Gossip is rarely praised. There seems little virtuous that is about talking behind someone’s back. Whether there is anything virtuous about gossip, however, depends on the kind of gossip. Some gossip is idle, but some evaluative gossip promulgates and enforces norms. When properly motivated, such gossip effects positive change in society and counts as gossiping well. The virtue of gossiping well even includes some kinds of false gossip, namely the sort that exaggerates a pre-existing trait, thereby creating a caricature of (...) a person’s character in order to establish a moral exemplar (or anti-exemplar). (shrink)

Hearsay or indirect testimony receives little discussion even today in epistemology, and yet it represents one of the cardinal modes for the transmission of knowledge and for human cognitive development. It suffices to think of school education whereby a student listens to teachers reporting knowledge acquired, often indirectly, from the most varied sources such as text books, newspapers, personal memory, television, etc… Or let us consider the importance of oral tradition in the social and cultural development of civilisations. Or even (...) let us call to mind the learning process of infants who, only thanks to the knowledge learned from others, succeed in learning the language. Finally, with the emerging digital technology, the information gleaned from third parties is influencing the creation of knowledge in a full gamut of fields, in a quasi-comprehensive manner. This leads us to claim that hearsay, despite the reductionist conceptual scheme to which epistemology has confined it in that indirect testimony, is in any case quintessential in the dissemination of knowledge. This work fully expounds upon the basic mechanism of indirect testimonial transmission and provides an epistemologically founded explanation of the cognitive possibilities of hearsay by investigating, in the light of the anti-reductionist paradigm, three mutually connected epistemic properties, namely trust, reputation and coherence, that are key in the epistemic justification of the truth acquired via an indirect testimony. (shrink)

I propose that the relationship between moral and violent behavior is overlooked in current philosophical, epistemological, and cognitive studies. To the aim of clarifying the complex dynamics of this interplay, I will describe, adopting an evolutionary perspective, the concepts of coalition enforcement, cognitive moral niche, and of what I call moral bubbles. Showing the interesting relationships between these three basic concepts, I will explain the role of morality in causing and justifying violence. The main theoretical merit of the concept of (...) coalition enforcement is that it permits the naturalization of morality that is the only conceptual means to unveil, in a naturalized way, the status of violence beyond the constraints generated by the so-called moral bubbles that prevent agents from seeing the potential violence generated by their own moral acts. (shrink)

I will analyse some properties of abduction that are essential from a logical standpoint. When dealing with the so-called ‘inferential problem’, I will opt for the more general concepts of input and output instead of those of premisses and conclusions, and show that in this framework two consequences can be derived that help clarify basic logical aspects of abductive reasoning: (i) it is more natural to accept the ‘multimodal’ and ‘context-dependent’ character of the inferences involved, (ii) inferences are not merely (...) conceived of in the terms of the process leading to the ‘generation of an output’ or to the proof of it, as in the traditional and standard view of deductive proofs, but rather, from this perspective abductive inferences can be seen as related to logical processes in which input and output fail to hold each other in an expected relation, with the solution involving the modification of inputs, not that of outputs. I will also describe that if we wish to naturalize the logic of the abductive processes and its special consequence relation, we should refer to the following main aspects: ‘optimization of situatedness’, ‘maximization of changeability’ of both input and output, and high ‘information-sensitiveness’. (shrink)

Research on autonomy exhibits a constellation of variegated perspectives, from the problem of the crude deprivation of it to the study of the distinction between personal and moral autonomy, and from the problem of the role of a “self as narrator”, who classifies its own actions as autonomous or not, to the importance of the political side and, finally, to the need of defending and enhancing human autonomy. My precise concern in this article will be the examination of the role (...) of the human cognitive processes that give rise to the most important ways of tracking the external world and human behavior in their relationship to some central aspects of human autonomy, also to the aim of clarifying the link between autonomy and the ownership of our own destinies. I will also focus on the preservation of human autonomy as an important component of human dignity, seeing it as strictly associated with knowledge and, even more significantly, with the constant production of new and pertinent knowledge of various kinds. I will also describe the important _paradox of autonomy_, which resorts to the fact that, on one side, cognitions (from science to morality, from common knowledge to philosophy, etc.) are necessary to be able to perform autonomous actions and decisions because we need believe in rules that justify and identify our choices, but, on the other side, these same rules can become (for example, as a result of contrasting with other internalized and approved moral rules or knowledge contents) oppressive norms that diminish autonomy and can thus, paradoxically, defeat agents’ autonomous capacity “to take ownership”. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to reflect on the communication model of fake news, starting from the assumption that fake news items are not mere falsehoods (e.g., trivial lies) nor something completely new.Drawing inspiration from the work of Umberto Eco, I will investigate the idea that today’s viral fake news can be aligned with the hermetic paradigm he outlined. Then I will consider another communicative model: that of gossip. Thanks to these two models, I will support the thesis that (...) fake news are not something to eliminate or to correct according to the criterion of evidence or truth, but rather something to live with, corresponding to a potentiality of discourse, that is to detect and to analyze. (shrink)

