In this paper I develop a genealogical approach for investigating and evaluating conspiracy theories. I argue that conspiracy theories with an epistemically problematic genealogy are (in virtue of that fact) epistemically undermined. I propose that a plausible type of candidate for such conspiracy theories involves what I call ‘second-order conspiracies’ (i.e. conspiracies that aim to create conspiracy theories). Then, I identify two examples involving such conspiracies: the antivaccination industry and the industry behind climate change denialism. After fleshing out the mechanisms (...) by which these industries systematically create and disseminate specific types of conspiracy theories, I examine the implications of my proposal concerning the particularism/generalism debate and I consider the possibility of what I call local generalism. Finally, I tackle three objections. It could be objected that a problematic genealogy for T merely creates what Dentith (2022) calls ‘type-1’ (or ‘weak’) suspicion for T. I also consider a challenge according to which the genealogical method is meta-undermined, as well as an objection from epistemic laundering. (shrink)

This book argues that misinformation poses a multi-faceted threat to knowledge, while arguing that some forms of content moderation risk exacerbating these threats. It proposes alternative forms of content moderation that aim to address this complexity while enhancing human epistemic agency. The proliferation of fake news, false conspiracy theories, and other forms of misinformation on the internet and especially social media is widely recognized as a threat to individual knowledge and, consequently, to collective deliberation and democracy itself. This book argues (...) that misinformation presents a three-pronged threat to knowledge. While researchers often focus on the role of misinformation in causing false beliefs, this deceptive potential of misinformation exists alongside the potential to suppress trust and to distort the perception of evidence. Recognizing the multi-faceted nature of this threat is essential to the development of effective measures to mitigate the harms associated with misinformation. The book weaves together work in analytic epistemology with emerging empirical work in other disciplines to offer novel insights into the threats posed by misinformation. Additionally, it breaks new ground by systematically assessing different forms of content moderation from the perspective of epistemology. Misinformation, Content Moderation, and Epistemology will appeal to philosophers working in applied and social epistemology, as well as scholars and advanced students in disciplines such as communication studies, political science, and social psychology who are researching misinformation. (shrink)

This paper reviews current debates in social epistemology about the relations ‎between ‎knowledge ‎and consensus. These relations are philosophically interesting on their ‎own, but ‎also have ‎practical consequences, as consensus takes an increasingly significant ‎role in ‎informing public ‎decision making. The paper addresses the following questions. ‎When is a ‎consensus attributable to an epistemic community? Under what conditions may ‎we ‎legitimately infer that a consensual view is knowledge-based or otherwise ‎epistemically ‎justified? Should consensus be the aim of scientific inquiry, and (...) if so, what ‎kind of ‎consensus? How should dissent be handled? It is argued that a legitimate inference ‎that a ‎theory is correct from the fact that there is a scientific consensus on it requires taking ‎into ‎consideration both cognitive properties of the theory as well as social properties of ‎the ‎consensus. The last section of the paper reviews computational models of ‎consensus ‎formation.‎. (shrink)

Policymakers who seek to make scientifically informed decisions are constantly confronted by scientific uncertainty and expert disagreement. This thesis asks: how can policymakers rationally respond to expert disagreement and scientific uncertainty? This is a work of non-ideal theory, which applies formal philosophical tools developed by ideal theorists to more realistic cases of policymaking under scientific uncertainty. I start with Bayesian approaches to expert testimony and the problem of expert disagreement, arguing that two popular approaches— supra-Bayesianism and the standard model of (...) expert deference—are insufficient. I develop a novel model of expert deference and show how it can deal with many of these problems raised for them. I then turn to opinion pooling, a popular method for dealing with disagreement. I show that various theoretical motivations for pooling functions are irrelevant to realistic policymaking cases. This leads to a cautious recommendation of linear pooling. However, I then show that any pooling method relies on value judgements, that are hidden in the selection of the scoring rule. My focus then narrows to a more specific case of scientific uncertainty: multiple models of the same system. I introduce a particular case study involving hurricane models developed to support insurance decision-making. I recapitulate my analysis of opinion pooling in the context of model ensembles, confirming that my hesitations apply. This motivates a shift of perspective, to viewing the problem as a decision theoretic one. I rework a recently developed ambiguity theory, called the confidence approach, to take input from model ensembles. I show how it facilitates the resolution of the policymaker’s problem in a way that avoids the issues encountered in previous chapters. This concludes my main study of the problem of expert disagreement. In the final chapter, I turn to methodological reflection. I argue that philosophers who employ the mathematical methods of the prior chapters are modelling. Employing results from the philosophy of scientific models, I develop the theory of normative modelling. I argue that it has important methodological conclusions for the practice of formal epistemology, ruling out popular moves such as searching for counterexamples. (shrink)

