Some responses are such that the agents are praiseworthy for them. A benevolent agent who made some sacrifice to help someone in need is morally praiseworthy. And someone who managed to solve an important scientific problem is epistemically praiseworthy. The question that arises is whether there is a unified explanation of what makes agents praiseworthy?

I argue that there is: in both the moral and the epistemic domain, what makes an agent praiseworthy for her response is that it manifests a degree of sensitivity that exceeds the degree of sensitivity one can fittingly expect of her.

I start with a widespread view about what makes agents morally praiseworthy: the “Quality of Will View”. While this view is highly compelling in the moral case, at first sight, one might think it is not extendable to the epistemic case. However, I argue that it is, when described a bit differently: first, I suggest that we should conceive of the manifestation of morally good will as the manifestation of moral sensitivity. Second, I lay out the structurally analogous notion of epistemic sensitivity, and I make a case for a view about what makes agents epistemically praiseworthy in terms of this notion.