16 found
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  1. The preference for belief, issue polarization, and echo chambers.Bert Baumgaertner & Florian Justwan - 2022 - Synthese 200 (5):1-27.
    Some common explanations of issue polarization and echo chambers rely on social or cognitive mechanisms of exclusion. Accordingly, suggested interventions like “be more open-minded” target these mechanisms: avoid epistemic bubbles and don’t discount contrary information. Contrary to such explanations, we show how a much weaker mechanism—the preference for belief—can produce issue polarization in epistemic communities with little to no mechanisms of exclusion. We present a network model that demonstrates how a dynamic interaction between the preference for belief and common structures (...)
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  2.  71
    Extended Mechanistic Explanations: Expanding the Current Mechanistic Conception to Include More Complex Biological Systems.Sarah M. Roe & Bert Baumgaertner - 2017 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 48 (4):517-534.
    Mechanistic accounts of explanation have recently found popularity within philosophy of science. Presently, we introduce the idea of an extended mechanistic explanation, which makes explicit room for the role of environment in explanation. After delineating Craver and Bechtel’s account, we argue this suggestion is not sufficiently robust when we take seriously the mechanistic environment and modeling practices involved in studying contemporary complex biological systems. Our goal is to extend the already profitable mechanistic picture by pointing out the importance of the (...)
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  3. Yes, no, maybe so: a veritistic approach to echo chambers using a trichotomous belief model.Bert Baumgaertner - 2014 - Synthese 191 (11):2549-2569.
    I approach the study of echo chambers from the perspective of veritistic social epistemology. A trichotomous belief model is developed featuring a mechanism by which agents will have a tendency to form agreement in the community. The model is implemented as an agent-based model in NetLogo and then used to investigate a social practice called Impartiality, which is a plausible means for resisting or dismantling echo chambers. The implementation exposes additional factors that need close consideration in an evaluation of Impartiality. (...)
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  4. Opinion strength influences the spatial dynamics of opinion formation.Bert Baumgaertner, Stephen Krone & Rebecca T. Tyson - 2016 - Journal of Mathematical Sociology 40 (4):207-218.
    Opinions are rarely binary; they can be held with different degrees of conviction, and this expanded attitude spectrum can affect the influence one opinion has on others. Our goal is to understand how different aspects of influence lead to recognizable spatio-temporal patterns of opinions and their strengths. To do this, we introduce a stochastic spatial agent-based model of opinion dynamics that includes a spectrum of opinion strengths and various possible rules for how the opinion strength of one individual affects the (...)
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  5.  65
    Introduction: the philosophy of information.Bert Baumgaertner & Luciano Floridi - 2016 - Topoi 35 (1):157–159.
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  6.  46
    Is there a philosophy of information?Filip Buekens, Alessandro Salice, Luciano Floridi, Bert Baumgaertner & Filippo Domaneschi - 2016 - Topoi 35 (1):161-171.
    In 2002, Luciano Floridi published a paper called What is the Philosophy of Information?, where he argues for a new paradigm in philosophical research. To what extent should his proposal be accepted? Is the Philosophy of Information actually a new paradigm, in the Kuhninan sense, in Philosophy? Or is it only a new branch of Epistemology? In our discussion we will argue in defense of Floridi’s proposal. We believe that Philosophy of Information has the types of features had by other (...)
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  7.  19
    The influence of political ideology and trust on willingness to vaccinate.Bert Baumgaertner, Juliet E. Carlisle & Florian Justwan - 2018 - PLoS ONE 13 (1).
    In light of the increasing refusal of some parents to vaccinate children, public health strategies have focused on increasing knowledge and awareness based on a “knowledge-deficit” approach. However, decisions about vaccination are based on more than mere knowledge of risks, costs, and benefits. Individual decision making about vaccinating involves many other factors including those related to emotion, culture, religion, and socio-political context. In this paper, we use a nationally representative internet survey in the U.S. to investigate socio-political characteristics to assess (...)
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  8.  13
    Precedent and rest stop convergence in reflective equilibrium.Bert Baumgaertner & Charles Lassiter - 2024 - Synthese 203 (3):1-19.
    The method of reflective equilibrium is typically characterized as a process of two kinds of adjustments: hold fixed one’s current set of commitments/intuitions and adjust rules/principles to account for them, then hold fixed those rules while making adjustments to one’s set of commitments. Repeat until no further adjustments are required. Such characterizations ignore the role of precedent, i.e., information about the commitments and rules of others and how those might serve as guides in one’s own process of deliberation. In this (...)
