India's Near East

A great many philosophers suggest that we can exercise epistemic agency. Notably, they include Ernest Sosa, Linda Zagzebski, Christine Korsgaard, John McDowell, Christopher Peacocke, Pamela Hieronymi, Martin Steup, Joseph Raz, Alvin Goldman, and Miranda Fricker.1 Indeed, for a variety of reasons, it is supposedly crucial that we do. For example, the exercise of epistemic agency supposedly enters into the explanation of belief formation and knowledge acquisition; it is said to be necessary for knowledge attribution, rationality, normativity, and responsibility. So what is epistemic agency? Of course, just as there is a plurality of philosophers who maintain that we exercise epistemic agency there is a plurality of ways in which it has been characterized. Nevertheless, we can get a general idea of what it is without getting caught up in the particulars of the accounts