Epistemology & Philosophy of Science

Volume 58, Issue 4, 2021

Special Issue on Virtue Epistemology

Extended Mind and Epistemic Responsibility in a Digital Society

The article deals with the problem of compatibility of the extended mind thesis with the concept of epistemic responsibility. This compatibility problem lies at the intersection of two current trends in Virtue Epistemology (VE): the study of extended cognition, and the return of VE to the topic of epistemic responsibility. I give objections to two seemingly independent positions; their acceptance makes it difficult or even impossible to make the concept of epistemic responsibility applicable to the agents of digital society whose cognition is extended. The core of both positions can be illustrated by the following thesis: “Since the subject cannot voluntarily change his/her beliefs, we cannot ascribe to him/her either epistemic responsibility or intellectual virtues that allow him/her to take responsibility”. The counter-arguments to this thesis are based on the distinction between the causal (responsibility-in) and normative (responsibility-for) components of responsibility. The absence of the former allows us to characterize the subject as not responsible, the absence of the latter as irresponsible. I propose two conceptual foundations that can make possible the consistent talk about the epistemic responsibility of an extended subject. 1) The subject may not be responsible for the beliefs taken from the epistemic environment, but the subject bears significant responsibility for what environment he finds himself in. 2) Being epistemically responsible means deliberately reducing the number of possible causal excuses – excuses based on agent’s unresponsibiity due to his causal dependence on his epistemic environment (‘cognitive extensions’).