Epistemic Vulnerability

Abstract

In developing her ethics of care, Eva Kittay discusses the vulnerability and voluntarism models of obligation. Kittay uses the vulnerability model to demonstrate that we have some obligations to care, even for those to whom we’ve made no promise or with whom we have no agreement. Kittay’s primary interest is in our moral obligations. I use this distinction to propose a new way to understand our epistemic obligations to one another. After explaining Kittay’s models and their epistemic analogs, I use epistemic vulnerability to explain two cases.