Loyalty and Epistemic Partiality (Conference Talk)

Should friendship matter when forming a belief? This past weekend, I attended a conference on “Virtuous and Vicious Partiality” at Christopher Newport University. In my talk “Loyalty and Epistemic Partiality”, I argue that in some circumstances it’s reasonable (and epistemically permissible) to be mad if your friends don’t believe you.

Abstract :

Individuals can commit moral wrongs against their friends through the act of disbelief. Philosophers disagree about whether it is bad (epistemically or morally) to disbelieve your friends. On one hand, most people intuitively see the appeal of trusting their friends more than others, but on the other hand, careful inquiry seems to require forming beliefs in an impartial way based on the evidence only. I argue that there is a way to make sense of an epistemically permissible type of partiality towards one’s friends. First, I consider a literary example to clarify the instinct that disbelief can be harmful to friendship. In sections two and three, I consider and reject two views of epistemic partiality in friendship that I argue are overly strong. Finally, I present my own account of how friendship can permissibly influence belief-formation in certain situations, without representing epistemic irresponsibility.