Epistemic Partiality and the Nature of Friendship

The debate around epistemic partiality in friendship presents us with several tough philosophical puzzles. One of these has been articulated in two objections to the view that friendship can require epistemic partiality on the grounds it is incompatible with the nature of friendship. The first, owed...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Warman, Jack (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Interlibrary Loan:Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany)
Published: 2024
In: Ethical theory and moral practice
Year: 2024, Volume: 27, Issue: 3, Pages: 371-388
IxTheo Classification:NBE Anthropology
NCA Ethics
NCB Personal ethics
VB Hermeneutics; Philosophy
Further subjects:B Epistemic Partiality
B Friendship
B Love
B Special Duties
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Description
Summary:The debate around epistemic partiality in friendship presents us with several tough philosophical puzzles. One of these has been articulated in two objections to the view that friendship can require epistemic partiality on the grounds it is incompatible with the nature of friendship. The first, owed to Crawford, argues that you should not treat your friends with epistemic partiality because your beliefs about your friends should be responsive to the facts about them, and epistemic partiality is incompatible with this demand. The second, owed to Mason, draws on a Murdochian account of love to argue that loving relationships—such as friendship—are ‘epistemically rich states’, which means that they are constituted by a drive towards ever greater and more intimate knowledge of our loved ones. In this paper, I shall argue that epistemic partiality may indeed limit what we know about our friends, but not in ways that diminish the quality of our love for them, and certainly not in ways that block us from being friends with them.
ISSN:1572-8447
Contains:Enthalten in: Ethical theory and moral practice
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10677-024-10440-5