are robustly normative.
Importantly, this view also makes room for an independent epistemic normative domain, which can be identified (following Woodard and Flores 2023) by our practices of epistemic blame. When we can legitimately be epistemically blamed for phi-ing, we have violated an epistemic norm of action. An attractive aspect of this view is that one can be legitimately (epistemically) blamed for acting as they ought (simpliciter). This is why epistemic norms of actions are normatively relevant, even though they might not be normatively robust. I also identify potential worries about over-generating norms and asymmetries but argue that they can be dealt with.
In addition to reconciling sceptics and proponents of epistemic norms of action, a successful application of the two-level framework to a new target (beyond epistemic and practical reasons to believe) is exciting evidence of its ability to generalize across normative domains.
Chair: Rafaela Schinner
Time: September 13th, 10:00 – 10:30
Location: SR 1.003
SOPhiA 2026 