Caring About Our Own Epistemic Capacities qua Responsible Citizens

Abstract Are citizens responsible for their own bad epistemic conduct? What grounds do we have for such accountability practice? And what if citizens lack education and knowledge on how evidence should be considered and thus acted upon? Does ignorance of this kind excuse them, or are there still normative margins for legitimately holding them accountable? In this paper, I wish to chart the legitimate options that we have for our practice of moral accountability in the epistemic domain, in particular the one which pertains to the institutional role of citizens. In order to fulfil the task, I will resort to an analysis of what it takes to meet the standards of an institutional role, what capacities are required, and what duties we incur. The analysis will show that a certain number of capacities are required in order to perform within an institutional role, and that role-occupants are not exempt from a duty of care regarding the state of their own capacities. This is a duty which pertains to most institutional roles, and citizens qua institutional role-occupants are no exception. Institutions have a role to play; they should educate citizens not only by offering suitable chances to acquire specific capacities and knowledge of evidence treatment, but also, conjunctively and constitutively, by helping them to enhance the conscience and care pertaining to the role. This can be effectively done by more clearly defining the standards of epistemic conduct imperative to the institutional role of citizens, as well as illustrating its moral significance in-depth.