My main aim in this paper is to examine whether gossip should be categorized as an epistemically valuable character trait. Gossip satisfies the necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for an acquired character trait to be classified as an intellectual virtue under the responsibilist understanding of the concept of virtue. The excellent gossiper is motivated to acquire epistemic goods through gossiping, reliably successful in acquiring epistemic goods through gossiping, competent at the activity of gossiping and good at judging when, with whom (...) and what to gossip. Nonetheless, I show that the excellent gossiper inflicts epistemic wrong on others. The excellent gossiper comes to intentionally acquire another person’s private information without their consent. This leaves virtue responsibilists with three options: resist my argument that gossip qualifies as a responsibilist virtue and/or that excellent gossiping inflicts epistemic wrong, bite the bullet and argue that the intellectually virtuous agent sometimes inflicts epistemic wrong on other agents intentionally, develop a no-wrong principle that disqualifies gossip from being categorized as an intellectual virtue. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to present and discuss a novel understanding of the nature of epistemic vice. I highlight that epistemic vice such as excessive curiosity, gossip and excessive inquisitiveness do not obstruct the acquisition, transmission and retention of knowledge and are not characterized by a deficiency of epistemic desires or vicious epistemic motivations. However, I argue that such traits ought to be classified as epistemic vices because the agent who possesses them causes epistemic harm to other agents (...) through those traits’ characteristic activities.To remedy obstructivism’s inability to account for vices that cause epistemic harm in other ways besides blocking effective epistemic inquiry, I propose an amended version of this theory. I argue that epistemic vices are character traits, attitudes, and ways of thinking that obstruct the acquisition, transmission, and retention of knowledge and/or cause other kinds of epistemic harm. In addition, I propose a modified version of motivationalism that cashes out non-obstructing, excess-motivation vices in terms of motivation simply by acknowledging, and incorporating into theory, excessive epistemic drives and the negative epistemic (and non-epistemic) consequences stemming from them. (shrink)

In this paper we seek an inferential and cognitive model explaining some characteristics of abduction to composite hypotheses. In the first section, we introduce the matter of composite hypotheses, stressing how it is coherent with the intuitive and philosophical contention that a single event can be caused not only by several causes acting together, but also by several kinds of causation. In the second section, we argue that gossip could serve as an interesting model to study the generation of composite (...) hypotheses at a larger scale: several characteristics of gossip make it extremely prone to produce composite hypotheses considering different levels of causation. In the third and final section, we try to illustrate some specificities of abduction to composite hypotheses for individual agents basing on the analysis of collective agents. (shrink)

Cyber-bullying, and other issues related to violence being committed online in prosocial environments, are beginning to constitute an emergency worldwide. Institutions are particularly sensitive to the problem especially as far as teenagers are concerned inasmuch as, in cases of inter-teen episodes, the deterrent power of ordinary justice is not as effective as it is between adults. In order to develop the most suitable policies, institution should not be satisfied with statistics and sociological perspectives on the phenomenon, but rather seek a (...) deep ethical understanding—also referring to the biological and evolutionary past of human beings. The aim of this paper is to show a way to fill this theoretical gap, offering some answers that can illuminate future policy-oriented research and reflection. In order to do so, we will start by connecting our argument to evolutionary studies carried out in the past two decades, focusing on gossip as a tool for social assortment, thus endowed with a dual function: protect the group from free riders, intruders and bullies but also bully the deviant members. In the “Mediating gossip through social networks” section, we will see which aspects of gossip, vital for bullying, are co-opted by social network scenarios. A fundamental trait of human social life, that is the subdivision in smaller coalitions, or sub-groups, will be shown as missing in social networks dynamics—therefore constituting themselves as structurally violent. The “Why and how do social networks empower bullying?” section will deal with techno-ethical and epistemological concerns regarding how gossip, mediated by SN, manages to empower cyber-bullying. The “Self-gossip and self-mobbing in the light of the disruption of sub-moralities” section will characterize cyber-bullying as often sparked by self-gossip in a scenario where familiar sub-groups, which also mediate defense and mutual understanding, are disrupted. The “Discussion and conclusion” section will consist of a philosophical summary, divided in two parts: a pars destruens analyzing whether SN, in their actual configurations, are fit for being used by humans-like-us, and a pars construens examining the broad potential consequences of highly enforced regulation aimed at contrasting cyber-bullying. (shrink)

In this paper we aim at discussing cognitive and epistemic features of online communities, by the use of cognitive niche constructions theories, presenting them as virtual cognitive niches. Virtual cognitive niches can be considered as digitally-encoded collaborative distributions of diverse types of information into an environment performed by agents to aid thinking and reasoning about some target domain. Discussing this definition, we will also consider how online communities, as networks displaying a social bias, can both foster civic awareness and promote (...) problematic group-led behaviors in the virtually aggregated crowds. To support this affirmation, we will take into account the use of online communication networks during crises and we will argue that it can lead to ethically dubious consequences. (shrink)

Gossip is often serious business, not idle chitchat. Gossip allows those oppressed to privately name their oppressors as a warning to others. Of course, gossip can be in error. The speaker may be lying or merely have lacked sufficient evidence. Bias can also make those who hear the gossip more or less likely to believe the gossip. By examining the social functions of gossip and considering the differences in power dynamics in which gossip can occur, we contend that gossip may (...) be not only permissible but virtuous, both as the only reasonable recourse available and as a means of resistance against oppression. (shrink)