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  1. How Partisanship Can Moderate the Influence of Communicated Information on the Beliefs of Agents Aiming to Form True Beliefs.Maarten van Doorn - forthcoming - Social Epistemology.
    Partisan epistemology – individuals granting greater credibility to co-partisan sources in evaluating information – is often taken to be evidence of directionally motivated reasoning in which concerns about group membership override concerns about accuracy. Against this dominant view, I outline a novel accuracy-based account of this mode of reasoning. According to this account, partisan epistemology stems from the inference that co-partisans are more likely to be right as they have superior epistemic access to the relevant facts and seek to realize (...)
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  • Environmental Epistemology.Dallas Amico-Korby, Maralee Harrell & David Danks - 2024 - Synthese 203 (81):1-24.
    We argue that there is a large class of questions—specifically questions about how to epistemically evaluate environments that currently available epistemic theories are not well-suited for answering, precisely because these questions are not about the epistemic state of particular agents or groups. For example, if we critique Facebook for being conducive to the spread of misinformation, then we are not thereby critiquing Facebook for being irrational, or lacking knowledge, or failing to testify truthfully. Instead, we are saying something about the (...)
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  • The Problem of Political Polarization and a Way Out of It.Ivan Mladenovic - 2023 - In Nenad Cekić (ed.), Virtues and vices – between ethics and epistemology. Belgrade: Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade. pp. 265-288.
    Since political polarization significantly impacts contemporary politics and democracy, much of the research in the social sciences is dedicated to this topic. In recent times, philosophers joined the discussion related to the research on political polarization, primarily in the fields of political philosophy and political epistemology. The main aim of this paper is philosophical analysis of some dominant explanations of political polarization, but also to propose solutions for a way out of political polarization from the perspective of political philosophy. In (...)
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  • What's Wrong with Partisan Deference?Elise Woodard - forthcoming - In Tamar Szabó Gendler, John Hawthorne, Julianne Chung & Alex Worsnip (eds.), Oxford Studies in Epistemology, Vol. 8. Oxford University Press.
    Deference in politics is often necessary. To answer questions like, “Should the government increase the federal minimum wage?” and “Should the state introduce a vaccine mandate?”, we need to know relevant scientific and economic facts, make complex value judgments, and answer questions about incentives and implementation. Lay citizens typically lack the time, resources, and competence to answer these questions on their own. Hence, they must defer to others. But to whom should they defer? A common answer is that they should—or (...)
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  • Partisan Epistemology and Misplaced Trust.Boyd Millar - forthcoming - Episteme:1-21.
    The fact that each of us has significantly greater confidence in the claims of co-partisans – those belonging to groups with which we identify – explains, in large part, why so many people believe a significant amount of the misinformation they encounter. It's natural to assume that such misinformed partisan beliefs typically involve a rational failure of some kind, and philosophers and psychologists have defended various accounts of the nature of the rational failure purportedly involved. I argue that none of (...)
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  • Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy: On the Ethical Dimension of Recommender Systems.Sofia Bonicalzi, Mario De Caro & Benedetta Giovanola - 2023 - Topoi 42 (3):819-832.
    Feasting on a plethora of social media platforms, news aggregators, and online marketplaces, recommender systems (RSs) are spreading pervasively throughout our daily online activities. Over the years, a host of ethical issues have been associated with the diffusion of RSs and the tracking and monitoring of users’ data. Here, we focus on the impact RSs may have on personal autonomy as the most elusive among the often-cited sources of grievance and public outcry. On the grounds of a philosophically nuanced notion (...)
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  • Virtues and vices – between ethics and epistemology.Nenad Cekić (ed.) - 2023 - Belgrade: Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade.
    The statement everyone wants to live a fulfilled and happy life may seem simple, self-evident, and even trivial at first glance. However, upon closer philosophical analysis, can we unequivocally assert that people are truly focused on well-being? Assuming they are, the question becomes: what guidelines should be followed and how should one behave in order to achieve true well-being and attain their goals? One popular viewpoint is that cultivating moral virtues and personal qualities is essential for a life of "true" (...)
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  • It’s Our Epistemic Environment, Not Our Attitude Toward Truth, That Matters.Neil Levy - 2023 - Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 35 (1):94-111.
    The widespread conviction that we are living in a post-truth era rests on two claims: that a large number of people believe things that are clearly false, and that their believing these things reflects a lack of respect for truth. In reality, however, fewer people believe clearly false things than surveys or social media suggest. In particular, relatively few people believe things that are widely held to be bizarre. Moreover, accepting false beliefs does not reflect a lack of respect for (...)
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  • Against Intellectual Autonomy: Social Animals Need Social Virtues.Neil Levy - 2024 - Social Epistemology 38 (3):350-363.
