Abstract I argue that all extant philosophical accounts of gaslighting overgenerate or undergenerate cases, either because they fail to include the internal felt experience of the gaslit or because they include this internal experience in the wrong way. I contend that some act A counts as gaslighting iff : (1) the gaslighter’s act A expresses disagreement with the gaslit without adequately expressing respect for the gaslit, and this makes it the case that (2) the gaslit in fact comes to believe that there is no hope for their fundamental rational competence, either universally or within some specific domain.
R Stroud (Mon,) studied this question.