“Epistemic Closure”

There is a concept in philosophy called “epistemic closure” The fundamental notion is that if one knows something, one also knows those things logically implied by that something. This idea looks pretty silly to anyone who has ever studied mathematics, but that’s not my subject here.

Every once in a while, some semi-technical phrase or idea gets hijacked by popular culture, usually utterly changing its meaning in the process. Such was the case with “begs the question” a few years back, “quantum leap” way back when, and thus it is with “epistemic closure” today.

It seems that one Julian Sanchez wrote a piece about the 'epistemic closure' of the conservative mind. What he was referring to was what a painfully objective observer might call conservative’s close-mindedness or their resistance to testing their ideas against empirical evidence – I would just call it “obdurate stupidity.”

Now it seems to me that this usage is almost unrelated to “epistemic closure” in the classical sense, but it has been picked up by popular writers and even a Nobel Prize winner, so it seems that fuddy-duddies like me will just have to grit their teeth over this like we do when hear the abuse of the phrase “begs the question” or the claim that it’s somehow improper to use “hopefully” as a sentence adverb.

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