The epistemic blame objection (Dyke, 2024) is that (most) non-social versions of epistemic instrumentalism cannot explain why we have standing to epistemically blame others. This is offered as a reason to prefer social versions of epistemic instrumentalism. In response, I offer an explanation of why we have standing to epistemically blame that all instrumentalists can accept. We have standing to blame others because a lot of epistemic goods are stored in other people’s heads—a communal ‘epistemic well’—and we have standing to blame people for spoiling this collective resource. Moreover, I will argue that social versions of instrumentalism have their own ‘problems’ with epistemic blame.