Abstract: There are epistemic manipulators in the world. These people are actively attempting to sacrifice epistemic goods for personal gain. In doing so, manipulators have led many competent epistemic agents into believing contrarian theories that go against well-established knowledge. In this paper, I explore one mechanism by which manipulators get epistemic agents to believe contrarian theories. I do so by looking at a prominent empirical model of trustworthiness. This model identifies three major factors that epistemic agents look for when trying (...) to determine who is trustworthy. These are (i) ability, (ii) benevolence, and (iii) moral integrity. I then show how manipulators can manufacture the illusion that they possess these factors. This leads epistemic agents to view manipulators as trustworthy sources of information. Additionally, I argue that fact-checking will be an ineffective – or even harmful – practice when correcting the beliefs of epistemic agents who have been tricked by this illusion of epistemic trustworthiness. I suggest that in such cases we should use an alternative correction, which I call trust undercutting. (shrink)

Epistemic Courage is a timely and thought-provoking exploration of the ethics of belief, which shows why epistemology is no mere academic abstraction - the question of what to believe couldn't be more urgent. Jonathan Ichikawa argues that a skeptical, negative bias about belief is connected to a conservative bias that reinforces the status quo.

The weaponizing of scientific expertise to oppose regulation has been extensively studied. However, the relevant studies, belonging to the emerging discipline of agnotology, remain focused on the analysis of empirical corruption: of misinformation, doubt mongering, and other practices that cynically deploy expertise to render audiences ignorant of empirical facts. This paper explores the wrongful deployment of expertise beyond empirical corruption. To do so, I develop a broader framework of morally subversive expertise, building on recent work in political philosophy (Howard, 2016). (...) Expertise is subversive if it sets up its audience to fail morally, either intentionally or negligently. I distinguish three modes of subversive expertise: empirical subversion (the focus of agnotology), normative subversion and motivational subversion. Drawing on these distinctions, I offer a revisionary account of the Trump Administration’s regulatory science as a case study. I show that the Trump Administration’s use of expertise to dismantle climate regulation, contra the standard charge, cannot be explained using the resources of agnotology alone: the Administration produced highly reliable climate assessments, detailing the risks of climate change, candidly admitting the harms of its proposed policies, and still successfully deployed these findings to justify massive climate deregulation. The lesson of the analysis is that dismissing the expertise that underpins climate deregulation as empirically corrupt ‘anti-science’ both obscures its actual role in the politics of climate change and understates its wrongfulness: it misses the breadth of the assault on moral agency that sustains climate injustice. (shrink)

Epistemic questions have become an important area of debate within democratic theory. Epistemic democrats have revived epistemic justification of democracy, while social scientific research has speared a significant debate on voter knowledge. An area which has received less attention, however, is the epistemic case for markets. Market advocates have developed a number of epistemic critiques of democracy which suggest that most goods are better provided by markets than democratic institutions. Despite representing important challenges to democracy, these critiques have gone without (...) reply as democratic theorists have tended to exclude markets from consideration. This article responds to these critiques and argues that there are good epistemic grounds for granting a much greater role to democracy than its market critics have claimed. It argues that there is a broad range of goods, including important ethical goods, which are better provided by democracy than markets due to the particular epistemic burdens they create. (shrink)

This is the second of three parts of an introduction to the philosophy of climate science. In this second part about modelling climate change, the topics of climate modelling, confirmation of climate models, the limits of climate projections, uncertainty and finally model ensembles will be discussed.

Despite decades of concerted efforts to communicate to the public on important scientific issues pertaining to the environment and public health, gaps between public acceptance and the scientific consensus on these issues remain stubborn. One strategy for dealing with this shortcoming has been to focus on the existence of scientific consensus on the relevant matters. Recent science communication research has added support to this general idea, though the interpretation of these studies and their generalizability remains a matter of contention. In (...) this paper, we describe results of a qualitative interview study on different models of scientific consensus and the relationship between such models and trust of science, finding that familiarity with scientific consensus is rarer than might be expected. These results suggest that consensus messaging strategies may not be effective. (shrink)

I discuss the roles of journalism in aspirational democracies, and argue that they generate set of pressures on attention that apply to people by virtue of the type of society they live in. These pressures, I argue, generate a problem of democratic attention: for journalism to play its roles in democracy, the attentional demands must be met, but there are numerous obstacles to meeting them. I propose a principle of salience to guide the selection and framing of news stories that (...) I argue may help address the puzzle: the public-as-protagonist principle. -/- . (shrink)

