Robin McKenna's Non-Ideal Epistemology
Dr McKenna's book, Non-Ideal Epistemology, is being published this month by OUP. Robin’s book argues for a way of doing epistemology that departs from the idealizations that are typical in much of contemporary epistemology. This includes contemporary social epistemology: it is rather common to work with idealized pictures of what social interactions are like, not to mention the social institutions and environments in which social interactions take place. To avoid these problems, we need to make space for non-ideal epistemology—a way of doing epistemology that eschews the idealizations typical in much contemporary epistemology. However, the book is not just an exercise in philosophical methodology. Robin also develops distinctive approaches to a range of important topics in applied and social epistemology, such as what to do about science denial, whether we should try to be intellectually autonomous, and what our obligations are to other inquirers. The result is an illustration of why we need non-ideal epistemology and what it can do for us.