With the rise of social epistemology over the past decade, epistemologists have for the most part moved beyond the purely analytical task of defining knowledge, with their work today touching on almost every aspect of our lives. This conversation between social epistemologists Lani Watson and Aidan McGlynn coincided with the publication of the “Authority and Knowledge” issue of The Philosopher. In that issue, we asked how what counts as knowledge both depends on and supports authority, as well as what forms knowledge has to take (objective, expert, etc.) in order to be authoritative. Lani Watson's idea of “epistemic rights” expands the question of rights to include the right to goods such as information, knowledge and truth. Using the US pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma as a case study, Watson argues that epistemic rights violations harm individuals, diminish the quality of the debate, and lead to increased polarization.

LANI WATSON is a Research Fellow with the Oxford Character Project at the University of Oxford. Her research is in applied social and virtue epistemology, with a focus on the nature and value of questioning.

AIDAN MCGLYNN is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. His research focuses mainly on issues in epistemology, particularly where it intersects with other areas such as the philosophies of language and mind, and social and feminist philosophy.

Aidan McGlynn (AM): In your work, you make a case for the importance of the notion of epistemic rights. But this isn't a particularly familiar phrase to us in law or politics or other areas of social significance. How do you understand the notion of epistemic rights and what are some examples of the kind of phenomena you’re trying to understand in these terms?

Lani Watson (LW): The term “epistemic” has always been a hard sell outside of academia, and I think that is a great shame because it is a very useful term. We can use it much more widely outside of universities and the academy than we in fact do. Epistemic rights are simply rights to epistemic goods like information, knowledge, understanding, truth, maybe even wisdom. They are rights that concern these epistemic goods and, in particular, they are rights that govern and protect the quality, the accessibility, and the distribution of these goods. As an example, take the right to know the results of a medical test.