Ephecticism is the tendency towards suspension of belief. Epistemology often focuses on the error of believing when one ought to doubt. The converse error—doubting when one ought to believe—is relatively underexplored. This essay examines the errors of undue doubt. I draw on the relevant alternatives framework to diagnose and remedy undue doubts about rape accusations. Doubters tend to invoke standards for belief that are too demanding, for example, and underestimate how farfetched uneliminated error possibilities are. They mistake seeing how incriminating (...) evidence is compatible with innocence for a reason to withhold judgement. Rape accusations help illuminate the causes and normativity of doubt. I propose a novel kind of epistemic injustice, for example, wherein patterns of unwarranted attention to farfetched error possibilities can cause those error possibilities to become relevant. Widespread unreasonable doubt thus renders doubt reasonable and makes it harder to know rape accusations. Finally, I emphasise that doubt is typically a conservative force and I argue that the relevant alternatives framework helps defend against pernicious doubt-mongers. (shrink)

This chapter offers a critique of intelligent design arguments against evolution and a philosophical discussion of the nature of science, drawing several lessons for the teaching of evolution and for science education in general. I discuss why Behe’s irreducible complexity argument fails, and why his portrayal of organismal systems as machines is detrimental to biology education and any under-standing of how organismal evolution is possible. The idea that the evolution of complex organismal features is too unlikely to have occurred by (...) random mutation and selection (as recently promoted by Dembski) is very widespread, but it is easy to show students why such small probability arguments are fallacious. While intelligent design proponents have claimed that the exclusion of supernatural causes mandated by scientific methods is dogmatically presupposed by science, scientists have an empirical justification for using such methods. This justification is instructive for my discussion of how to demarcate science from pseudoscience. I argue that there is no universal account of the nature of science, but that the criteria used to judge an intellectual approach vary across historical periods and have to be specific to the scientific domain. Moreover, intellectual approaches have to be construed as practices based on institutional factors and values, and to be evaluated in terms of the activities of their practitioners. Science educators should not just teach scientific facts, but present science as a practice and make students reflect on the nature of science, as this gives them a better appreciation of the ways in which intelligent design falls short of actual science. (shrink)

We attribute knowledge to institutions on a daily basis, saying things like "the government knew about the threat" or "the university did not act upon the knowledge it had about the harassment". Institutions can also attribute knowledge to themselves, like when Maybank Global Banking claims that it offers its customers "deep expertise and vast knowledge" of the Southeast Asia region, or when the United States Geological Survey states that it understands complex natural science phenomena like the probability of earthquakes occurring (...) along a given fault line. This article aims to discover when we can correctly attribute knowledge to an institution. I find this an interesting question, especially because when something does go wrong, all too often the official line of response from institutions is that they were unaware of the situation: in other words, they did not have enough information at their disposal. I will argue that institutions have fewer excuses for being ignorant than individuals do, and that many admissions of institutional knowledge are too modest. I begin by discussing a real-life example of the latter, before turning my attention to the usually fragmented nature of institutional knowledge. I also discuss the robustness of this knowledge, offering a distinction between two types of institutional knowledge. I then discuss knowledge parameters and why institutions have fewer excuses for not knowing about something than individuals do. I round off the chapter by examining institutional knowledge on climate change. (shrink)

In this chapter I zoom in on a topic in climate ethics that has not previously received academic scrutiny: the intersection between evolutionary ethics and climate change. I argue that in the context of climate discourse, an evolutionary perspective can be illuminating, but may also invite moral corruption and reasoning fallacies. Relating my discussion to the general theme of the book, I argue that academic philosophy is well-positioned to fulfil a specific societal role, which is particularly important in the age (...) of popular science: to raise awareness of the ethical predicaments to which scientific findings can give rise, and to highlight the normative assumptions implicit in the reasoning of science communicators. (shrink)

What makes science trustworthy to the public? This chapter examines one proposed answer: the trustworthiness of science is based at least in part on its independence from the idiosyncratic values, interests, and ideas of individual scientists. That is, science is trustworthy to the extent that following the scientific process would result in the same conclusions, regardless of the particular scientists involved. We analyze this "idiosyncrasy-free ideal" for science by looking at philosophical debates about inductive risk, focusing on two recent proposals (...) which offer different methods of avoiding idiosyncrasy: the high epistemic standards proposal and the democratic values proposal. (shrink)

This chapter explores a species of false modesty, false intellectual humility, which is defined as affected or pretended intellectual humility concealing intellectual arrogance. False intellectual humility is situated in a virtue epistemological framework, where it is contrasted with intellectual humility, understood as excellence in self-attribution of intellectual weakness. False intellectual humility characteristically takes the form of insincere expressions of ignorance or uncertainty – as when dogmatically committed conspiracy theorists insist that they just want to know what’s going on – and, (...) in such cases, false intellectual humility is a kind of false skepticism or false fallibilism. In connection with this, the chapter further explores the relationship between the concepts of intellectual humility, skepticism, and fallibilism. A distinction can be drawn between the virtues of intellectual humility, skepticism, and fallibilism, but the traditional association of skepticism and fallibilism with intellectual humility is vindicated by the fact that the virtues of intellectual humility, skepticism, and fallibilism overlap. (shrink)

