Social Epistemology

Diversity of practice is widely recognized as crucial to scientific progress. If all scientists perform the same tests in their research, they might miss important insights that other tests would yield. If all scientists adhere to the same theories, they might fail to explore other options which, in turn, might be superior. But the mechanisms that lead to this sort of diversity can also generate epistemic harms when scientific communities fail to reach swift consensus on successful theories. In this paper, (...) we draw on extant literature using network models to investigate diversity in science. We evaluate different mechanisms from the modeling literature that can promote transient diversity of practice, keeping in mind ethical and practical constraints posed by real epistemic communities. We ask: what are the best ways to promote an appropriate amount of diversity of practice in scientific communities? (shrink)

Jesper Kallestrup has provided an insightful response to our paper, “Epistemic Structure in Non-Summative Social Knowledge”. Kallestrup identifies some important issues pertaining to our non-summative, non-supervenient account of group knowledge which we did not address in our original paper. Here, we develop our view further in light of Kallestrup’s helpful reply.

Epistemologists often work with idealized pictures of what inquirers are like, how they interact with each other, and the social institutions and environment in which they do the interacting. These idealizations might be appropriate for the more foundational issues in epistemology, such as the theory of knowledge. However they become problematic when epistemologists address applied and practical topics, such as public ignorance about important political and scientific issues, or our obligations and responsibilities as inquirers. A solution to a problem like (...) public ignorance that might work in an ideal world could be disastrous in the real world. Ways of interacting that would yield epistemic benefits in an epistemically just world might not be so beneficial in an epistemically unjust world. -/- Author Robin McKenna argues that, to avoid these problems, we need to make space for non-ideal epistemology-a way of doing epistemology that eschews the idealizations typical in much contemporary epistemology. However Non-Ideal Epistemology is not just an exercise in philosophical methodology. McKenna also develops distinctive approaches to a range of important topics in applied and social epistemology, such as what to do about science denial, whether we should try to be intellectually autonomous, and what our obligations are to other inquirers. The result is an illustration of why we need non-ideal epistemology and what it can do for us. (shrink)

Epistemologists often work with idealized pictures of what inquirers are like, how they interact with each other, and the social institutions and environment in which they do the interacting. These idealizations might be appropriate for the more foundational issues in epistemology, such as the theory of knowledge. However they become problematic when epistemologists address applied and practical topics, such as public ignorance about important political and scientific issues, or our obligations and responsibilities as inquirers. A solution to a problem like (...) public ignorance that might work in an ideal world could be disastrous in the real world. Ways of interacting that would yield epistemic benefits in an epistemically just world might not be so beneficial in an epistemically unjust world. -/- Author Robin McKenna argues that, to avoid these problems, we need to make space for non-ideal epistemology-a way of doing epistemology that eschews the idealizations typical in much contemporary epistemology. However Non-Ideal Epistemology is not just an exercise in philosophical methodology. McKenna also develops distinctive approaches to a range of important topics in applied and social epistemology, such as what to do about science denial, whether we should try to be intellectually autonomous, and what our obligations are to other inquirers. The result is an illustration of why we need non-ideal epistemology and what it can do for us. (shrink)

Epistemic trespassing, science denial, refusal to guard against bias, mishandling higher-order evidence, and the development of vice are troubling intellectual behaviors. In this paper, I advance work done by psychologists on moral self-licensing to show how all of these behaviors can be explained in terms of a parallel phenomenon of epistemic self-licensing. The paper situates this discussion at the intersection of three major epistemological projects: epistemic explanation and intervention (the project of explaining troubling intellectual phenomena in the hopes of deriving (...) ameliorative strategies), hostile epistemology (the study of how intellectual vulnerabilities might be exploited), and the promise of higher- order evidence (the hope that higher-order evidence leads to epistemic improvement). Analyzing epistemic licensing allows us to explain and offer modest interventions aimed at mitigating these behaviors, while illuminating exploitable vulnerabilities and tempering optimism about the promise of higher-order evidence. -/- . (shrink)

In this paper, I will defend a communitarian perspective on the so-called “hinge propositions” (hinges, for short). Accordingly, I will argue that hinges play a normative role, in the sense that, among other things, they govern the mechanisms of social inclusion/exclusion. In particular, I will examine the so-called “religious hinges”; and I will argue that such hinges, being the product of mere indoctrination, are particularly effective in shaping boundaries among communities. Finally, with the help of Peter Munz's theory of altruism, (...) I will attempt to explain why religious hinges play the role they do. (shrink)

