🧠 Explore a new moral-cognitive framework that redefines knowledge as care through the lens of epistemic intimacy in relationships.

A theoretical synthesis introducing epistemic psychology—a framework uniting cognition, ethics, and relational science. Based on the Kahl Model of Epistemic Dissonance (KMED-R), it reconceptualises knowing as fiduciary care and introduces FBT, TACM, and the Intimate Epistemic Oath as tools for diagnosing trust and dependence.

This paper develops Epistemic Clientelism Theory, analysing how academic institutions systematically delegate epistemic agency through clientelist exchange. It diagnoses fiduciary breaches, democratic failures, and epistemic injustices, and proposes fiduciary-epistemic governance reforms to restore autonomy and accountability.

KMED-I models the newborn’s cry as the first epistemic event, simulating caregiver responses—fiduciary, inconsistent, neglectful, or silencing—and their impact on autonomy, dissonance tolerance, and dependence. A computational tool for developmental psychology, psychiatry, and epistemic theory.

This paper reframes the newborn’s first cry as the primordial epistemic claim—the embodied registration of contradiction and dependence at life’s threshold. Drawing on developmental research, attachment theory, and KMED-I simulations, it shows how caregiver responses form fiduciary scaffolds shaping autonomy, resilience, and trust.

Peter Kahl’s essay critiquing epistemic gatekeeping, exposing peer review as a tool of epistemic clientelism and advocating for autonomous knowledge dissemination.

This paper extends Epistemic Clientelism Theory into intimate life, introducing the Kahl Model of Epistemic Dissonance (KMED). It shows how love, recognition, and autonomy can be modelled mathematically and simulated in Python, offering a new foundation for epistemic psychology and fiduciary ethics.