Epistemic Responsibility means that scientists are responsible for their research being suitable to contribute to our understanding of the world, or at least some part of the world. As will be shown with the example of computer simulations in social sciences, this is unfortunately far from being understood as a matter of course. Rather, there exist whole research traditions in which the bulk of the contributions is quite free from any tangible purpose of enhancing our knowledge about anything. This essay (...) is concerned with the causes of this phenomenon and pleads for taking epistemic responsibility as a scientific virtue serious. Science should be organized in such a way that it is possible and likely that scientists will assume epistemic responsibility for their research tasks. (shrink)

The goal of this chapter is to contribute to ignorance studies by taking advantage of the pragmatist epistemology of Peirce and Dewey, which, in my view, would be an “unfinished” business without facing sundry problems raised by ignorance studies. Five typical pragmatist claims provide the framework for this chapter. They can be endorsed by other philosophies, but their conjunction is typical of pragmatism: (1) the first is Peirce’s pragmatist maxim for clarifying our ideas, where the reference to “practical bearings”, to (...) situations, conducts and contexts, is pivotal; (2) the second is pragmatism’s focus on inquiry as a norm-governed practice, rather than on mere knowledge; (3) the third idea is their “externalism”, the conviction that mind, reason and knowledge are not properties of atomic individuals but are distributed over community of inquirers or “publics” and their environment; (4) the fourth idea is that philosophy has condemned itself to skepticism when it was looking for absolute theoretical certainties; and (5) the last claim is their rejection of the fact-value dichotomy. My own general claim is that pragmatism has under-appreciated relevance for understanding the epistemology of ignorance and its social implications, and each section explores one possible dimension – semantic, epistemic, externalist, doxastic and normative – for this contribution. (shrink)

The democratization of science entails the public having greater influence over science and that influence being shared more equally among members of the public. This chapter will present a thumbnail sketch of the arguments for the democratization of science based on the importance of collectively shaping science’s impact on society, the instrumental benefits of public participation in science, and the need to ensure that the use of science in politics does not undermine collective self-government. It will then outline worries about (...) citizen competence, the abuse of democratic ideals and the limits posed by the nation-state. (shrink)

While the foundations of climate science and ethics are well established, fine-grained climate predictions, as well as policy-decisions, are beset with uncertainties. This chapter maps climate uncertainties and classifies them as to their ground, extent and location. A typology of uncertainty is presented, centered along the axes of scientific and moral uncertainty. This typology is illustrated with paradigmatic examples of uncertainty in climate science, climate ethics and climate economics. Subsequently, the chapter discusses the IPCC’s preferred way of representing uncertainties and (...) evaluates its strengths and weaknesses from a risk management perspective. Three general strategies for decision-makers to cope with climate uncertainty are outlined, the usefulness of which largely depends on whether or not decision-makers find themselves in a context of deep uncertainty. The chapter concludes by offering two recommendations to ease the work of policymakers, faced with the various uncertainties engrained in climate discourse. (shrink)

I argue that that an influential strategy for understanding conspiracy theories stands in need of radical revision. According to this approach, called ‘generalism’, conspiracy theories are epistemically defective by their very nature. Generalists are typically opposed by particularists, who argue that conspiracy theories should be judged case-by-case, rather than definitionally indicted. Here I take a novel approach to criticizing generalism. I introduce a distinction between ‘Dominant Institution Conspiracy Theories and Theorists’ and ‘Non-Dominant Institution Conspiracy Theories and Theorists’. Generalists uncritically center (...) the latter in their analysis, but I show why the former must be centered by generalists’ own lights: they are the clearest representatives of their views, and they are by far the most harmful. Once we make this change in paradigm cases, however, various typical generalist theses turn out to be false or in need of radical revision. Conspiracy theories are not primarily produced by extremist ideologies, as generalists typically claim, since mainstream, purportedly non-extremist political ideologies turn out to be just as, if not more responsible for such theories. Conspiracy theories are also, we find, not the province of amateurs: they are often created and pushed by individuals widely viewed as experts, who have the backing of our most prestigious intellectual institutions. While generalists may be able to take this novel distinction and shift in paradigm cases on board, this remains to be seen. Subsequent generalist accounts that do absorb this distinction and shift will look radically different from previous incarnations of the view. (shrink)

