Epistemic deontology, epistemic trade-offs, and Kant’s formula of humanity

Abstract

An epistemic deontology modelled on Kant’s ethics—in particular the humanity formula of the categorical imperative—is a promising alternative to epistemic consequentialism because it can forbid intuitively impermissible epistemic trade-offs which epistemic consequentialism seems doomed to permit and, most importantly, it can do so in a way that is not ad hoc.