Lani Watson, "The Right to Know: Epistemic Rights and Why We Need Them" (Routledge, 2021)
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Hi everyone, this is Marshall Poe. I'm the founder of the New Books Network, and I'm also a historian. I used to be a history professor, and I love maps, so I'm especially happy to tell you that this episode is sponsored by What's Your Map, which was the winner of the Best Education Podcast at the 2025 British Podcast Awards. What's Your Map is hosted by historian and prize-winning author Professor Jerry Broughton. In each episode, he invites a guest to share a map close to their heart and unfurl the ideas, inspirations, and stories behind it. I can tell you I've listened and it's fascinating. The podcast is in its sixth series and is enjoyed by audiences around the globe. You can explore all the maps in the podcast online.
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Hello, and thanks for joining us for this episode of New Books and Philosophy, which is part of the New Books Network. I'm Robert Talese. I'm Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. I co-host the program with Carrie Figter, Malcolm Keating, and Sarah Tyson. My guest today is Lani Watson. Lani is research fellow and associate faculty in the philosophy faculty at the University of Oxford. Her research specializations include epistemology, social epistemology, virtue theory, and the theory of rights. Her new book has just been published with Routledge. It is titled The Right to Know, Epistemic Rights and Why We Need Them. Now, we often talk as if individuals have entitlements to certain kinds of information, like medical test results, the voting records of their political representatives, for example, maybe crime statistics in the neighborhood that they live in, and the like.
We also talk as if these entitlements entail duties on the part of others to provide the relevant information. And furthermore, we often talk as if the individual's entitlement to these sorts of information or this kind of information also entails a range of protections for individuals against manipulation or misinformation, deception, and the like. Now, despite the fact that these ideas are kind of commonplace, there's surprisingly little in the philosophical literature about the nature and the contours of these relevant entitlements. Lonnie Watson seeks to remedy this. In her new book, The Right to Know, she develops a conception of epistemic rights. These are a distinct class of entitlements which nonetheless fit neatly into the existing landscape of rights theory.
Now, as usual, there's a lot to talk about, but why don't we begin, as we normally do, with our guest.
Hi, Lonnie. Hi, Bob. How are
you today? I
very
well, thank you, and really delighted to be here.
Well, I'm delighted to have you here. You know, we usually start these interviews off with the author saying a few things about themselves. Why don't we not break that trend? Can you tell us a bit about
yourself? Yeah, sure. So you can tell from the accent, I'm a Brit. I'm from the South coast of England from Southampton. I've lived in a few different places in the UK. I've spent a bit of time in the US. I've lived mostly in Edinburgh for the past 10 years, which is where I am just now on a beautiful, sunny, warm day. But I'm actually based at the moment at the University of Oxford as of last year, like you said. So, yeah, I'm very much an epistemologist and I work, as you said, in the areas of sort of social, political and virtue epistemology and in the rights theory literature. And I think really I'm an epistemologist because, as it turns out, I'm just very interested in the epistemic dimension of our lives, really.
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