A common philosophical account of expertise contends that (a) the good of expertise lies in the fact that it is grounded in reliably true beliefs or knowledge in a domain and (b) rejecting this truth-linked view threatens the authority of experts and opens one to epistemic relativism. I argue that both of these claims are implausible, and I show how epistemic authority and objectivity can be grounded in the current state of understanding and skill in a domain. Further, I argue (...) that what I call a ‘cognitive systems’ approach is consistent with this domain-linked account of expert authority, is empirically supported, and provides a philosophical foundation for both empirical and conceptual work on the nature and scope of expertise. (shrink)

This paper is about a problem that can arise when we try to harness the “wisdom of the crowd” from groups comprised of individuals who exhibit a certain kind of epistemic humility in the way they respond to testimonial evidence. I begin by setting out the problem and then make some initial steps toward solving it. The solution I develop is tentative and may not apply in all circumstances, but it promises to alleviate what seems to me to be a (...) problem of both theoretical interest and practical importance. (shrink)

Supposedly, stubbornness on the part of scientists—an unwillingness to change one’s position on a scientific issue even in the face of countervailing evidence—helps efficiently divide scientific labor. Maintaining disagreement is important because it keeps scientists pursuing a diversity of leads rather than all working on the most promising, and stubbornness helps preserve this disagreement. Planck’s observation that “Science progresses one funeral at a time” might therefore be an insight into epistemically beneficial stubbornness on the part of researchers. In conversation with (...) extant formal models, recent empirical research, and a novel agent-based model of my own I explore whether the epistemic goods which stubbornness can secure—disagreement and diversity—are attainable through less-costly methods. I make the case that they are, at least in part, and also use my modeling results to show that if stubbornness is scientifically valuable, it still involves a willingness to change one’s mind. (shrink)

There seems to be a deep tension between two aspects of aesthetic appreciation. On the one hand, we care about getting things right. On the other hand, we demand autonomy. We want appreciators to arrive at their aesthetic judgments through their own cognitive efforts, rather than deferring to experts. These two demands seem to be in tension; after all, if we want to get the right judgments, we should defer to the judgments of experts. The best explanation, I suggest, is (...) that aesthetic appreciation is something like a game. When we play a game, we try to win. But often, winning isn’t the point; playing is. Aesthetic appreciation involves the same flipped motivational structure: we aim at the goal of correctness, but having correct judgments isn’t the point. The point is the engaged process of interpreting, investigating, and exploring the aesthetic object. Deferring to aesthetic testimony, then, makes the same mistake as looking up the answer to a puzzle, rather than solving it for oneself. The shortcut defeats the whole point. This suggests a new account of aesthetic value: the engagement account. The primary value of the activity of aesthetic appreciation lies in the process of trying to generate correct judgments, and not in having correct judgments. -/- *There is an audio version available: look for the Soundcloud link, below.*. (shrink)

In our life with science, we trust experts; we form judgements by inference from past evidence. We conduct ourselves very differently in the aesthetic domain. We avoid deferring to aesthetic experts. We form our judgements through direct perception of particulars rather than through inference. Why the difference? I suggest that we avoid aesthetic testimony and aesthetic inference, not because they’re unusable, but because we have adopted social norms to avoid them. Aesthetic appreciation turns out to be something like a game. (...) We have laid down certain rules and restrictions in order to shape a kind of activity we cherish. And aesthetic properties turn out to be a kind of social construct. Much like the goal of a game, they are constituted in part by our obedience to certain rules. The norms of aesthetic life are different from those of science because our purposes are different. We engage in science to get the right answers; we engage in aesthetic appreciation to be absorbed in the activity of the sensuous perception of particulars. Our aesthetic practices are a constructed shelter from science; they restore to us a small domain where we may once again engage in our own sensuous perception of particulars. (shrink)

