here, I'm reminded of the most important question in terms of philosophy of any context that can be asked, "what do you mean?" Which reminds me of a friend from a good almost forty years ago who told me a story of trying to use her bank card without money in the account. And in her half-self-amused-at-herself manner recounting how she said to the bank person over an ATM's phone [circa 1990], in a high whine, "What do you MEAN I don't have any money???" Anyway, I'll here parse a distinction using a pedestrian resource [Google's Gemini 'A.I.'], as I was interested in what would result from a query regarding the term "epistemic conflation":
001. no, not this "epistemic conflation", in answer to the query to Gemini "what would the definition of the term "epistemic conflation" be?":
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"Epistemic conflation is the conceptual error of blurring or treating as identical two distinct areas related to knowledge: the epistemic (justification, evidence, and truth) and the moral/social (recognition, fairness, or personal/political views). It occurs when moral recognition of a knower is treated as evidence of the truth of their claim, or when the desire to avoid 'epistemic injustice' leads to the leveling of credibility across competing claims regardless of actual evidentiary warrant [etc...]"
so, not what I use "epistemic conflation" to convey. The above definition strikes me as a certain elementary school kind of thought sophistication...we've all been there. Oddly enough, along those lines, Gemini informs: "In developmental psychology, the specific error of 'epistemic conflation' [in the above sense] most closely resembles the cognitive stage of a preschooler (roughly ages 3 to 5), which corresponds to the Pre-K and Kindergarten grade levels. During this period, children often fail to distinguish between the source's character (moral) and the source's accuracy (epistemic)."
002. and since the above definition is basically squatting on the term as a 'sole usage tyranny' [!!!], which is quite not-cool, I'll break down each part to assemble my usage:
002.a. I asked the reference if making a distinction between science and pseudoscience is 'epistemic'. The answer:
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"yes [...] the distinction is fundamentally about evaluating the quality and justification of knowledge claims, making it an entirely epistemic matter."
and I'll add this too, practically, about the dangers of absolutism in terms of knowledge disambiguating because I've seen this kind of defense: 'there is no difference between knowledge types because there is, on their edges where they border each other [science and nonscience], a dynamic / fluid / vague / transitioning kind of haze. Well, my answer is that just because there is the kind of obscure transition between day to night and night to day for some amount of time, it doesn't justify the position that there is no difference therefore between midday and midnight.
002.b. and then regarding 'conflation':
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"Yes the blending of science and pseudoscience is widely considered a conflation [...] this conflation is dangerous because it can cause people to overlook crucial evidence, leading to ineffective or harmful decisions, particularly in health care."
hear, hear. And so yes, I remember needing -- back in 2006 -- a term for what naturopathy does. And as I wrote back then [the hypertext that follows upon the language is from current / live sources as examples]: "The easiest language to use when Internet searching for this naturopathic epistemic conflation phenomenon, which is present across the Internet regardless of the search engine employed, is the term 'naturopathic medicine blends' or simply the separate words ‘naturopathic’ or ‘naturopathy,’ and ‘blends’ or ‘combines’ [...] though naturopathy does not abide epistemic delineation, they obviously claim overall to be of scientific type, which is an epistemic delineation by definition." Is 'epistemic conflation' a synonym for pseudoscience? Sure, just with less temperature and a larger footprint, perhaps. I also like the term I employed in my M.S. capstone sourced from the Dyer and Hall study / context I adapted / partially modeled / extended, "epistemically unwarranted." Yet, even now in the world of competing best phrasing, I prefer 'epistemic conflation' as the sort of macro container for, amongst other terms within, pseudoscience and the epistemically unwarranted. [2026-04-18 Note: I just noticed that I used this statement containing 'epistemic conflation' in the first episode of the Podcast from 2013: "So, let me be specific with naturopathy's ruse, the one I walked away from: an epistemic conflation or blending is not an epistemic delineation or distinction."
003. what's really funny is that I submitted the 2006 paper to the AANP's annual conference. It included the phrase "The author includes specific examples of misrepresentation by naturopathic academic institutions, national guild organizations, and practitioners to illustrate a naturopathy-wide mannerism of disguising and omitting pertinent descriptive and comparative information, and provides a tabulated overview of current naturopathic characteristics, beliefs and behaviors since it is essential that potential naturopathy students, scientific and allied health professionals be made aware of what naturopathy actually is in a manner that is complete and transparent." It was rejected:
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