The Epistemic Dimensions of Civil Disobedience

Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, protests against the public health measures instituted by governments have become a familiar sight on the streets of major cities across the world. The policies these protests challenge, and the kinds of claims made by protestors, have differed across jurisdiction and have evolved through different stages of the pandemic, with protests across Europe and North America focussing at various times on the supposed injustice of initial lockdown measures, the rollout of vaccines, and the implementation of vaccine mandates. A significant number of these protests have been, in various respects, legally prohibited; many of the earlier protests violated emergency legislation restricting the number of people or households permitted to gather in public, while later actions include occupations of the offices of media companies and refusal to pay taxes.1 At least some participants in these protests have been animated by false claims that the pandemic is a hoax, or that it is in some sense deliberate, or that it is being exploited by politicians and businesses to implement policies of radical social control. Many participants and commentators have described some of these actions as forms of civil disobedience; a placard displayed by one protestor in Bristol in November 2020 stated that ‘civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state has become lawless or corrupt’,2 while a Canadian anti-lockdown campaigner compared his refusal to provide details of his vaccination status in a coffee shop to the actions of Rosa Parks.3 Similar claims have been made regarding the protests in Ottawa in late 2021/early 2022.4 These protests raise important questions regarding the conditions for permissible civil disobedience in a pandemic specifically,5 but also highlight some more general questions for theories of civil disobedience. Some of these relate to the use of civil disobedience in the pursuit of ‘anti-democratic and illiberal goals’, such as whether broadly liberal theories of civil disobedience effectively apply across these cases as well as the justice-promoting paradigm examples.6 In this article I focus on a slightly different issue: is the justification of civil disobedience conditional on dissenters satisfying some epistemic conditions? If so, what kinds of conditions? Perhaps surprisingly, the two most directly relevant philosophical literatures suggest quite different answers to these questions. Within broadly liberal theories of civil disobedience they have received little direct attention. Such accounts generally view the justification of civil disobedience as primarily relating to the conduct of the dissenters during and after disobedience. The justification of an act of civil disobedience just relates to the question of whether agents act in accordance with certain constraints, which may include non-violence, civility, and accepting punishment. However, there are some accounts within this literature, such as those developed by Ronald Dworkin and Kimberley Brownlee, which incorporate explicit epistemic constraints. These identify these constraints as tests by which we can determine whether an agent's claim qualifies as a conviction, and thus as a commitment which deserves a special kind of consideration in liberal democratic societies. As such, the constraints are viewed as relatively minimal tests of coherence rather than as tests of epistemic responsibility. The literature on political epistemology presents a very different picture. Political epistemologists disagree about the nature and scale of the epistemic obligations or responsibilities of citizens in a democratic polity. But they broadly agree that citizens do have some epistemic responsibilities when they act politically in various ways, including voting, engaging in public discussion, and even dissenting. If citizens in a democratic polity have responsibilities to act in epistemically responsible ways when voting in elections or discussing political issues in public, it might seem straightforward that these responsibilities will also constrain their civil disobedience. I argue that the political epistemologists are right that the justification of our political acts is sensitive to our epistemic conduct, and outline a particular way of incorporating epistemic constraints into theories of civil disobedience. This article has three aims. The first of these is to show that even those liberal theories of civil disobedience which incorporate explicit epistemic requirements an of what is with disobedience. epistemic conditions within the of an of and on an view of claims of relate to a political is to provide a more I argue that agents have a epistemic to their citizens to to the that the claim they to is the of dissenters to that their actions as little as is with a of the to these on the of a I show this is with the epistemic obligations of political but made by of the different conditions of the by disobedience. I to show that this on The of this is sensitive to in a when agents have and broadly political just and in a epistemic and when the disobedience more and in a and in some cases in the which can this in different has the of the epistemic conditions in which most dissenters act and the of such conditions to questions of the justification of civil disobedience. a on use of the of ‘civil This in most has been to a of important political and in including that it as a in the of the and the made by those in disobedience as the in the as of permissible I of these I more that a of civil disobedience which some of the of the liberal when to include a of actions and a of and as just rather than the of permissible to a In of a of the I two for with a broadly use of it in this The first is that focus is on the kind of which is the of the and of to or and by agents broadly to of with in this in of conditions such as and the to or forms of public I there is to that some of the apply to some forms of but I do argue for that the of for civil disobedience and the use of the by those in the kinds of protests I at the of the as well as many that regarding the coherence and of the have the it is in the public Many of these to in permissible civil disobedience; whether this claim is or and has important for democratic and philosophical theories of civil disobedience incorporate epistemic epistemic requirements in the liberal accounts developed in the and by and These theories claim that agents in civil disobedience act with a of the and of the and political of the and in of a claim which is their and but do these requirements to have epistemic The can by in a way which to such as accepting for act of while the is most as a of which or within this have by and this focus on the conduct of agents and the of their acts of civil disobedience can in many ways, to these but by of our epistemic Some liberal have which to These epistemic constraints into the familiar of The most of this kind is developed by Kimberley Brownlee, an and of the epistemic conditions to the of the right to in civil disobedience is to the duty that to the that have for and for and that agents to the of those is our for right of as our of our and a right the and for the of these The of at the of of conviction, and as to the kind of which can ‘civil are of this a a a and a As and have The a of our and If agents are in the of their stated an a against but in claim to that will to is important to for our is the for such by that minimal of and provide a of these or what it to it is that in this that is about the of but about the of and the of that have The also directly the nature of the of the and the by which those are to our but to in of with and against certain kinds of disobedience we are to in this kind of can to our as and we are to and But the is we our claim for our as agents or the to their claims and this a of rather the As a to in a that we do their to and is for to In at least some satisfying the dissenters to have a particular the of their conviction, and to to their to such are that to the and for claim the of or that might claim they the and that our and and our are that is in being explicit about the epistemic conditions it and in the with which those conditions are it to provide a of what kinds of epistemic our of the of an act of civil and is to claim that the epistemic requirements on the right to civil disobedience are conditions of agents to these conditions of and agents are than civil disobedience. But it very to view those claims which to these in their protests against public health measures which they as civil and which to into most of the as civil or civil disobedience which they do have a right to but as the epistemic in these The of this is that also to conviction, a right to in civil disobedience on the of to the political or the that might on the some which on the question of whether an has this right which an of the of the If this to the very of political in a to this as a question of justification rather than and in the constraints of to that dissenters act the epistemic requirements of civil disobedience in the of to identify the epistemic on civil disobedience as But acts of civil disobedience do also on and about the the of social the kinds of claims being made by the nature of the political and as a of and in the way that or political the that the right to civil disobedience to the of agents or at is in cases of is to identify the of as the of of the epistemic constraints on the justification of civil disobedience. the epistemic of a of civil disobedience the of a of a more of whether an act of civil disobedience is these as one of a number of on that such as the nature of the political the of the epistemic the to which agents are to their claims through and the of claims and to the epistemic constraints as an which can different requirements in might the epistemic conditions on these In the I an to the in which agents epistemic obligations to which constrain their epistemic conduct to engaging in civil disobedience. 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least to the it can in to democratic and issues of in political The I outline may this by the epistemic that the public of a of within even epistemically or civil disobedience can public which is for a that the epistemic conditions are at a of but at the that dissenters have to citizens regarding the in they in civil disobedience. can these even when their claim is false or The of a of in public will there are to of the that democratic is by the of of their and even to that a right to in civil disobedience in of even the most will a the of and the polity as a as by As it is claims which have received a minimal of which are being the for civil disobedience on the to I will by to the cases of civil disobedience with which I those by those that the pandemic a hoax, or that the public health measures to and forms of social control. of the epistemic of civil disobedience to a epistemic in these is the most way in which epistemic constraints are into theories of civil accounts I in do These accounts to the claim that the of those as to as at or to the claim that they do as and are a for The that I have developed a more of these Some of these participants in these protests can by their citizens for to epistemic in to their The of this are in that the epistemic apply in a to the significant number of those participants in a epistemic to epistemic and the to their in public and within political The of epistemic by such agents is that can about their to identify this many may the that the justification of civil disobedience relates to some epistemic by may seem to the of liberal theories of civil the of the state and those at the of social and political that dissenters by the of such in cases which have been in their and a just state and political as a this will have to provide an of epistemic on these cases they the use of such we for the by at least some of the this of the for this article while I a at the and at I for the of the in the of this and to those and questions 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