From social media to search engines to Wikipedia, the internet is thoroughly embedded in how we produce, locate, and share knowledge around the world. Who Should We Be Online? provides an account of online knowledge that takes seriously the role of sexist, racist, transphobic, colonial, and capitalist forms of oppression. Frost-Arnold argues against analyzing internet users as a collection of identical generic people with smartphones. The novel epistemology developed in this book recognizes that we are differently embodied beings interacting within (...) systems of dominance. Our social identities and global inequalities shape who we are, who we can be online, and what we know. -/- Tackling problems of online content moderation, fake news, and hoaxes, Frost-Arnold shows that oppressive online structures and practices help fuel ignorance. But she also reveals how the internet provides opportunities for marginalized people and activists to share knowledge online. Drawing on feminist accounts of objectivity, veritistic social epistemology, epistemologies of ignorance, virtue epistemology, and the epistemic injustice literature, this book argues for a social epistemology that values truth and objectivity, while recognizing that inequalities shape our collective ability to attain these goals. Timely and interdisciplinary, Who Should We Be Online? weaves together internet studies scholarship from across the humanities, social sciences, and computer science. Presenting case studies of moderators, imposters, tricksters, fakers, and lurkers, this book both explains the problems with our current internet ecosystem and imagines liberatory online futures. (shrink)

Function-first epistemologists analyze epistemic concepts, norms, and practices by investigating their functions. According to the most prominent function-first account, the primary function of our concept of knowledge is identifying reliable informants. In this paper, I take for granted the function-first methodology to achieve three main goals: First, I argue against this prominent account: studying practices of knowledge attribution and denial related to epistemic dependence, coordination, and competition reveals that the primary function of our concept of knowledge is not identifying reliable (...) informants. Second, I recommend that function-firsters accept an alternative account: the primary function of our concept of knowledge is identifying those who have eliminated all relevant alternatives. Finally, I diagnose the error that has led function-firsters to their account: they base their investigation into the nature of knowledge on the situation of inquirers seeking informants, a situation that does not reflect the complexity of our epistemic condition. (shrink)

The gradation of know-how is a prominent challenge to intellectualism. Know-how is prima facie gradable, whereas know-that is not, so the former is unlikely to be a species of the latter. Recently, Pavese refuted this challenge by explaining the gradation of know-how as concerning either the quantity or the quality of practical answers one knows to a question. Know-how per se remains absolute. This paper argues, however, that in addition to the quantity and quality of practical answers, know-how also differs (...) in how reliably the agent is supposed to fulfil the task given her default constitution. Intellectualism is still troubled by the gradability challenge. (shrink)

L’article de Nathalie Heinrich sur les « petits malentendus transatlantiques, paru sur Telos le 9 février, soulève quelques questions qui méritent réflexion. Si les « cultural studies » ont leurs défauts, il faut prendre au sérieux leur réflexion sur le naturel, le construit et l’arbitraire, qui bouscule différentes traditions, d’Aristote à Marx et ouvre sur de nouvelles exigences de justice.

The concept of testimonial injustice (TI) has been expanded considerably since Fricker's groundbreaking original formulation. Testimonial void (TV), as well as other kinds of TI identified in the last decade, encourage the idea that the virtue of testimonial justice (TJ) is not the appropriate remedy to battle against injustice in our testimonial exchanges. This paper contributes to the existing literature on the limitations of TJ as the remedy for TI by drawing attention to its shortcomings in the context of other (...) kinds of TI. By contrast, I propose further engaging epistemically with the other (EE) as a corrective to injustice in our testimonial exchanges. I understand EE as a practice in which information regarding epistemic injustice, strategies to fight it and skills training play the leading roles. If the problem lies in lack of appropriate epistemic interaction between knowers, we need to train ourselves to do what we fail to do. Given that we are in the domain of testimony, EE essentially amounts to engaging further with the other in conversation. In the process, EE sheds light on the need for second-order change to fight TI, as enacting EE would require the transformation of our concepts of testimony and credibility. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the recent explosion of literature on the epistemological role of emotions and other affective states by defending two claims. First, affective states might do more than position us to receive evidence or function as evidence. Affective states might be thought to appraise evidence, in the sense that affective states influence what doxastic state is rational for someone given a body of evidence. The second claim is that affective evidentialism, the view that affective states function rationally in (...) this way, is not just possible but plausible and fruitful. We offer two arguments in favor of affective evidentialism. (shrink)

