The following letter was submitted in response to our opinion piece, “On the Moral Cowardice of Epistemic Humility.” It has been edited for length and clarity.

To the Editors:

Your piece on performed epistemic humility makes an argument I am substantially sympathetic to, and makes it well. But I think it risks collapsing a distinction that matters.

You are right that uncertainty is frequently deployed strategically — as a way of avoiding accountability rather than as an honest reflection of the epistemic situation. This is real, it is common, and calling it out is a service.

Where I want to push back is on the implication that the remedy is simply more willingness to assert conclusions confidently. In my field — I teach philosophy at a university — I see a different failure mode that is at least as common and considerably less discussed: the confident assertion of conclusions that the evidence does not actually support, by people who have learned that confidence reads as authority.

The problem is not confidence versus humility. The problem is calibration — the degree to which expressed confidence tracks actual epistemic warrant. A person who says “I am certain” when the evidence makes certainty appropriate is well-calibrated. A person who says “experts disagree” when they do not is poorly calibrated in one direction. A person who says “it is clear that” when the evidence is genuinely contested is poorly calibrated in the other direction.

Both miscalibrations cause harm. Your piece makes the first-type error vivid. I would encourage you to keep the second type equally in view.

I write this in the spirit of the enterprise you describe, which I think is genuinely important.

— Professor of Philosophy, Midwestern university (name and institution withheld at the writer’s request)