Free-riding is defined by John in “Expert Testimony and Epistemological Free-Riding: The MMR Controversy” as receiving “some benefit from a system of social co-operation but refus[ing] to contribute to the maintenance of the system which generates that benefit, where widespread refusal to contribute to maintenance of the system would mean that no one could enjoy the relevant benefit.” To illustrate the issue of free-riding, John uses the example of a parent who believes that getting their child vaccinated puts them at risk of getting autism, while not getting the child vaccinated has very little risk because of herd immunity, the idea that if everyone around is getting vaccinated, people who do not get vaccinated will have the benefits of being vaccinated because no one around them get sick. Therefore, getting vaccinated has more costs to this parent (risk of autism) than not getting vaccinated (herd-immunity).
Epistemic free-riding is when individuals “raise the epistemic standards which they use to guide their acceptance of some kind of proposition above the level normally agreed to be sufficient in their community, and this standard-shifting is premised on predictions about the costs and benefits of false acceptance in the context which assume that others will not shift their epistemic standards beyond the community-accepted standard.” If the scientific community reaches near-consensus on an issue, society usually holds that belief to be true. When someone raises their epistemic standards beyond that of scientists, they are committing epistemic free-riding because they assume others will accept the standards set by scientists. They can then plan around what they think those people will do with the information they believe, while the free-rider does not accept the burden of acknowledging that the information is true, because, since their epistemic standards are higher than scientists’ standards, accepting the scientific information would be riskier. Back to the MMR example, the parent, to keep their child safe, decides not to accept scientific data because there is an extremely small chance that the data could be wrong, and instead decides to not get their child vaccinated unless scientists know with 100% certainty that the vaccination is safe. The parent assumes that everyone around them will make the “riskier” decision in accepting the scientific data instead of also raising their epistemic standards. Therefore, the parent is committing epistemic free-riding.
Bibliography
1. John, Stephen. "Expert Testimony and Epistemological Free‐Riding: The MMR Controversy." The Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 61, issue 244, 2011, pg 496–517.