Large language models (LLMs) represent the currently most relevant incarnation of artificial intelligence with respect to the future fate of democratic governance. Considering their potential, this paper seeks to answer a pressing question: Could LLMs outperform humans as expert advisors to democratic assemblies? While bearing the promise of enhanced expertise availability and accessibility, they also present challenges of hallucinations, misalignment, or value imposition. Weighing LLMs’ benefits and drawbacks compared to their human counterparts, I argue for their careful integration to augment (...) democracy’s ability to address complex policy issues. The paper posits that time-tested democratic procedures like deliberation and aggregation by voting provide safeguards effective against both human and machine advisor imperfections. Additional protective measures include custom LLM training for the advisory role, boosting representatives’ competencies in query formulation, or implementation of adversarial proceedings in which LLM advisors could debate each other and provide dissenting opinions. These could further mitigate the risks that LLMs present in advisory roles and empower human decision-makers toward increased autonomy and quality of their collective choices. My conceptual exploration offers a roadmap for the co-evolution of AI and democratic institutions, setting the stage for an empirical research agenda to finetune the implementation specifics. (shrink)

When should you engage with difficult arguments against your cherished controversial beliefs? The primary conclusion of this book is that your obligations to engage with counterarguments are more limited than is often thought. In some standard situations, you shouldn't engage with difficult counterarguments and, if you do, you shouldn't engage with them open-mindedly. This conclusion runs counter to aspects of the Millian political tradition and political liberalism, as well as what people working in informal logic tend to say about argumentation. (...) -/- Not all misleading arguments wear their flaws on their sleeve. Each step of a misleading argument might seem compelling and you might not be able to figure out what's wrong with it. Still, even if you can't figure out what's wrong with an argument, you can know that it's misleading. One way to know that an argument is misleading is, counterintuitively, to lack expertise in the methods and evidence-types employed by the argument. When you know that a counterargument is misleading, you shouldn't engage with it open-mindedly and sometimes shouldn't engage with it at all. You shouldn't engage open-mindedly because you shouldn't be willing to reduce your confidence in response to arguments you know are misleading. And you sometimes shouldn't engage closed-mindedly, because to do so can be manipulative or ineffective. -/- In making this case, Jeremy Fantl discusses echo chambers and group polarization, the importance in academic writing of a sympathetic case for the opposition, the epistemology of disagreement, the account of open-mindedness, and invitations to problematic academic speakers. (shrink)

In this paper, I distinguish three general approaches to public trust in science, which I call the individual approach, the semi-social approach, and the social approach, and critically examine their proposed solutions to what I call the problem of harmful distrust. I argue that, despite their differences, the individual and the semi-social approaches see the solution to the problem of harmful distrust as consisting primarily in trying to persuade individual citizens to trust science and that both approaches face two general (...) problems, which I call the problem of overidealizing science and the problem of overburdening citizens. I then argue that in order to avoid these problems we need to embrace a (thoroughly) social approach to public trust in science, which emphasizes the social dimensions of the reception, transmission, and uptake of scientific knowledge in society and the ways in which social forces influence both positively and negatively the trustworthiness of science. (shrink)

This paper argues that the value of openness to epistemic plurality and the value of social responsiveness are essential for epistemic agents such as scientists who are expected to carry out non-epistemic missions. My chief philosophical claim is that the two values should play a joint role in their communication about earthquake-related damages when their knowledge claims are advisory. That said, I try to defend a minimal normative account of science in the context of communication. I show that these epistemic (...) agents when acting as communicators may encounter various epistemic and practical uncertainties in making their knowledge claims. Using four vignettes, I show that the value of openness to epistemic plurality and the value of social responsiveness may best serve their epistemic and practical purposes across different contexts by reducing their epistemic and practical risks associated with the knowledge claims they communicated. The former may reduce the risks of prematurely excluding epistemic alternatives and is conducive to two types of epistemic plurality; the latter is supposed to reduce the risks of making self-defeating advisory claims and harmful wishful speaking by minimizing the values in tension that can be embedded in the social roles the epistemic agents play. (shrink)

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)

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues facing humanity and has become an area of growing focus in Business & Society. Looking back and reviewing climate change discussion within this journal highlights the importance of time and space in addressing the climate crisis. Looking forward, we extend existing research by theorizing and politicizing the co-implication of time and space through the concept of “space-time.” To illustrate this, we employ the logical structure of “the trace” to advance business and (...) society scholarship on climate change by shifting the focus to a place-bound emphasis on climate impacts and directing scholarship toward climate change’s temporal markers and material effects. By operationalizing “the trace,” we contribute to Business & Society debates in three ways: reimagining complex stakeholder relations, advancing a performative understanding of climate risk, and foregrounding planetary systems and the physical environment. (shrink)

