Explaining the Normative Significance of Epistemic Evaluation

Abstract

Ordinary thought and talk accepts epistemic evaluation as genuinely relevant to or bearing on what and how we ought to believe, all things considered. In this article, I treat our pretheoretical commitment to the normative significance of epistemic evaluation as a kind of datum that epistemic theorizing ought not merely accommodate but explain. I argue that familiar versions of two popular sorts of explanations are not well-positioned to fully vindicate our pretheoretical commitment to the genuine normative significance of epistemic evaluation. And I develop an alternative, fully vindicating explanation of this datum.