Sobre a (im)possibilidade de agência epistêmica

Abstract

This work examines the possibility of agency in the epistemic domain - the view shared by many philosophers that we can be active, rather than passive, in relation to the formation of our beliefs and our manifestations of knowledge. It presents various senses in which this view is articulated in the literature and concludes that the notion of epistemic agency is plausible only in an indirect sense, in the sense of the different actions that we perform in order to improve our epistemic commitments. It is a kind of practical agency, like any agency, that does not allow us to think that we may be acting genuinely when we believe or know.