• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.245-254
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• 2007

It is an orthodox in epistemology that only those things that affect the truth conduciveness of a belief are relevant to the epistemic rationality of the belief. I criticize this orthodox. In this paper, 1 claim that the epistemic worth of a subject affects the epistemic rationality of inquiries and resulting beliefs. More specifically, I argue that it is epistemically irrational to conduct an inquiry when it is about something unworthy of knowing, and that the epistemic irrationality of an inquiry in this sense makes the resulting beliefs epistemically irrational. After presenting my argument, I defend it from various possible criticisms. Then I explicate the implications of my argument that opposes the core assumptions of contemporary epistemology.