Most people in countries with the highest climate impact per capita are well aware of the climate crisis and do not deny the science. They worry about climate and have climate engaged attitudes. Still, their greenhouse-gas emissions are often high. How can we understand acting contrary to our knowledge? A simple answer is that we do not want to give up on benefits or compromise our quality of life. However, it is painful to live with discrepancies between knowledge and action. (...) To be able to avoid taking the consequences of our knowledge, we deal with the gap by motivating to ourselves that the action is still acceptable. In this article, we use topical analysis to examine such processes of motivation by looking at the internal deliberation of 399 climate engaged people’s accounts of their reasoning when acting against their own knowledge. We found that these topical processes can be described in at least four different ways which we call rationalization, legitimization, justification and imploration. By focusing on topoi we can make visible how individual forms of reasoning interact with culturally developed values, habits and assumptions in creating enthymemes. We believe that these insights can contribute to understanding the conditions for climate transition communication. (shrink)

This paper discusses how to deal with research that threatens to cause harm to society—in particular, whether and in what cases bans and moratoria are appropriate. First, it asks what normative resources philosophy of science may draw on to answer such questions. In an effort to presuppose only resources acknowledgeable across different comprehensive worldviews, it is claimed that the aim of credibility provides a good basis for normative reflection. A close analysis reveals an inner tension inherent in the pursuit of (...) credibility, referred to as the paradox of credibility: Although the aim of credibility involves the goal of being trusted, the immediate pursuit of the goal of being trusted as much as possible can run counter to and undermine the pursuit of credibility. From this inner tension, considerations are derived on what it means to uncompromisingly strive for trustworthiness. When applied to the problem of harmful research, it becomes apparent that it is important to distinguish between different types of cases. Some cases allow science to prevent harm while relinquishing credibility in the associated research area. In contrast, other cases demand preserving subject-specific scientific credibility in order to manage potential harm. (shrink)

Science and technology influence international affairs by many different mechanisms. Both create new issues, risks and uncertainties. Advances in science alert the international community to new issues and risks. New technological capabilities transform war, diplomacy, commerce, intelligence, and investment. This paper identifies six basic patterns by which advances in science and technology influence international relations: as a juggernaut or escaped genie with rapid and wide-ranging ramifications for the international system; as a game-changer and a conveyer of advantage and disadvantage to (...) different actors in the international system; as a source of risks, issues and problems that must be addressed and managed by the international community; as key dimensions or enablers of international macro phenomena; as instruments of foreign policy or sources of technical information for the management of an ongoing international regime; as the subject of projects and institutions whose planning, design, implementation and management provide grist for the mill of international relations and diplomacy. (shrink)

In their recent book, Oreskes and Conway describe the ‘tobacco strategy’, which was used by the tobacco industry to influence policymakers regarding the health risks of tobacco products. The strategy involved two parts, consisting of promoting and sharing independent research supporting the industry’s preferred position and funding additional research, but selectively publishing the results. We introduce a model of the tobacco strategy, and use it to argue that both prongs of the strategy can be extremely effective—even when policymakers rationally update (...) on all evidence available to them. As we elaborate, this model helps illustrate the conditions under which the tobacco strategy is particularly successful. In addition, we show how journalists engaged in ‘fair’ reporting can inadvertently mimic the effects of industry on public belief. 1Introduction2Epistemic Network Models3Selective Sharing4Biased Production5Journalists as Unwitting Propagandists6ConclusionAppendix. (shrink)

There is a debate on the nature of ignorance in contemporary epistemology. The standard view holds that ignorance is the lack of knowledge, while the new view contends that ignorance is the lack of true belief. Rather than taking a side in this dispute, Pritchard recently offers a new proposal according to which ignorance essentially involves not just the absence of a certain epistemic good, but also an intellectual failing of inquiry. We argue that Pritchard’s new proposal advances the discussion (...) of ignorance by incorporating insight from virtue epistemology, and hence the normative dimension of ignorance is properly noticed. Crucially, ignorance is no longer a mere static cognitive state, but also reflects the quality of inquiry and inquirers’ obligations. However, the new proposal faces two problems. First, current formulation is incomplete so that it cannot ground the epistemic blame that Pritchard requires. More details must be filled in. Second, his view would label all ignorance as normatively negative, and therefore locutions such as virtuous ignorance, blameless ignorance and the positive value of ignorance would be wrong. (shrink)

