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EPISTEMIC DUTIES 341
conditions, which I will explain in the last part of this paper. An epistemic norm, which
satisfies the guidance function, will be called a regulative epistemic norm. From Goldman’s
quote it becomes clear that the search for and the establishment of epistemic duties are what
is needed to deal with the epistemological aim of guiding our intellectual conduct (cf.
Goldman 2001: 116). I will characterize epistemic duties in more detail below. From what has
been said so far, we get two assumptions about epistemic duties. The first assumption is that
epistemic duties are epistemic norms, but not vice versa. The second assumption is that
epistemic duties are regulative epistemic norms, i.e. norms with a guidance function. This is
in accordance with what Feldman says about epistemic duties.
Epistemological duties are duties that one must carry out in order to be successful from
an intellectual (or epistemological) perspective. (Feldman 2002: 376)
1.2 An Argument against Epistemic Duties
There is an argument against epistemic duties which can be found in Alston (1988) 2 and also
in Feldman (2001). The argument against epistemic duties can be paraphrased in the
following way:
(1) There are epistemic duties only if epistemic duties have a non-empty domain, i.e.
they apply at least to some epistemic agents in some cases.
(2) Epistemic duties take doxastic attitudes as their objects. If Oφ is an epistemic duty,
then φ is a doxastic attitude.
(3) If an epistemic agent has an epistemic duty Oφ (i.e. Oφ is incumbent on the
epistemic agent), then the epistemic agent is able to bring about φ voluntarily.
(Epistemic “ought implies can” principle)
(4) Epistemic agents are not able to voluntarily bring about doxastic attitudes.
(5) Therefore, epistemic duties do not apply to any epistemic agent and hence,
epistemic duties have an empty domain.
(6) Hence, there are no epistemic duties.
The first premise seems to be plausible, because epistemic duties, which do not apply to any
epistemic agent, do not make sense from the start. The second premise rests on the idea that
only duties which have doxastic attitudes as their objects can be characterized as epistemic
duties. Feldman shows that to have a doxastic attitude as an object is only a necessary, but
not a sufficient condition for Oφ to be an epistemic duty (cf. Feldman 2002: 373). For now, I
will accept this premise. The third premise captures the idea that epistemic norms, which are
supposed to guide us in our intellectual conduct, need to take the cognitive limits of epistemic
agents into account. How else could we say that epistemic agents can be guided by epistemic
norms? That an epistemic duty to φ is only incumbent on the epistemic agent if the agent is
able to voluntarily bring about φ 3 , is one way to take the cognitive limits of epistemic agents
into account. Therefore, an epistemic “ought implies can” principle appears to be a necessary
condition for Oφ to be an epistemic duty. Moreover, the epistemic “ought implies can”
2
Alston (1988) does not argue directly against the existence of epistemic duties. This argument is a
byproduct of his arguments against the viability of a deontological notion of epistemic justification,
which relies on his famous argument for the psychological incapacity of epistemic agents to bring about
doxastic attitudes voluntarily, i.e. his rejection of doxastic voluntarism.
3
Please note that to prevent a common criticism against “ought implies can”, namely that if “ought
implies can” holds, then agents can too easily release themselves from having a certain duty in a certain
situation by bringing about that they are not (any longer) able to bring about the required state of affairs
(cf. Sinnott-Armstrong 1984), I support a more refined version of “ought implies can” as it is given by
Howard-Snyder (2006: 235f.)