Moral encroachment and group-to-individual inferences

The paper is concerned with a special class of inferences, in which we draw conclusions about <i>individual people</i> based on evidence about the <i>groups</i> to which they belong. One thing that is notable about these inferences is that they are often subject to a kind of <i>moral</i> criticism. By judging people in this way, it is claimed, we demean or diminish them, and fail to properly respect them as individuals. And yet, if these inferences are epistemically sound - as they sometimes appear to be - then we face the possibility of a clash between moral and epistemic norms. One way to avoid this clash is through the thesis of <i>moral encroachment</i> - the idea that standards of epistemic justification are themselves sensitive to moral considerations and, in particular, can become more stringent when a belief has the potential to morally wrong others. In this paper I offer some reasons for doubting this thesis, and argue that group-to-individual inferences are, in the end, better understood through a more traditional framework on which epistemic justification is determined purely by the nature of one's evidence.