How to Be an Epistemic Constitutivist (Without Being a Moral Constitutivist)

Abstract Constitutivism has been widely discussed in both metaethics and epistemology. In this paper I argue that it has been misunderstood in a number of significant ways. I argue that a hallmark of constitutive norms is a particular kind of escapability—what I will call jurisdictional escapability. And that jurisdictional escapability is key to whether constitutivism is a good fit or a potentially awkward one, in a given domain. Jurisdictional escapability is often run together with a different kind of escapability, which I will call normative escapability. But clearly distinguishing these has significant upshots both for the normative landscape generally and for constitutivism. First, it reveals a way in which constitutivism is a particularly good fit for epistemic norms and not such a good fit for moral ones. Second, it reveals that constitutivism is not, as is often thought, an anti-realist position, and is in fact entirely compatible with robust realism. Third, it introduces a new dimension of precision into the normative landscape.