Abstract
The goal of this paper is to argue for a particular epistemic policy, epistemic de-platforming, according to which nobody is a priori entitled to automatically turn their assertions into epistemically relevant alternatives, with the power to question what we know.We start with a presentation of our take on the political turn in analytic philosophy: what characterizes this trend is that philosophical concepts and theories are evaluated according to their power to help detecting hidden forms of injustice (generalizing over our pre-theoretical perceptions of injustice) and intervening to alleviate them. Building on our conception of the political turn, we highlight two epistemic paradoxes. One amounts to the idea that agents subjected to an excess of epistemic friction, for instance, by not receiving the credibility or authority that they deserve, may be said to simultaneously increase their epistemic standing and suffer an epistemic harm. The other is related to the sound attitude of disregarding any evidence that goes against what we know, leading to the allegedly dogmatic stance of rejecting beforehand future evidence and making our present knowledge an obstacle to the future acquisition of further knowledge. We contrast some epistemic policies in terms of their capacity to offer a way out from these paradoxes. Neither dogmatism nor libertarianism take into account which are, and which are not, the contextually relevant epistemic alternatives that should be considered. As an example of a pluralistic, context-dependent, epistemic policy, we explore epistemic de-platforming, a policy that, in line with our characterization of the political turn, entitles agents to ignore possibilities presented by groups whose aim is to further oppressive agendas, while recommends them to always take into account the ideas and opinions of those who have earned the right to be heard by them: their friends, allies, and loved ones.
