Epistemic and Legal Normativity: Reasons, Guidance, Rights, and Capacities

Abstract This paper address two related topics regarding reasons, rational guidance, and epistemic capacities. First, the paper draws a parallel between the publicity condition on the rule of law and legal normativity, and an internal guidance constraint on genuine epistemic reasons and justification: just as the rule of law requires that laws must be available to the people to whom they apply, genuine epistemic reasons must also be available to the people to whom they apply. The parallel supports a kind of qualified internalism about epistemic reasons, motivated by a “Guidance” constraint on normative reasons. Second, the paper addresses the relation between epistemic rights and epistemic capacities. Lani Watson has recently argued that epistemic rights do not depend on epistemic capacities. In particular, she argues that in order to have a right to know, it’s not necessary that you have a capacity to know. If her view is correct, it poses a threat to the general applicability of Guidance constraints across normative domains. Although I largely agree with Watson’s approach to epistemic rights, I argue that this particular aspect of her view is mistaken: while negative epistemic rights (typically) do not depend on having any particular capacities, positive epistemic rights to know things do depend on a capacity to know those things.