Open letter to David Chalmers and David Bourget addresses serious fiduciary governance failures, conflicts of interest, and lack of transparency at PhilPapers, calling urgently for accountability and reform to protect epistemic justice in academia.

Peter Kahl reports HEPI to the Charity Commission for governance record inaccuracies and undeclared trustee interests, demanding transparency and compliance with fiduciary-epistemic duties in one of the UK’s most influential higher education think tanks.

This paper develops Epistemic Clientelism Theory, analysing how academic institutions systematically delegate epistemic agency through clientelist exchange. It diagnoses fiduciary breaches, democratic failures, and epistemic injustices, and proposes fiduciary-epistemic governance reforms to restore autonomy and accountability.

While acknowledging Coeckelbergh’s valuable insights into the democratic vulnerabilities exacerbated by digital technologies, this essay critiques his foundational assumption that AI inherently possesses political or epistemic agency.

This paper introduces ‘epistemic transposition’, reframing ethical and fiduciary duties as epistemic obligations grounded in epistemic humility. A novel contribution to virtue epistemology, fiduciary theory, and institutional accountability.