Are Epistemic Concepts Reducible to Ethical Concepts?

Abstract

When discussing problems in theory of knowledge we often find ourselves using a terminology that is characteristically ethical. We may ask what it is that distinguishes a good hypothesis or explanation from a bad one. We may affirm or deny that mere simplicity can sometimes make one hypothesis preferable to another. We may say that we ought to trust our memories to the extent that they cohere with one another. We may decide that this or that kind of inference to theoretical entities ispermissible. We may wonder if we could ever have the right to accept a theory if we knew of an equally plausible, but incompatible, alternative. And so forth. Facts of this kind suggest that epistemological questions are a species of ethical questions, and that epistemic concepts are reducible to ethical concepts to whatever extent this entails.