The epistemic demands of friendship: friendship as inherently knowledge-involving

Cathy Mason*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

Many recent philosophers have been tempted by epistemic partialism. They hold that epistemic norms and those of friendship constitutively conflict. In this paper, I suggest that underpinning this claim is the assumption that friendship is not an epistemically rich state, an assumption that even opponents of epistemic partiality have not questioned. I argue that there is good reason to question this assumption, and instead regard friendship as essentially involving knowledge of the other. If we accept this account of friendship, the possibility of epistemic partialism does not arise.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2439-2455
Number of pages17
JournalSynthese
Volume199
Issue number1-2
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2021
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Epistemic norms
  • Epistemic partiality
  • Friendship
  • Iris Murdoch
  • Love

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