Epistemic Style in OCD

Abstract

* University of California, Irvine floreshc@uci.edu The author reports no conflict of interest. P ablo Hubacher Haerle’s excellent paper argues that there are cases of obsessivecompulsive disorder (OCD) (sexual OCD [S-OCD], specifically) in which people inquire in rational ways. If his analysis is correct, then OCD is not uniformly characterized by epistemic irrationality. The analysis of the cases is compelling, and it offers valuable new resources for understanding why (some) subjects with OCD persist in their inquiries. But I want to raise some questions about whether subjects really inquire rationally. To do so, I suggest a more comprehensive assessment of how these agents set different epistemic parameters. More generally, I will argue that by focusing on epistemic parameter settings and epistemic styles, we can clarify different loci of irrationality while de-stigmatizing OCD.