Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Reviewing Epistemic Authority, Paige Massey

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

Given the relationship between personal autonomy and our various commitments across ideological communities, it is important to understand how to navigate peer disagreement and on which bases we may rationally accept a community leader as an authority in the formation of our beliefs. In her most recent book, Epistemic Authority, Linda Zagzebski develops a theory of rational trust to provide a framework for understanding this complex relationship between autonomy and authority. In my project with Professor Bogardus, we set out to coauthor a scholarly review of Zagzebski's book in light of current epistemological research, with the additional aim to provide …