ABSTRACT
In this chapter I focus on the attitude of those citizens that, in democratic public debates concerning the elaboration of public policies, mistrust trustworthy epistemic authorities as for beliefs that are fully justified and almost undisputed within the scientific community. I argue that this mistrusting attitude, which I understand as a specific manifestation of post-truth, is prima facie bad for democratic societies. I defend this thesis by claiming that citizens showing it do not possess the political and deliberative virtue of the epistemic trust in trustworthy epistemic authorities (ETITEA), which is demanded by the non-exhaustive ideal of the good citizen publicly debating in democratic contexts. I develop this ideal and show that, in light of the fact of epistemic dependence, citizens publicly debating in democratic contexts should trust trustworthy epistemic authorities as for fully justified and almost undisputed beliefs, as a way to reduce the prudential and moral risks engendered by plainly and fully unjustified beliefs. In more detail, I show that ETITEA is required by three ideas characterizing my ideal: the idea of rational citizens; the idea of reasonable citizens; and the idea of responsible citizens. Finally, I employ my normative framework to assess the attitude of those citizens that mistrust climatologists as for fully justified and almost undisputed beliefs such as “climate change is occurring”.