In an influential recent paper, Hawthorne, Rothschild, and Spectre (“HRS”) argue that belief is weak. More precisely: they argue that the referent of believe in ordinary language is much weaker than epistemologists usually suppose; that one needs very little evidence to be entitled to believe a proposition in this sense; and that the referent of believe in ordinary language just is the ordinary concept of belief. I argue here to the contrary. HRS identify two alleged tests of weakness – the (...) neg-raising and weak upper bounds tests, as I call them – which they claim believe and think pass. But I identify several other expressions in ordinary English for attributing belief, all of which fail both tests. Therefore, even if HRS are correct that believe and think refer to a weak attitude, it does not follow that the ordinary concept of belief is weak. I conclude by raising some problems for the accounts of belief as guessing, building on HRS's arguments, due to Kevin Dorst, Matt Mandelkern, and Ben Holguín. (shrink)

Practical knowledge is discussed in close relation to practical expertise. For both anti-intellectualists and intellectualists, the knowledge of how to φ is widely assumed to entail the practical expertise in φ-ing. This paper refutes this assumption. I argue that non-experts can know how to φ via other experts’ knowledge of φ-ing. Know-how can be ‘outsourced’. I defend the outsourceability of know-how, and I refute the objections that reduce outsourced know-how to the knowledge of how to ask for help, of how (...) to get things done, or of external contents. Interestingly, outsourcing differs from social cooperation, collective agency, testimonial transmission, and many other notions in social-epistemological debates. Thus, outsourcing provides not only a hitherto unconsidered form of know-how but also a novel way for knowledge to be social. Furthermore, outsourcing plausibly involves a ‘social’ cognitive extension that does not rest on EMT or HEC. Given the outsourceability of know-how, we must reconsider the nature of know-how and expertise, as well as the relation between non-experts and experts. (shrink)

I examine how James Baldwin explored white ignorance—as conceived by Charles Mills—in his work. I argue that Baldwin helps us understand Mills’s account of white ignorance more deeply, showing that while only mentioned briefly by Mills, Baldwin provides fruitful insights into the phenomenon. I also consider the resources Baldwin provides to find a way out of white ignorance. My aim is to link these thinkers in ways that have been largely ignored.

ABSTRACT Understanding is a demanding epistemic state. It involves not just knowledge that things are thus and so, but grasping the reasons why and seeing how things hang together. Understanding, then, typically requires inquiry. Many of our inquiries are conducted online nowadays, with the help of search engines, forums, and social media platforms. In this paper, I explore the idea that online inquiry easily leads to what I will call online illusions of understanding. Both the structure of online information presentation (...) (with hyperlinks, shares, retweets, likes, etc.) and the operation of recommender systems and the like make it easy for people using them to form the impression that they are conducting inquiry responsibly, whereas they are in fact fed with irrelevant information, or, even worse, falsehoods, misinformation, disinformation, or outright conspiracy theories. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke argue that virtue signalling – saying things in order to improve or protect your moral reputation – has a range of bad consequences and that as such there is a strong moral presumption against engaging in it. I argue that virtue signalling also has a range of good consequences, and that as such there is no default presumption either for or against engaging in it. Following from this, I argue that given that virtue signalling (...) is sometimes bad and sometimes good, we should avoid virtue signalling when we can be confident that the consequences will be bad, and we should press on with signalling when we can be confident that the consequences will be good. For the most part, I focus on three good consequences that are related to trusting dispositions: signalling trustworthiness, avoiding distrust, and scaffolding self-trust. I also highlight some additional positive consequences that are unrelated to trust. (shrink)

