Philosophy PhD student Alex Cunningham's paper, "Epistemic Hypocrisy and the Standing to Judge Epistemically Blameworthy," has been selected as the graduate student winner of the 2023 Helen Stenner Memorial Essay Prize, which includes an award of $1,000. An abstract of the paper is below. Congtratulations, Alex!
Abstract: It is uncontroversial that something goes wrong with the blaming practices of hypocrites. However, it is more difficult to pinpoint exactly what is objectionable about their blaming practices. I contend that, just as we have recently done with blame, we can constructively treat hypocrisy as admitting of an epistemic species. This paper has two objectives: first, to identify the epistemic fault in epistemically hypocritical blame, and second, to explain why epistemically hypocritical blamers lose their standing to form even judgements of epistemic blameworthiness. I tackle the first problem by appeal to an epistemic norm of consistency. I address the second by arguing that the epistemically hypocritical blamer commits to an opting-out of the set of shared epistemic standards that importantly underlies our standing to judge others epistemically blameworthy. I suggest that considering hypocrisy and standing from an epistemological perspective reveals important upshots for traditional debates within epistemology, the relationship between different standing conditions on blame, and epistemic blame skepticism.