This paper explores ‘reasonable doubt’ as an enlightening notion to think of reasoning and decision-making generally, beyond the judicial domain. The paper starts from a decision-theoretic understanding of the notion, whereby it can be defined in terms of degrees of belief and a probabilistic confirmation threshold for action. It then highlights some of the limits of this notion, and proposes a richer analysis of epistemic states and reasoning through the lens of ‘reasonable doubt’, which in turn is likely to supplement (...) the DT framework. The strategy consists in fighting on two fronts: with DT, the paper claims that there is no absolute notion of ‘reasonable doubt’ but, pace DT, it shows that reasonable doubt cannot be accounted for only in terms of degrees of belief and probabilistic threshold. We argue that the lens of reasonable doubt sheds light on aspects of belief dynamics, as well as of the nature of epistemic attitudes, which are often obscured by belief-centred approaches. In particular, when it comes to acknowledging the necessary ignorance and irreducible uncertainty that we face in our everyday-life decisions, studying the various facets of doubt rather than focusing on what can be believed, enables one to do justice to the richness and diversity of the mental states in play. (shrink)

This article examines the centrality of Brazil within the future of climate policy and politics. The state of the carbon sink of the Amazon rainforest has long been an iconic marker of the condition of the Earth. Brazil has been innovative in developing many non-carbon forms of energy generation and use and it has played a major role in international debates on global warming since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. We examine various ways in which climate change has come (...) to be centrally important in Brazilian public opinion. Survey evidence shows that Brazilians are the most concerned about issues of climate change – with less climate change scepticism as compared with more ‘advanced’ societies. Through using techniques of corpus linguistics we examine how Brazilian media has engendered and stabilized such a high and striking level of climate change concern. We show that the media helped to fix a ‘climate change framing’ of recent often strange weather. The article analyses the newly constructed Brazilian Corpus on Climate Change, presenting data on a scale and reach that is unique in this area of research. (shrink)

Our experience of the present is defined by numbers, graphs and, increasingly, an algorithmically calculated future, based on the mathematical and formal reasoning that began with the rise of modern science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Today, this reasoning is further modified and extended in the form of computer-executed, algorithmic reasoning. Instead of fallible human reasoning, algorithms—based on mining databases for ‘information’—are seen to provide more efficient processes, offering fast solutions. In this paper, then, I will follow Jan Patočka, (...) who suggests that we live in an age of supercivilisation, one in which human reasoning has become self-sufficient, ceasing to depend on the supernatural or cultural traditions that previously guided human lives. My argument is that Patočka’s analysis of supercivilisation can open up a different way to reflect on the ‘spiritual foundation of our times’. As Patočka says, to reflect on our situation does not mean that we can change it, but reflection can give us a new understanding that will open up different ways to think about our human future. (shrink)

The relationship between knowledge, belief, and ethics is an inaugural theme in philosophy; more recently, under the title “ethics of belief” philosophers have worked to develop the appropriate methodology for studying the nexus of epistemology, ethics, and psychology. The title “ethics of belief” comes from a 19th-century paper written by British philosopher and mathematician W.K. Clifford. Clifford argues that we are morally responsible for our beliefs because each belief that we form creates the cognitive circumstances for related beliefs to follow, (...) and we inevitably influence each other through those beliefs. This study argues that recent cognitive research supports Cliffordian insights regarding patterns of belief formation and social influence. From the confirmation offered by such research, it follows that informational accuracy holds serious ethical significance in public discourse. Although scientific and epistemological matters are not always thought to be linked to normative morality, this study builds on Clifford's initial insights to show their linkage is fundamental to inquiry itself. In turn, Clifford's ethical and epistemic outline can inform a framework grounded in “public reason” under which seemingly opposed science communication strategies are philosophically united. With public discourse on climate change as the key example, empirically informed and grounded strategies for science communication in the public sphere are considered. (shrink)

This study investigates how uncertainty works in science policy debates by considering an unusual case: one in which uncertainty-based arguments for delay come from the scientific community, rather than industry actors. The case I present is the central use of value-added modeling in the evaluation of individual teachers, a controversial trend in education reform. In order to understand how policy actors might counter inconvenient statements of uncertainty from experts, I analyze speeches from Education Secretary Arne Duncan, a committed and influential (...) advocate of VAM. I identify a three-part rhetorical tactic, the “Overcaution Allegation,” and describe its persuasive potential to legitimize policies that elicit caution from the scientific community because they are built on uncertain science. (shrink)

Recent work in science and technology studies has looked at how chemical industries manufacture doubt about the toxicity of their products and manage to establish their scientific views in the field of international regulations on toxic substances. Rather than examining yet another “victory” for the industry, this article analyzes the deployment of a “pro-industrial” scientific position, punctuated mainly by failure and opposition. This trajectory is tracked through the analysis of several data sets: archives, scientific documentation, and sociological interviews. The first (...) part of the article charts the development of a biochemical concept, “peroxisome proliferation,” within an academic subfield and its subsequent appropriation by certain industrial parties who used it as a defensive weapon for their commercial interests. Through the example of the International Agency for Research on Cancer and its network of interdependent institutions, the article goes on to analyze the multiple attempts of chemical industry players to establish their interpretation of the concept within the regulatory bodies for carcinogenic substances. The study of such systems of sociological interdependence shows that a full analysis of the “doubt manufacturing” requires an examination not only of the manufacturing process but also of the reception of the ideas produced. (shrink)