This paper tackles some of the arguments Steve Fuller – arguably the best advocate of post-truth currently on the scene – put forward to show that, correctly understood, post-truth is the best conceptual tool to get a clear picture not only of what is happening in our societies today, but also of what has happened throughout the secular history of Western culture. The implicit assumption is that post-truth represents a reliable ‘epistemological compass’ – that is, a notion (or a set (...) of notions) for proper orientation in both cultural and physical environments. The aim of the paper is to show that Fuller’s arguments do not work, because an epistemological compass can only be centered on a plausible notion of objectivity, and – it will be contended – this is exactly what Fuller lacks. Accordingly, it will be stressed how the upshot of his theses is the opposite of what he presumes it to be and, moreover, that his theses prove lethal to his own position. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Massimo Dell’Utri proposes the idea of an ‘epistemological compass’, which he alleges provides a common intuitive sense of objectivity, the existence of which defenders of ‘post-truth’ positions would perversely try to deny. I argue that Dell’Utri’s choice of a compass – metaphorical or otherwise – is unfortunate because it is a device that presupposes that what appears plain to the senses is directed by hidden forces emanating from distant sources, such as the stars. More generally, the post-truth condition is (...) not about the denial of facts as ordinarily understood. Rather, it is about the denial of a privileged context in terms of which the significance of the facts should be understood. In Dell’Utri’s terms, it implies a plurality of epistemological compasses, which in turn undermines the effectiveness of the metaphor. I have described this situation as a struggle over ‘the name of the game’. In terms of philosophical logic, it is about which metalanguage provides the semantics for expressions in the object language the people try to deploy to their advantage. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The status and role of Popper’s ‘Rationality Principle’ (RP) is still the subject of disputes. The ‘prevailing view’ among Popper’s commentators seems to be that RP is better interpreted as a methodological principle. Yet, this view is challenged in a recent study where RP is interpreted as an‘idealization’. We critically review these two accounts of RP and propose a novel one according to which RP is, first and foremost, the scientific version of a heuristic that ordinary people unconsciously use (...) when they seek to explain and predict other people’s behavior. However, we recognize that, to the extent RP is part of a methodological strategy whereby, in the wake of adverse empirical results, social scientists place the ‘onus of proof’ on their situational model it is legitimate to claim that RP is adopted, at least partly, for methodological reasons. Further, to the extent that the adoption of RP implies suppressing those mental processes that may affect actors’ reasoning and willpower it is also legitimate to claim that RP is, at least partly, an ‘idealization’. We conclude that the status and role of RP is multi-faceted and that the three accounts of RP complement each other. (shrink)

Democracy in its currently dominant liberal form has proven supportive of unprecedented human flourishing. However, it also appears increasingly plagued by political polarization, strained to cope with the digitalization of the political discourse, and threatened by authoritarian backlash. A growing sense of the anthropic risks—with runaway climate change as the leading example—thus often elicits concern regarding democracy’s capability of mitigating them. Apparently, lacking a sufficient degree of the citizens’ consensus on the priority issues of the day, it can find itself (...) unable to muster the resolve and resources necessary to alter its “business as usual” path even where disasters loom ever larger in its track. Against these concerns, I argue that democracy’s potential remains far from depleted. While political irrationality needs to be considered a major obstacle to successfully managing the anthropic risks, many existing reform proposals appear capable of reining it in. My main suggestion is to seek ways to facilitate a speedier and more effective exploration of the landscape of the possible democratic mechanisms of collective choice. A virtual platform to support such an exploration—which I call ‘democracy’s digital playground’—may allow us to find innovative ways of managing anthropic risks without compromising our commitment to democratic values. (shrink)

Rima Basu and I have offered separate accounts of wokeness as an anti-racist ethical concept. Our accounts endorse controversial doctrines in epistemology: doxastic wronging, doxastic voluntarism, and moral encroachment. Many philosophers deny these three views, favoring instead some ordinary standards for epistemic justification. I call this denial the standard view. In this paper, I offer an account of wokeness that is consistent with the standard view. I argue that wokeness is best understood as “group epistemic partiality.” The woke person does (...) extra epistemic work before forming a negative belief about a member of an oppressed social group. Just as we do extra epistemic work when forming belief about our friends, so the woke person does for members of oppressed social groups. I first outline the account. I then raise questions about the scope of wokeness and belief formation. After this, I demonstrate that the group partiality view is consistent with the standard view in epistemology. The partiality view, therefore, should appeal to epistemologists who have adopted the standard view because it is consistent with ordinary standards of justification. I conclude that wokeness as a concept in epistemology should not be controversial for those who endorse the standard view. (shrink)

