Epistemic Respect and the Right to be Believed

It has seemed intuitive to many that disbelieving another's testimony for no good reason is morally wrong. However, existing accounts locate the wrong in contingent features — partial relationships, high-stakes content, or identity-based prejudice. In this dissertation, I offer a fully generalizable explanation for the moral wrong of testimony refusal: one rooted in the concept of epistemic respect. In the first chapter, "Epistemic Respect", I argue that just as persons are entitled to respect in virtue of their capacity for practical reasoning, epistemic agents are entitled to respect in virtue of their capacity for theoretical reasoning. Since testimony is the primary expression of epistemic agency, refusing it without cause constitutes a form of disrespect — implying, without evidence, that the testifier lacks rational norm-responsiveness. In the second chapter, "Moral Norms on Peer Disagreement", I extend this framework to the epistemological puzzle of peer disagreement, arguing that there is a moral reason to conciliate when your epistemic peer disagrees with you, both out of respect for their epistemic authority and as an expression of open-mindedness. Finally, in the third chapter, "Moralizing Expertise", I apply these insights to expert testimony, arguing that failing to assign significant weight to expert testimony compounds both wrongs: disregarding testimony without cause and failing to respect a demonstrably superior epistemic track record. Together, these chapters establish that epistemic respect demands we properly value both the capacity for and the successful deployment of epistemic agency.