A unified reply to epistemic blame skepticism

Abstract Two skeptical challenges have recently been raised against the existence of epistemic blame. One challenge argues that all seeming instances of epistemic blame are nothing more than moral blame in disguise. The second challenge asserts that epistemic blame is in fact nothing more than mere negative evaluation. I aim to simultaneously defend the existence of epistemic blame against both forms of skepticism. But rather than directly defending epistemic blame, I build an indirect case for the phenomenon’s existence. To do so, I return to the moral domain and examine three of what I call blame’s neighboring phenomena: excuses, exemptions, and the objective attitude. I develop domain-generalizable connections between each of these phenomena and blame. Next, I return to the epistemic domain, providing examples of excuses, exemptions, and objective attitudes being offered or adopted in response to poor epistemic performances. Given our derived evidentiary connections, I argue that the presence of these phenomena in the epistemic domain is compelling evidence for the existence of epistemic blame.