Do people fall for online disinformation, or do they actively utilize it as a tool to accomplish their goals? Currently, the notion of the members of the public as victims of deception and manipulation prevails in the debate. It emphasizes the need to limit people’s exposure to falsehoods and bolster their deficient reasoning faculties. However, the observed epistemic irrationality can also stem from politically motivated reasoning incentivized by digital platforms. In this context, the readily available disinformation facilitates an arms race (...) in loyalty signaling via a public endorsement of fanciful partisan claims. Such a signaling arms race appears capable of derailing democratic decision-making perhaps more effectively than any known reasoning deficiency. Appreciating the role of an instrumentally rational cost-benefit calculus in triggering the disinformation crisis thus appears vital. Examining these themes, the paper contributes to the current debates in political epistemology and democratic theory. (shrink)

Research on the normative ideal of democracy has taken a sharp deliberative and epistemic turn. It is now increasingly common for claims about the putative cognitive benefits of political deliberation to play central roles in normative arguments for democracy. In this paper, I argue that the most prominent epistemic defences of deliberative democracy fail. Relying on empirical findings on the workings of implicit bias, I show that they overstate the epistemic virtues of political deliberation. I also argue that findings in (...) cognitive and social psychology can aid in the development of a new and improved generation of epistemic arguments for deliberative democracy. (shrink)

Intellectual interest in epistemic bubbles and echo chambers has grown exponentially over the past two decades. This is largely because many assume, in light of recent events, that these phenomena are morally, socially, politically, and epistemically problematic. But are we justified in simply assuming that epistemic bubbles and echo chambers are inherently epistemically problematic? Perhaps surprisingly, numerous philosophers have recently argued that epistemic bubbles and echo chambers are not intrinsically epistemically problematic. Nevertheless, I argue, this trend is mistaken. Epistemic bubbles (...) and echo chambers are all intrinsically epistemically problematic, such that we should try to escape them, if we find ourselves in them. Crucially, there are two senses in which we might identify epistemic bubbles and echo chambers as being intrinsically epistemically problematic, as opposed to “good.” After distinguishing between these senses, I demonstrate that, even if there is a sense in which epistemic bubbles can in principle be “good,” all epistemic bubbles are epistemically problematic in the sense that is ultimately relevant to the question of whether we ought to stay in epistemic bubbles or to try to get out of them. (shrink)

Placing our trust wisely is both difficult and important. The challenge of knowing who to trust inheres at least partially in the fact that coinciding interests cannot be taken for granted, and that language, as the principal medium through which would-be interactants make their interests known, doesn’t discriminate between true and feigned proclamations of good intent. Because our patterns of trust partition the world into reliable and unreliable sources, trust is also important: it determines how we distribute our social and (...) epistemic dependencies, which in turn informs much of what we believe and do. The fact that our interactions with the world and each other are increasingly mediated by digital communication technologies affects both these elements of trust: though unabated access to the internet invites us to distribute our dependencies more broadly, the kinds of information environments that we encounter online make misplaced trust a more common occurrence. I argue that a large part of the problem, as well as one possible set of solutions, resides in a deceptively simple dictum: the internet makes talk cheap, and cheap talk can’t be trusted. (shrink)

While social epistemology is a diverse field, much of it still understands knowledge as an individual status—albeit an individual status that crucially depends on various social factors (such as testimony). Further, the literature on group knowledge until now has primarily focused on limited, specialized groups that may be said to know this or that as a group. I wish to argue, to the contrary, that all knowledge-attributions ascribe a collective status; and that this follows more or less directly from an (...) essential function of entitlement-ascriptions: Ascriptions of knowledge and entitlement serve a primarily social function in that they facilitate coordination by maintaining consensus around true beliefs, true theories, and truth-producing methodologies. This conclusion will shed light on ways in which traditional theories of knowledge (such as foundationalism and coherentism) fail to capture a central function of our epistemic practice. (shrink)

In making sense of the world, we typically cooperate, join forces, and draw on one another’s competence and expertise. A group or community in which there is a well-functioning division of cognitive-epistemic labor can achieve levels of understanding that a single agent who relies exclusively on her own capacities would probably never achieve. However, is understanding also collective? I.e., is understanding something that can be possessed by a group or community rather than by individuals? In this paper, I develop an (...) account of understanding phenomena according to which understanding a phenomenon requires reasonably endorsing an adequate and intelligible epistemic mediator that accounts for this phenomenon. I then show that understanding, conceived along these lines, can be attributed to collective entities. An important result of my arguments will be that a collective entity’s understanding cannot (always) be reduced to the sum of the understandings of the individuals belonging to it. This is because a collective entity can sometimes be rightfully claimed to understand a phenomenon while none of its individual members understands it. (shrink)

I examine the history of the concept of spontaneity in philosophy and the social sciences, particularly as it relates to monetary phenomena. I then offer an argument for the general significance of spontaneity. The essay concludes that scholars across the humanities and social sciences, whatever their (disciplinary, political, ideological, etc.) persuasion, would be well-served to further develop the theory of spontaneity and its social effects.