    We are constantly called upon to evaluate the evidential weight of testimony, and to balance its deliverances against our own independent thinking. ‘Intellectual autonomy’ is the virtue that is supposed to be displayed by those who engage in cognition in this domain well. I argue that this is at best a misleading label for the virtue, because virtuous cognition in this domain consists in thinking with others, and intelligently responding to testimony. I argue that the existing label supports an excessively (...)
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  • (1 other version)Bayesian belief protection: A study of belief in conspiracy theories.Nina Poth & Krzysztof Dolega - 2023 - Philosophical Psychology 36 (6):1182-1207.
    Several philosophers and psychologists have characterized belief in conspiracy theories as a product of irrational reasoning. Proponents of conspiracy theories apparently resist revising their beliefs given disconfirming evidence and tend to believe in more than one conspiracy, even when the relevant beliefs are mutually inconsistent. In this paper, we bring leading views on conspiracy theoretic beliefs closer together by exploring their rationality under a probabilistic framework. We question the claim that the irrationality of conspiracy theoretic beliefs stems from an inadequate (...)
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  • Do your own research!Neil Levy - 2022 - Synthese 200 (5):1-19.
    Philosophical tradition and conspiracy theorists converge in suggesting that ordinary people ought to do their own research, rather than accept the word of others. In this paper, I argue that it’s no accident that conspiracy theorists value lay research on expert topics: such research is likely to undermine knowledge, via its effects on truth and justification. Accepting expert testimony is a far more reliable route to truth. Nevertheless, lay research has a range of benefits; in particular, it is likely to (...)
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  • Second-Order Assessment of Scientific Expert Claims and Sharing Epistemic Burdens in Science Communication.George Kwasi Barimah - 2024 - Episteme 21 (2):461-477.
    When laypersons are presented with scientific information which seeks to modify their way of life, they are expected to believe, suspend belief, or reject it. Second-order assessment of scientific experts helps laypersons to make an informed decision in such situations. This is an assessment of the trustworthiness of the person making the scientific claim. In this paper I challenge the optimistic view of Anderson (2011), regarding the ease with which laypersons can perform second-order assessment of experts, by pointing out some (...)
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  • What is the Point of Persistent Disputes? The meta-analytic answer.Alexandre Billon & Philippe Vellozzo - forthcoming - Dialectica.
    Many philosophers regard the persistence of philosophical disputes as symptomatic of overly ambitious, ill-founded intellectual projects. There are indeed strong reasons to believe that persistent disputes in philosophy (and more generally in the discourse at large) are pointless. We call this the pessimistic view of the nature of philosophical disputes. In order to respond to the pessimistic view, we articulate the supporting reasons and provide a precise formulation in terms of the idea that the best explanation of persistent disputes entails (...)
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  • Echoes of covid misinformation.Neil Levy - 2021 - Philosophical Psychology 36 (5):931-948.
    Public support for responses to the coronavirus pandemic has sharply diverged on partisan lines in many countries, with conservatives tending to oppose lockdowns, social distancing, mask mandates and vaccines, and liberals far more supportive. This polarization may arise from the way in which the attitudes of each side is echoed back to them, especially on social media. In this paper, I argue that echo chambers are not to blame for this polarization, even if they are causally responsible for it. They (...)
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  • Trusting scientific experts in an online world.Kenneth Boyd - 2022 - Synthese 200 (1):1-31.
    A perennial problem in social epistemology is the problem of expert testimony, specifically expert testimony regarding scientific issues: for example, while it is important for me to know information pertaining to anthropogenic climate change, vaccine safety, Covid-19, etc., I may lack the scientific background required to determine whether the information I come across is, in fact, true. Without being able to evaluate the science itself, then, I need to find trustworthy expert testifiers to listen to. A major project in social (...)
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  • (1 other version)Bayesian belief protection: A study of belief in conspiracy theories.Nina Poth & Krzysztof Dolega - 2022 - Philosophical Psychology.
    Several philosophers and psychologists have characterized belief in conspiracy theories as a product of irrational reasoning. Proponents of conspiracy theories apparently resist revising their beliefs given disconfirming evidence and tend to believe in more than one conspiracy, even when the relevant beliefs are mutually inconsistent. In this paper, we bring leading views on conspiracy theoretic beliefs closer together by exploring their rationality under a probabilistic framework. We question the claim that the irrationality of conspiracy theoretic beliefs stems from an inadequate (...)
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  • Bounded Reflectivism and Epistemic Identity.Nick Byrd - 2021 - Metaphilosophy 53 (1):53-69.