We carry out most of our epistemic projects as groups. Networks of individuals work together to identify questions, accumulate evidence, and settle on answers that lie beyond the ken of individual knowers. This is particularly important for controversial issues. And when it comes to ideologically contested issues, groups that are ideologically diverse in their membership are epistemically superior to groups that are ideologically homogenous. That’s because ideologically diverse groups are better at (a) identifying a representative sample of important questions, (b) (...) developing a wider range of potential answers, and (c) evaluating the evidence for and against each option. Awareness of this point produces a competence defeater for the relevant outputs of ideologically homogenous groups: they don’t deserve the high level of trust we often grant them. That, among other things, goes a long way towards justifying the public’s decreased trust in institutions like social networks, journalism, and universities. (shrink)

Life is a group project. It takes a village. The same is true of our intellectual lives. Since we are finite cognitive creatures with limited time and resources, any healthy intellectual life requires that we rely quite heavily on others. For nearly any question you want to investigate, there is someone who is in a better epistemic position than you are to determine the answer. For most people, their expertise does not extend far beyond their own personal lives, and even (...) here we can sometimes find others who are more reliable. Without relying on them we would know very little about the world. Since others are typically better positioned to determine the answers to the questions we have, it should make us wonder why we should bother to try and figure out much of anything at all for ourselves. After all, when trying to find an answer to a question, we should take the best route to the answer, and the most reliable route to the answer to most questions is to rely on the minds of others. At the same time, there is something defective about an intellectual life that outsources nearly all of its intellectual projects. That is, it seems that individuals ought to think for themselves, at least about some issues and at least some of the time. The puzzle is in determining why it is epistemically valuable to think for yourself, since doing so will almost always not be the best available route to the answer of your question. In this paper, I will first clarify our central question and sharpen this puzzle regarding epistemic autonomy. Having done so, I will argue that autonomous deliberation can be epistemically valuable to inquirers both when it is successful, as well as when it is unsuccessful. I conclude by gesturing at how these considerations point us toward an account of epistemic autonomy as an intellectual virtue. (shrink)

Two challenges have faced policymakers during the Covid-19 pandemic: First, they must determine the reliability of expert testimony in the face of uncertainty; second, they must determine the relevance of different kinds of expertise with regard to particular decisions. I argue that both these problems can be fruitfully analyzed through the lens of trust by introducing an in-depth case study of Iceland’s handling of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. I contend that the problem of relevance highlights the limited (...) appeal of a thoroughly technocratic society. Value judgments, best realized through democratic processes, are always lurking in the background. (shrink)

Deepfakes are realistic videos created using new machine learning techniques rather than traditional photographic means. They tend to depict people saying and doing things that they did not actually say or do. In the news media and the blogosphere, the worry has been raised that, as a result of deepfakes, we are heading toward an “infopocalypse” where we cannot tell what is real from what is not. Several philosophers have now issued similar warnings. In this paper, I offer an analysis (...) of why deepfakes are such a serious threat to knowledge. Utilizing the account of information carrying recently developed by Brian Skyrms, I argue that deepfakes reduce the amount of information that videos carry to viewers. I conclude by drawing some implications of this analysis for addressing the epistemic threat of deepfakes. (shrink)

Introduction to the Synthese Special Issue on Disagreement in Science.

Around 97% of climate scientists endorse anthropogenic global warming (AGW), the theory that human activities are partly responsible for recent increases in global average temperatures. Clearly, this widespread endorsement of AGW is a reason for non-experts to believe in AGW. But what is the epistemic significance of the fact that some climate scientists do not endorse AGW? This paper contrasts expert unanimity, in which virtually no expert disagrees with some theory, with expert consensus, in which some non-negligible proportion either rejects (...) or is uncertain about the theory. It is argued that, from a layperson’s point of view, an expert consensus is often stronger evidence for a theory’s truth than unanimity. Several lessons are drawn from this conclusion, e.g. concerning what laypeople should infer from expert pronouncements, how journalists should report on scientific theories, and how working scientists should communicate with the public. (shrink)

English abstract: In order for experts to serve as authorities in our society, people need to trust them when they make claims that fall within their domains of expertise. However, it also seems important for people to think independently and critically about the experts‘ conclusions – one shouldn‘t believe everything one is told. In this paper, I examine this tension with the aim of answering four closely related questions: (1) What is it to trust experts? (2) Why do we often (...) have to rely on experts? (3) Which experts should we trust more than others, and in what circumstances? (4) And in what circumstances is it important to think critically and try to reach our own conclusions? (shrink)