The paper examines one of the considerations that determines the extent to which policymakers pursue the objec- tives demanded by constituents. The nature and extent of their ignorance serve to determine the incentives confronted by policymakers to pursue their constituents’ demands. The paper also considers several other consequences of policymaker ig- norance and its relationship to expert failure.

To clarify the proper role of values in science, focusing on controversial expert responses to Covid-19, this article examines the status of (in)convenient hypotheses. Polarizing cases like health experts downplaying mask efficacy to save resources for healthcare workers, or scientists dismissing “accidental lab leak” hypotheses in view of potential xenophobia, plausibly involve modifying evidential standards for (in)convenient claims. Societies could accept that scientists handle (in)convenient claims just like nonscientists, and give experts less political power. Or societies could hold scientists to (...) a higher bar, by expecting them not to modify evidential standards to avoid costs only incidentally tied to error. (shrink)

Après avoir présenté et expliqué la notion de cognition distribuée, je situerai l'analyse qu'elle permet au sein des sciences cognitives et de la sociologie. Mes buts sont de montrer en quoi la théorie de la cognition distribuée contribue aux théories de la psychologie et de la sociologie, et réciproquement comment les théories de la sociologie et de la psychologie peuvent être recrutées pour expliquer l'existence de systèmes de cognition distribuée. La troisième section de ce chapitre est centrée sur les relations (...) entre psychologie et théorie de la cognition distribuée. Elle montre que la sociologie de la cognition distribuée béné à être une sociologie cognitive de la cognition distribuée. La quatrième partie continue cet argument, mais en soulignant les phénomènes typiquement sociologique qui interviennent dans la constitution et l'évolution des systèmes de cognition distribuèe. (shrink)

Analytic philosophers increasingly make reference to the concept of ideology to think about how representational structures can lead to oppression, and argue that the distinctively pernicious functioning of things like propaganda and generic generalizations need to be explained in terms of ideology. The aim of this paper is two-fold. First, it aims to serve as an introduction to (some of) the best contemporary work on ideology in the analytic tradition. Second, it proposes a novel challenge for any such theory. The (...) challenge turns on the nature of intersectionality: it is hard to see how to render consistent the claims that ideology creates or sustains oppression with the claim that oppression is intersectional, without making substantial modifications to extant theories. The conclusion will be that certain projects in contemporary philosophy of language need to further develop their theories of ideology. (shrink)

What, if anything, is the import of Hayek to epistemic democracy? Although Hayek is revered by epistemic democrats for his insights into the epistemic aspects of the market sphere, it is generally believed that his theory is moot with respect to democratic reason. This paper aims to challenge this verdict. I argue that a Hayekian analysis of inclusive public deliberation contributes at least three valuable lessons: (1) Hayek makes the case that under certain conditions even unbiased deliberators are permanently unable (...) to converge on the best available policy option. Call this the problem of ‘persistent hidden policy champions’. (2) He demonstrates that to unlock hidden policy champions, reasonable minority factions need the opportunity to act on their own evidential standards. (3) He challenges epistemic democrats to think more carefully about how to design the “epistemic basic structure” (Kurtulmus and Irzik 2017) of society in order to account for persistent hidden policy champions. (shrink)

According to a widely held view epistemic justification is a normative notion. According to another widely held assumption, epistemic justification comes in degrees. Given that gradability requires a context-sensitivity that normativity seems to lack, these two assumptions stand in tension. Giving up the assumption of gradability of justification represents a lesser theoretical cost.

There’s something paradoxical with a person saying ‘I am humble’; it doesn’t seem so humble to self-attribute humility in general, and intellectual humility in particular. In light of the recent interest in educating for intellectual virtues, this paradox has interesting implications to educating for intellectual humility. In particular, one might wonder how a teacher can be a model of intellectual humility to her students. If a teacher says something like ‘Here’s me being an exemplar of intellectual humility’, the paradox above (...) takes on a pedagogical angle. In this paper, I analyze the paradoxes in self-attributing and learning intellectual humility using three different accounts of this virtue, before proceeding to untangle what could be called the ‘Modeling Paradox’ of teaching intellectual humility and figure out whether this virtue can be non-problematically demonstrated to one’s students. (shrink)

In this paper I use insights from exploratory analyses on large English language corpora to consider the extent to which there is a widely-used ordinary notion of justification that attaches to beliefs. I will show that this has ramifications for one broad approach to theorising about justification – the folk justification approach. I will argue that the corpus-based findings presented pose a challenge to the folk justification approach insofar as they suggest that “justify” is not widely-used talk about the justification (...) of our beliefs. I will conclude by presenting the possible solutions to this challenge, and remarking on their feasibility. (shrink)

This paper looks at a constellation of three interrelated figures, the hypocrite, the imposter, and the chameleon, all of whom deceive others and at times themselves as they present themselves and are examined by others in different social settings. On closer examination, different facets of their public presentations come to light, some related to their motives, some to the expected goals of their conduct. The conduct of hypocrites overlaps with and resembles imposters insofar as they both suggest a possible nefarious (...) intentionality associated with undeserved outcomes or gains, as compared with chameleons, who seem at most to camouflage themselves in order to become undetected in their environments. The deceptive (and occasionally self-deceptive) character of the conduct of all three figures (whether understood interchangeably or not) remains of interest beyond the circles of social theorists and political pundits at least in the sense that it is condemnable as much as it is condemning, though to different degrees. (shrink)

What differentiates scientific research from non-scientific inquiry? Philosophers addressing this question have typically been inspired by the exalted social place and intellectual achievements of science. They have hence tended to point to some epistemic virtue or methodological feature of science that sets it apart. Our discussion on the other hand is motivated by the case of commercial research, which we argue is distinct from (and often epistemically inferior to) academic research. We consider a deflationary view in which science refers to (...) whatever is regarded as epistemically successful, but find that this does not leave room for the important notion of scientific error and fails to capture distinctive social elements of science. This leads us to the view that a demarcation criterion should be a widely upheld social norm without immediate epistemic connotations. Our tentative answer is the communist norm, which calls on scientists to share their work widely for public scrutiny and evaluation. (shrink)

I propose the notion of ‘epistemic sanity’, a property of parsimony between the holding of true but not false beliefs and the consideration of our cognitive limitations. Where ‘alethic value’ is the epistemic value of holding true but not false beliefs, the ‘alethic potential’ of an agent is the amount of extra alethic value that she is expected to achieve, given her current environment, beliefs, and reasoning skills. Epistemic sanity would be related to the holding of (true or false) beliefs (...) that increase the agent's alethic potential (relevant beliefs) but not of beliefs that decrease it (this is related to cognitive parsimony). Suspension of judgment, forgetting, and clutter avoidance are the main contributors to an agent's epistemic sanity, where this paper focuses on suspension. I argue that rational suspension favors the holding of true and relevant beliefs, which is not the case for the extremes of opinionation (no suspension) and skepticism (general suspension). In the absence of evidence, opinionated agents are often forced to rely on principles such as the principle of indifference, but suspension dominates indifference in terms of alethic value in some conditions. A rational agent would only find it beneficial to adopt skepticism if she considers herself to be an anti-expert about her entire agenda, but then ‘flipping’ beliefs maximizes expected alethic value in relation to skepticism. The study of epistemic sanity results in an ‘impure’ veritism, which can deal with some limitations of veritism (e.g., explaining the existence of false but relevant beliefs). (shrink)

In his article ‘Divine hiddenness and the demographics of theism’ (Religious Studies, 42 (2006), 177-191) Stephen Maitzen develops a novel version of the atheistic argument from divine hiddenness according to which the lopsided distribution of theistic belief throughout the world’s populations is much more to be expected given naturalism than given theism. I try to meet Maitzen’s challenge by developing a theistic explanation for this lopsidedness. The explanation I offer appeals to various goods that are intimately connected with the human (...) cognitive constitution, and in particular, with the way in which we depend upon social belief forming practices for our acquisition of much of our knowledge about the world – features about us that God would value but that also make probable a lopsided distribution of theistic belief, or so I argue. (shrink)