    Reflectivists consider reflective reasoning crucial for good judgment and action. Anti-reflectivists deny that reflection delivers what reflectivists seek. Alas, the evidence is mixed. So, does reflection confer normative value or not? This paper argues for a middle way: reflection can confer normative value, but its ability to do this is bound by such factors as what we might call epistemic identity: an identity that involves particular beliefs—for example, religious and political identities. We may reflectively defend our identities’ beliefs rather than (...)
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  • Epistemic Obligations of the Laity.Boyd Millar - 2023 - Episteme 20 (2):232-246.
    Very often when the vast majority of experts agree on some scientific issue, laypeople nonetheless regularly consume articles, videos, lectures, etc., the principal claims of which are inconsistent with the expert consensus. Moreover, it is standardly assumed that it is entirely appropriate, and perhaps even obligatory, for laypeople to consume such anti-consensus material. I maintain that this standard assumption gets things backwards. Each of us is particularly vulnerable to false claims when we are not experts on some topic – such (...)
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  • Consuming Fake News: Can We Do Any Better?Michel Croce & Tommaso Piazza - 2023 - Social Epistemology 37 (2):232-241.
    This paper focuses on extant approaches to counteract the consumption of fake news online. Proponents of structural approaches suggest that our proneness to consuming fake news could only be reduced by reshaping the architecture of online environments. Proponents of educational approaches suggest that fake news consumers should be empowered to improve their epistemic agency. In this paper, we address a question that is relevant to this debate: namely, whether fake news consumers commit mistakes for which they can be criticized and (...)
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  • Morality as an Evolutionary Exaptation.Marcus Arvan - 2021 - In Johan De Smedt & Helen De Cruz (eds.), Empirically Engaged Evolutionary Ethics. Synthese Library. Springer - Synthese Library. pp. 89-109.
    The dominant theory of the evolution of moral cognition across a variety of fields is that moral cognition is a biological adaptation to foster social cooperation. This chapter argues, to the contrary, that moral cognition is likely an evolutionary exaptation: a form of cognition where neurobiological capacities selected for in our evolutionary history for a variety of different reasons—many unrelated to social cooperation—were put to a new, prosocial use after the fact through individual rationality, learning, and the development and transmission (...)
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  • Asymmetrical Rationality: Are Only Other People Stupid?Robin McKenna - 2021 - In Michael Hannon & Jeroen de Ridder (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Political Epistemology. New York: Routledge. pp. 285-295.
    It is commonly observed that we live in an increasingly polarised world. Strikingly, we are polarised not only about political issues, but also about scientific issues that have political implications, such as climate change. This raises two questions. First, why are we so polarised over these issues? Second, does this mean our views about these issues are all equally ir/rational? In this chapter I explore both questions. Specifically, I draw on the literature on ideologically motivated reasoning to develop an answer (...)
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  • On the limits of the political: The problem of overly permissive pluralism in Mouffe's agonism.Ugur Aytac - 2021 - Constellations 28 (3):417-431.
    This paper argues that the critique of depoliticization in Mouffe’s agonistic political theory needs to be revised. This is because her account of the political does not succeed in filtering out undesirable forms of politicization such as science denialism and other types of post-truth politics. Mouffe's conception of the common symbolic space does not accomplish the task of limiting extreme pluralism in the absence of certain standards about how to correctly apply the fundamental notions of this space. By drawing on (...)
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  • The Surprising Truth About Disagreement.Neil Levy - 2020 - Acta Analytica 36 (2):137-157.
    Conciliationism—the thesis that when epistemic peers discover that they disagree about a proposition, both should reduce their confidence—faces a major objection: it seems to require us to significantly reduce our confidence in our central moral and political commitments. In this paper, I develop a typology of disagreement cases and a diagnosis of the source and force of the pressure to conciliate. Building on Vavova’s work, I argue that ordinary and extreme disagreements are surprising, and for this reason, they carry information (...)
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  • What Is the Function of Confirmation Bias?Uwe Peters - 2022 - Erkenntnis 87 (3):1351-1376.
    Confirmation bias is one of the most widely discussed epistemically problematic cognitions, challenging reliable belief formation and the correction of inaccurate views. Given its problematic nature, it remains unclear why the bias evolved and is still with us today. To offer an explanation, several philosophers and scientists have argued that the bias is in fact adaptive. I critically discuss three recent proposals of this kind before developing a novel alternative, what I call the ‘reality-matching account’. According to the account, confirmation (...)
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  • Socially adaptive belief.Daniel Williams - 2020 - Mind and Language 36 (3):333-354.
    I clarify and defend the hypothesis that human belief formation is sensitive to social rewards and punishments, such that beliefs are sometimes formed based on unconscious expectations of their likely effects on other agents – agents who frequently reward us when we hold ungrounded beliefs and punish us when we hold reasonable ones. After clarifying this phenomenon and distinguishing it from other sources of bias in the psychological literature, I argue that the hypothesis is plausible on theoretical grounds and I (...)
