by Peter Kahl; published 6 July 2025
In this open letter to Professors David Chalmers and David Bourget, I formally address serious fiduciary-epistemic governance failures at PhilPapers, particularly regarding transparency, accountability, and responsiveness. Drawing upon fiduciary theory, epistemic justice principles, and my previous scholarly contributions, I highlight structural conflicts of interest arising from their dual governance and editorial roles. I argue that these governance issues significantly undermine the legitimacy, epistemic fairness, and trustworthiness of PhilPapers as a global scholarly resource. The letter explicitly calls upon Chalmers and Bourget to publicly acknowledge these concerns, commit to immediate governance reforms, and restore epistemic justice and institutional integrity within PhilPapers.
PhilPapers, David Chalmers, David Bourget, fiduciary governance, conflicts of interest, epistemic justice, fiduciary duties, institutional accountability, transparency, accountability, epistemic autonomy, epistemic injustice, governance reform, academic integrity, scholarly trust, open letter, scholarly communication, Peter Kahl
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Peter Kahl, ‘An Open Letter to David Chalmers and David Bourget’ (GitHub, 2025) <https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Peter-Kahl/An-Open-Letter-to-David-Chalmers-and-David-Bourget/master/Open%20Letter%20to%20David%20Chalmers%20and%20David%20Bourget.pdf>
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