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  9. Models of Opinion Dynamics and Mill-Style Arguments for Opinion Diversity.Bert Baumgaertner - 2018 - Historical Social Research 43 (1):210-33.
    John Stuart Mill advocated for increased interactions between individuals of dissenting opinions for the reason that it would improve society. Whether Mill and similar arguments that advocate for opinion diversity are valid depends on background assumptions about the psychology and sociality of individuals. The field of opinion dynamics is a burgeoning testing ground for how different combinations of sociological and psychological facts contribute to phenomena that affect opinion diversity, such as polarization. This paper applies some recent results from the opinion (...)
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  10. Vagueness Intuitions and the Mobility of Cognitive Sortals.Bert Baumgaertner - 2012 - Minds and Machines 22 (3):213-234.
    One feature of vague predicates is that, as far as appearances go, they lack sharp application boundaries. I argue that we would not be able to locate boundaries even if vague predicates had sharp boundaries. I do so by developing an idealized cognitive model of a categorization faculty which has mobile and dynamic sortals (`classes', `concepts' or `categories') and formally prove that the degree of precision with which boundaries of such sortals can be located is inversely constrained by their flexibility. (...)
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  11. Spatial opinion dynamics and the effects of two types of mixing.Bert Baumgaertner, Peter A. Fetros, Stephen M. Krone & Rebecca T. Tyson - 2018 - Physical Review E 98 (2):022310.
    Spatially situated opinions that can be held with different degrees of conviction lead to spatiotemporal patterns such as clustering (homophily), polarization, and deadlock. Our goal is to understand how sensitive these patterns are to changes in the local nature of interactions. We introduce two different mixing mechanisms, spatial relocation and nonlocal interaction (“telephoning”), to an earlier fully spatial model (no mixing). Interestingly, the mechanisms that create deadlock in the fully spatial model have the opposite effect when there is a sufficient (...)
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  12. Risk of Disease and Willingness to Vaccinate in the United State: A Population-Based Survey.Bert Baumgaertner, Benjamin J. Ridenhour, Florian Justwan, Juliet E. Carlisle & Craig R. Miller - 2020 - Plos Medicine 10 (17).
    Vaccination complacency occurs when perceived risks of vaccine-preventable diseases are sufficiently low so that vaccination is no longer perceived as a necessary precaution. Disease outbreaks can once again increase perceptions of risk, thereby decrease vaccine complacency, and in turn decrease vaccine hesitancy. It is not well understood, however, how change in perceived risk translates into change in vaccine hesitancy. -/- We advance the concept of vaccine propensity, which relates a change in willingness to vaccinate with a change in perceived risk (...)
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  13.  18
    Convergence and Shared Reflective Equilibrium.Bert Baumgaertner & Charles Lassiter - 2023 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 10.
    We build a model of the reflective equilibrium method to better understand under what conditions a community of agents would achieve a shared equilibrium. We find that, despite guaranteeing that agents individually reach equilibrium and numerous constraints on how agents deliberate, it is surprisingly difficult for a community to converge on a small number of equilibria. Consequently, the literature on reflective equilibrium has underestimated the challenge of coordinating intrapersonal convergence and interpersonal convergence.
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  14.  28
    Tanja Rechnitzer: Applying Reflective Equilibrium.Bert Baumgaertner - 2023 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 26 (1):153-155.
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  15.  31
    The Organism-Centered Approach to Cultural Evolution.Filip Buekens, Alessandro Salice, Luciano Floridi, Bert Baumgaertner & Filippo Domaneschi - 2016 - Topoi 35 (1):283-290.
    In this paper, we distinguish two different approaches to cultural evolution. One approach is meme-centered, the other organism-centered. We argue that in situations in which the meme- and organism-centered approaches are competing alternatives, the organism-centered approach is in many ways superior. Furthermore, the organism-centered approach can go a long way toward understanding the evolution of institutions. Although the organism-centered approach is preferable for a broad class of situations, we do leave room for super-organismic or sub-organismic explanations of some cultural phenomena.
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  16.  61
    Smooth Yet Discrete: Modeling Both Non-transitivity and the Smoothness of Graded Categories With Discrete Classification Rules. [REVIEW]Bert Baumgaertner - 2014 - Minds and Machines 24 (3):353-370.
    Many of our categorization experiences are non-transitive. For some objects a, b and c, a and b can appear indistinguishable, and likewise b and c, but a and c can appear distinguishable. Many categories also appear to be smooth; transitions between cases are not experienced as sharp, but rather as continuous. These two features of our categorization experiences tend to be addressed separately. Moreover, many views model smoothness by making use of infinite degrees. This paper presents a methodological strategy that (...)
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