Evidence that stakes don’t matter for evidence

Some philosophers have recently defended anti-intellectualism with respect to knowledge and evidence. In this paper, I assess anti-intellectualism about evidence, which claims a relation between one's evidence and the practical benefits or costs of being right or wrong about the propositions supported by that evidence. Proponents of anti-intellectualism generally regard their view as not at all obvious, but nonetheless strongly supported by appeal to our intuitive judgments about whether particular epistemic properties are instantiated in hypothetical cases. Anti-Intellectualism is thus taken by its proponents to be a surprising truth. I show that, though peoples’ explicit judgments about the general issue of whether or not non-epistemic factors make an epistemic difference are often in line with anti-intellectualism, their judgments about whether particular epistemic properties are instantiated in hypothetical cases do not display a pattern that would clearly support anti-intellectualism about evidence. ...