A natural way to think about epistemic normativity is in terms of evidence. It is a good thing, epistemically speaking, to have evidence in favor of one's beliefs, and a bad thing to have evidence against one's beliefs. So much is platitudinous. A number of philosophers, however, have thought that the notion of evidence is absolutely central to know­ledge-relevant normativity. Specifically, they have thought that whether a belief has k-normative status is entirely a function of one's evidence. Put differently: the facts about k-normative status supervene on the facts about evidence.

This sort of approach in epistemology is appropriately labeled “evidentialism.” Keeping in mind that we are interested in knowledge-relevant normativity specifically, let us call this approach to epistemic normativity “k-evidentialism” (or KE).

Among contemporary philosophers, Earl Conee and Richard Feldman come closest to explicitly endorsing k-evidentialism. First, Conee and Feldman famously endorse evidentialism about “epistemic justification,” where the latter notion marks an important part of the full normative status required for knowledge. Here are some typical passages: