Publications

“Justifying Humanitarian Interference for Epistemic Threats” – published in Engaging Populism: Democracy and the Intellectual Virtues, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), pgs 295-319

Abstract:

One feature of authoritarian populist regimes is the degree to which they both command and pollute epistemic environments. Populist leaders frequently employ strategies that both intentionally pollute the epistemic environment of political discourse and hinder opposing actors’ ability to correct the public record. Such actions hinder the development and operation of intellectual virtues in a population, promoting instead epistemic dependence. Although modern populist movements are not generally associated with mass atrocities, the techniques of epistemic pollution they employ have historically been used to support such atrocities and hinder human rights more generally. This chapter investigates (a) the polluting impact of populist epistemic environments on the functioning of epistemic virtues and the formation of epistemic dependence and (b) the legitimacy of international intervention to interrupt such epistemic threats. I discuss key concepts of sovereignty and social epistemology while introducing empirical work showing that when epistemic environments are exceptionally monopolized in local environments, mass atrocity events may be on the horizon. This threat is especially evident from a virtue epistemology perspective. Consequently, the international community can justify intervention that interrupts epistemic threats.