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According to De George, "in order to grant anyone epistemic authority _y_ must know something about the field and enough to know that _x_ knows more than _y_ does." Thus it would be reasonable to acknowledge an authority in morality, say, only when "\[t\]he moral agent ... understand\[s\] what it means to be moral and to think in moral terms. If \[she or\] he does not, \[she or\] he may simply do as \[she or\] he is told or advised from habit or fear or inclination or laziness. But if \[she or\] he does know what it means to be moral and if \[she or\] he wishes to be moral, \[she or\] he may well seek moral guidance, and, I would argue, properly so. In full knowledge of the diversity of moral opinion and the dubiousness of finding the complete truth, \[she or\] he may judge on the basis of \[her or\] his own experience who it is who can guide \[her or\] him in moral matters, either because that person seems to know more or seems to act better than \[she or\] he \[her\- or\] himself. \[She or h\]e he may seek the knowledge, clear thinking, and the approach to problems in the light of principle which is supplied by the scholar; or \[she or\] he may seek the insight of someone who appears to \[her or\] him to be holy or at least morally commendable; or \[she or \] he may emulate the example of some saint or moral hero.

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My question is whether, or to what extent, pretty much the same thing couldn't be said about authority in existential matters -- or, more exactly, about epistemic, or nonexecutive, authority in such matters. Assuming that there are such things as existential reality and truth, one can allow the possibility of epistemic, or, more generally, nonexecutive, authority with respect to them. But, then, why shouldn't the same principles that apply to epistemic (or nonexecutive) authority in general also apply to existential as well as to moral epistemic authority in particular?

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