We have positive epistemic duties

Morality regularly asks positive things of us. If a Roman Emperor could save a gladiator's life by giving a thumbs up, he morally should do that. We could call this a simple positive moral duty, insofar as there is a particular action the Emperor morally should perform.1 We often have non-simple positive moral duties as well. If someone stops breathing and I am the only person around, I should call 911, start applying CPR, and wait for instructions from the operator. This is not one action; it is a sequence of actions. Here I have a compound positive duty. We have disjunctive positive duties as well. If two children, A and B, twenty feet apart, are about to fall from a bridge and I only have time to save one, I should either save A or save B. Prudence is like morality in these respects. It regularly asks positive things of us, sometimes simple, sometimes compound, sometimes disjunctive. Is the same true of epistemic normativity? Do we ever have positive epistemic duties, be they simple, compound, or disjunctive, or some other kind? I focus on belief as the relevant positive option. Some philosophers have argued that although epistemic norms do tell us what we are appropriate to believe and what we shouldn't believe, they do not tell us that we should believe anything. 2 3 If these philosophers are wrong and we do have positive epistemic duties, another set of questions arises: which ones do we have? under what conditions do we have them, and why? One reason this topic matters is that the legitimacy of certain epistemic criticisms hangs in the balance. We might think, for instance, that many vaccine-skeptics merit epistemic criticism – and not merely moral or prudential criticism – for not believing that the polio vaccine is safe. It is not unusual for such people have strong evidence but still fail to appreciate this support; they underestimate it; or incorrectly take it to be outweighed or otherwise defeated by other evidence they have. It's not merely that we criticize them when they believe that the polio vaccine is unsafe. For we might criticize them as well for being 50/50 confident about its safety, or even 75/25. As we might put it: they should believe it is safe. 4 If we never have simple epistemic duties, or if we have them only when we appreciate the support our evidence provides, then epistemic criticism for lack of belief in such cases would not be merited. I will argue that we have positive epistemic duties, including simple ones, and that they sometimes arise in cases in which we do not appreciate the support our evidence provides. 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