This paper examines a broad range of ethical perspectives and principles relevant to the analysis of issues raised by the science of climate change and explores their implications. A second and companion paper extends this analysis to the contribution of ethics, economics and politics in understanding policy towards climate change. These tasks must start with the science which tells us that this is a problem of risk management on an immense scale. Risks on this scale take us far outside the (...) familiar policy questions and standard, largely marginal, techniques commonly used by economists; this is a subject that requires the full breadth and depth of what economics has to offer and a much more thoughtful view of ethics than economists usually bring to bear. Different philosophical approaches bring different perspectives on understanding and policy, yet they generally point to the case for strong action to manage climate change. (shrink)

You receive a pink packet from Miss Lead, a notoriously deceptive truth-teller. You know that if you open the packet and do not find blank pages, then you will justifiably change your mind about the evidence being misleading. Indeed, you will infer that your previous fears about misleading evidence were themselves founded on misleading evidence. Should you open the pink packet? No, answers an advocate of self-censorship. Yes, answers an advocate of the principle that you should base conclusions on all (...) the available evidence. Your final deliberations will be guided by Gilbert Harman’s Thought. Ultimately, the case against opening the packet prevails. (shrink)

Science communication via testimony requires a certain level of trust. But in the context of ideologically-entangled scientific issues, trust is in short supply—particularly when the issues are politically ‘entangled’. In such cases, cultural values are better predictors than scientific literacy for whether agents trust the publicly-directed claims of the scientific community. In this paper, we argue that a common way of thinking about scientific literacy—as knowledge of particular scientific facts or concepts—ought to give way to a second-order understanding of science (...) as a process as a more important notion for the public’s trust of science. (shrink)

The scientific community, we hold, often provides society with knowledge—that the HIV virus causes AIDS, that anthropogenic climate change is underway, that the MMR vaccine is safe. Some deny that we have this knowledge, however, and work to undermine it in others. It has been common to refer to such agents as “denialists”. At first glance, then, denialism appears to be a form of skepticism. But while we know that various denialist strategies for suppressing belief are generally effective, little is (...) known about which strategies are most effective. We see this as an important first step toward their remediation. This paper leverages the approximate comparison to various forms of philosophical skepticism to design an experimental test of the efficacy of four broad strategies of denial at suppressing belief in specific scientific claims. Our results suggest that assertive strategies are more effective at suppressing belief than questioning strategies. (shrink)

Feyerabend is infamous for his defense of pluralism, which he extends to every topic he discusses. Disagreement, a by-product of this pluralism, becomes a sign of flourishing critical communities. In Feyerabend’s political works, he extends this pluralism from science to democratic societies and incorporates his earlier work on scientific methodology into a procedure for designing just policy. However, a description and analysis of Feyerabend’s conception of disagreement is lacking. In this paper, I reconstruct and assess Feyerabend’s conception of disagreement, with (...) a particular emphasis on the role of experts, and its role in the formation of science policy. I go on to assess this argument in light of recent literature on manufactured disagreement on politically contentious science policy. I conclude by suggesting some prospects and problems for de-idealizing Feyerabend’s position on disagreement to see whether it may be plausibly implemented. (shrink)

We present a graduate science ethics course that connects cases from the historical record to present realities and practices in the areas of social responsibility, authorship, and human/animal experimentation. This content is delivered with mixed methods, including films, debates, blogging, and practicum; even the instructional team is mixed, including a historian of science and a research scientist. What really unites all of the course’s components is the experiential aspect: from acting in historical debates to participating in the current scientific enterprise. (...) The course aims to change the students’ culture into one deeply devoted to the science ethics cause. To measure the sought after cultural change, we developed and validated a relevant questionnaire. Results of this questionnaire from students who took the course, demonstrate that the course had the intended effect on them. Furthermore, results of this questionnaire from controls indicate the need for cultural change in that cohort. All these quantitative results are reinforced by qualitative outcomes. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that many arguments from expert opinion are strong arguments. Therefore, in many cases it is rational to rely on experts since in many cases the fact that an expert says that p makes it highly likely that p is true. I will defend this claim by providing 5 arguments that illuminate and elaborate on 5 crucial claims about expertise. In this way, I aim to undermine recent attempts to establish a rampant scepticism about arguments from (...) expert opinion. (shrink)