Epistemic Self‐indulgence

I argue in this essay that there is an epistemic analogue of moral self‐indulgence. Section 1 analyzes Aristotle's notion of moral temperance, and its corresponding vices of self‐indulgence and insensibility. Section 2 uses Aristotle's notion of moral self‐indulgence as a model for epistemic self‐indulgence. I argue that one is epistemically self‐indulgent only if one either : (ESI1) desires, consumes, and enjoys appropriate and inappropriate epistemic objects; or (ESI2) desires, consumes, and enjoys epistemic objects at appropriate and inappropriate times; or (ESI3) desires and enjoys epistemic objects too frequently, or to an inappropriately high degree, or consumes too much of them. We need not look far to locate the epistemically self‐indulgent: philosophers, especially skeptics, are likely candidates.