Our epistemic lives are ones of deep social dependence. Social epistemology is often understood as a subfield that stands apart from, but is compatible with, traditional individualistic approaches to epistemology. In my work I reject this view and argue instead that human epistemology is necessarily social epistemology. I argue for this as an epistemological naturalist. I understand epistemological naturalism as a commitment to the following: the claim that empirical research from psychology, cognitive science, and evolutionary biology is relevant to epistemological (...) inquiry and the meta-epistemological thesis that knowledge and justification are reducible to natural phenomena. In Chapter 1 of my dissertation, I argue that a naturalistic epistemic lens can account for the phenomena and considerations that are foundational to non-naturalist arguments. This chapter not only defends epistemological naturalism from its opponent; it makes room for epistemic naturalists, reliabilists about justification in particular, to say that our social epistemic practices, like our ability to defend our beliefs to one another, are epistemically significant. Naturalistic reliabilists have historically just explained away non-naturalist intuitions about the importance of the human capacity for reasons-giving. This chapter gives naturalistic reliabilists the resources to claim that, while non-naturalists are mistaken when they characterize our reasons-giving capacity as the source of epistemic normativity, they are correct in thinking that it is of deep epistemic importance to creatures like us. In Chapter 2, I develop the naturalistic reliabilist theory of justification so that it can accommodate empirical analysis of our social epistemic lives. I argue that there can be extended interactive justification conferring processes. In short, whether our individual beliefs are doxastically justified can be a function of the reliability of our dialogical interactions with interlocutors. My argument not only serves as a development and defense of reliabilism; it also functions as an independent argument against evidentialist views of doxastic justification. In Chapter 3, I turn my attention to epistemic blameworthiness and blaming. I give an argument against the plausibility of positing an epistemic norm of blameworthiness that is distinct from doxastic justification. I argue that internalists can’t do so, because their notion of blameworthiness can’t be meaningfully different from their notion of justification. I argue that it is difficult for externalists to do so, and that they ought not because of the fundamental commitments of externalism. I argue that we can give an account of our practices of epistemic blaming that construes them as instrumentally epistemically important. Chapter 1 establishes and defends a naturalistic social epistemic framework. The following two chapters explore how we should think about epistemic norms governing epistemic justification and blameworthiness if we adopt this framework. (shrink)

Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020, conspiracy theories, misinformation, and fake news about the virus have abounded, drastically affecting global health measures to oppose it. In response, different strategies have been proposed to combat such Covid-19 collective irrationalities. One suggested approach has been that of epistemic paternalism – non-consultative interference in agents’ inquiries for their epistemic improvement. While extant literature on epistemic paternalism has mainly discussed whether it is (ever) justified, in this paper, I primarily focus (...) on the potential implementation of widespread epistemically paternalistic policies (such as no-platforming and censorship) and its consequences. I argue that pursuing epistemic paternalism to combat Covid-19 collective irrationalities leads to a hitherto unnoticed puzzle for proponents of epistemic paternalism. Central to the puzzle is the idea those (governments, corporations, social media giants) who actually can (i.e., have the requisite power to) enact widespread epistemically paternalistic policies seem the institutions who are least suited to having such informational control over the populace. Thus, epistemic paternalism appears a sword without a hilt; while it may prove an effective strategy in tackling Covid-19 collective irrationalities, we do not have any way to use it without incurring serious risks. (shrink)

In Roger Pielke Jr.’s The Honest Broker (2007) he discusses different roles a scientist can adopt when giving advice to policymakers. The honest broker role focuses on clarifying and expanding the scope of choice for others. This role has the virtues of being sensitive to known problems with experts being partisan by stealth, dominating policy decisions by controlling knowledge input, and reducing the scope of considerations deemed relevant to decision-making. Yet I argue that to the extent the honest broker role (...) involves expanding the scope of choice, an array of problems arises. These include ambiguity about which and whose consensus ought to guide scientists in their decisions about what role to adopt, an implicit tendency to insulate politics from science, and a possible replication of the anti-pluralism of political populism. Drawing upon Phillip Pettit’s critique of Isaiah Berlin’s account of freedom as non-interference, I argue that the honest broker role for scientists inherits the problems afflicting accounts of freedom as the non-restriction of options: namely, the problems of adaptive preference formation and ingratiation. On this basis I suggest not advising scientists to be honest brokers, because doing so might fail to help them be reflexive scientists. (shrink)