Dr Kathryn Mackay1
1University Of Sydney, Australia
Biography:
Kathryn MacKay is a Senior Lecturer at Sydney Health Ethics. Kathryn’s background is in philosophy and bioethics, and her research involves examining issues of human flourishing at the intersection of ethics, feminist theory, and political philosophy. Kathryn’s research is mainly focussed on developing a theory of virtue for public health ethics, and on the ethics of public health communication. She is currently writing a book about public health virtue ethics.
Abstract:
In philosophy, epistemic humility is both a moral and an intellectual virtue, which, at the personal level, pertains to one’s attitude toward one’s own knowledge and abilities to learn and understand. In this presentation, I will sketch an argument that there is an analogous institutional-level virtue of epistemic humility and explore what it means for public health to have the appropriate disposition. Without engaging in a dispute about what counts as scientific knowledge, I propose that epistemic humility is an excellent disposition toward scientific knowledge at the mean between a disposition of excessive doubt and epistemic arrogance. Public health must wisely deliberate about the structures it will implement, including policies, practices, and initiatives, which are applied to entire groups in society. As such, I will argue that it is important that public heath maintains a disposition of epistemic humility with regard to its expert status, evidence, the concepts and values it holds, and the communicative methods it employs.