Epistemic Authority: Some Problems with Preemptionism

Abstract

Linda Zagzebski has recently argued that epistemic authorities’ judgments should serve as preemptive reasons for us, i.e., we should not merely regard them as especially weighty reasons, but we should accept the epistemic authorities’ views simply on the grounds that they endorse them. The paper makes two major points. First, the only solution offered so far to a major gap in Zagzebski account – how to account for the fact
that a putative epistemic authority’s outstanding mistake threatens their status as epistemic expert – is wrong. Second, it discusses in some details cases which were largely ignored in the literature, namely the once in which we may actually communicate with the authority and thus explain our reasons to each other. It turns out that there are cases in which we should not preempt.