Conference Program

This article examines epistemic vulnerability as a structural condition affecting all individuals across the lifespan and argues for its recognition as a critical educational object. Epistemic vulnerability refers to susceptibility to distorted or oversimplified representations of reality, arising from both internal cognitive biases and external narrative ecosystems (Bueter, 2022). We define this concept and distinguish it from other forms of vulnerability, then introduce the Large Ethics Model (LEM) as a comprehensive framework for addressing interpretive distortions, particularly in the context of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (Pisano, Crispni & Rossi, 2025). The LEM integrates the PAIA model of AI risks—Pervasiveness, Autonomy, Invisibility, and Adaptivity—with a multi-stakeholder approach to ethical responsibility, encompassing policymakers, funders, programmers, and users (Pisano, 2025).

We propose that ethics education, grounded in philosophical dialogue and critical literacy, offers the most potent response to these challenges. Empirical evidence from a recent AI & Ethics Literacy pilot study demonstrates that targeted educational interventions can improve ethical awareness, bias recognition, and critical thinking across different ages and educational tracks.

Building on this analysis, we outline a set of good practices through which the epistemic care-giver—performing what is, in essence, a genuinely philosophical task—can intervene operationally on multiple planes (Tronto, 2013). First, on the plane of social sustainability, through the epistemic-representational process of anthropomorphization, understood here in a constructive sense: this means attributing non-neutral intentions to digital platforms, thereby foregrounding the purposes of those who design and fund them, and recognizing as forms of silent enslavement the labour disguised by gamification mechanisms such as likes, comments, and reposts (Casilli, 2021). Second, on the plane of environmental sustainability, by materializing the virtual—revealing that digital space is not ethereal, but grounded in the exploitation of human labour and raw materials, rendered invisible to the end user (Crawford, 2020). Third, by relocating responsibility onto the human agent, supporting arguments that refuse to treat the machine as an autonomous moral agent and instead frame it as a tool of interaction with human beings (Holmes, 2023).

These proposals represent a mode of deploying the virtues of care ethics, triggering a positive paidetic circle in which the moral (epistemic) patient progressively becomes a conscious moral agent, thereby avoiding the perpetuation of disinformation and distorted representations of reality.

We conclude that addressing epistemic vulnerability through lifelong education, guided by frameworks like LEM and enacted through the care-based practices outlined above, is essential to preserving democracy and human agency in an era of pervasive information manipulation. The epistemic care-giver, far from being a marginal figure, emerges as a pivotal actor in the cultivation of critical awareness—one who can translate philosophical inquiry into concrete educational interventions capable of confronting the ethical challenges posed by digital technologies and artificial intelligence.