Evaluative effects on knowledge attributions

Experimental philosophers have investigated various ways in which non-epistemic evaluations can affect knowledge attributions. The contemporary starting point for philosophical discussions of the nature of knowledge is the justified true belief, or JTB model. The epistemic side-effect effect (ESEE) is the finding that factors like the goodness or badness of the outcome of an agent’s action or facts about whether the agent has fulfilled or violated a relevant social norm can affect whether that agent is taken to have certain kinds of knowledge. Work on the ESEE was originally inspired by Joshua Knobe’s important discovery of the Knobe effect or side-effect effect, probably the most famous result in experimental philosophy. The ESEE suggests a further respect in which knowledge may be connected to action, namely that whether a subject’s belief counts as knowledge, may be determined by other evaluative features of actions the subject performs in light of that belief.