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EPISTEMIC SELF‐INDULGENCE
Author(s) -
BATTALY HEATHER
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
metaphilosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.475
H-Index - 35
eISSN - 1467-9973
pISSN - 0026-1068
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9973.2009.01619.x
Subject(s) - indulgence , skepticism , epistemology , philosophy , psychology , theology
Abstract: I argue in this essay that there is an epistemic analogue of moral self‐indulgence. Section 1 analyzes Aristotle's notion of moral temperance, and its corresponding vices of self‐indulgence and insensibility. Section 2 uses Aristotle's notion of moral self‐indulgence as a model for epistemic self‐indulgence. I argue that one is epistemically self‐indulgent only if one either : (ESI1) desires, consumes, and enjoys appropriate and inappropriate epistemic objects; or (ESI2) desires, consumes, and enjoys epistemic objects at appropriate and inappropriate times; or (ESI3) desires and enjoys epistemic objects too frequently, or to an inappropriately high degree, or consumes too much of them. We need not look far to locate the epistemically self‐indulgent: philosophers, especially skeptics, are likely candidates.