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  • Believing to Belong: Addressing the Novice-Expert Problem in Polarized Scientific Communication.Helen De Cruz - 2020 - Social Epistemology 34 (5):440-452.
    There is a large gap between the specialized knowledge of scientists and laypeople’s understanding of the sciences. The novice-expert problem arises when non-experts are confronted with (real or apparent) scientific disagreement, and when they don’t know whom to trust. Because they are not able to gauge the content of expert testimony, they rely on imperfect heuristics to evaluate the trustworthiness of scientists. This paper investigates why some bodies of scientific knowledge become polarized along political fault lines. Laypeople navigate conflicting epistemic (...)
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  • Negative expertise in conditions of manufactured ignorance: epistemic strategies, virtues and skills.Jaana Parviainen & Lauri Lahikainen - 2019 - Synthese 198 (4):3873-3891.
    This paper is motivated by the need to respond to the spread of influential misinformation and manufactured ignorance, which places pressure on the work of experts in various sectors. To meet this need, the paper discusses the conditions required for expert testimony to evolve a reconceptualisation of negative capability as a new form of epistemic humility. In this regard, professional knowledge formation is not considered to be separate from the institutional and social processes and values that uphold its production. Drawing (...)
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  • Collectivized Intellectualism.Julia Jael Smith & Benjamin Wald - 2019 - Res Philosophica 96 (2):199-227.
    We argue that the evolutionary function of reasoning is to allow us to secure more accurate beliefs and more effective intentions through collective deliberation. This sets our view apart both from traditional intellectualist accounts, which take the evolutionary function to be individual deliberation, and from interactionist accounts such as the one proposed by Mercier and Sperber, which agrees that the function of reasoning is collective but holds that it aims to disseminate, rather than come up with, accurate beliefs. We argue (...)
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  • The Applied Epistemology of Official Stories.Tim Hayward - forthcoming - Social Epistemology.
    Is it generally rational to defer to official stories? On the affirmative view exemplified by Neil Levy, grounds for scepticism cannot outweigh the epistemic authority of the experts presumed to generate them. Yet sociological studies of how expertise is mediated into official communications reveal the epistemic potential of citizens’ collaboratives. These may include, or advocate hearing, dissident experts. Such groups’ epistemic position is arguably analogous to that of the ‘other institutions of civil society’ that Levy sees as underwriting the authority (...)
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  • Motivated ignorance, rationality, and democratic politics.Daniel Williams - 2020 - Synthese 198 (8):7807-7827.
    When the costs of acquiring knowledge outweigh the benefits of possessing it, ignorance is rational. In this paper I clarify and explore a related but more neglected phenomenon: cases in which ignorance is motivated by the anticipated costs of possessing knowledge, not acquiring it. The paper has four aims. First, I describe the psychological and social factors underlying this phenomenon of motivated ignorance. Second, I describe those conditions in which it is instrumentally rational. Third, I draw on evidence from the (...)
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  • Showing our seams: A reply to Eric Funkhouser.Neil Levy - 2018 - Philosophical Psychology 31 (7):991-1006.
    ABSTRACTIn a recent paper published in this journal, Eric Funkhouser argues that some of our beliefs have the primary function of signaling to others, rather than allowing us to navigate the world. Funkhouser’s case is persuasive. However, his account of beliefs as signals is underinclusive, omitting both beliefs that are signals to the self and less than full-fledged beliefs as signals. The latter set of beliefs, moreover, has a better claim to being considered as constituting a psychological kind in its (...)
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  • Beyond politics: additional factors underlying skepticism of a COVID-19 vaccine.Kenneth Boyd - 2021 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 43 (1):1-4.
    Even before it had been developed there had already been skepticism among the general public concerning a vaccine for COVID-19. What are the factors that drive this skepticism? While much has been said about how political differences are at play, in this article I draw attention to two additional factors that have not received as much attention: witnessing the fallibility of the scientific process play out in real time, and a perceived breakdown of the distinction between experts and non-experts.
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  • Where is the Motivation in Motivated Numeracy?Kathrin Glüer-Pagin & Levi Spectre - forthcoming - Review of Philosophy and Psychology:1-18.
    In a series of very influential papers, Dan Kahan argues for “the identity protective cognition thesis”: the claim that politically motivated reasoning is a major factor explaining current levels of polarization over matters of fact, especially in the US. An important part of his case consists of experimental data supporting the claim that ideological polarization is more extreme amongst more numerate individuals. In this paper, we take a close look at how precisely this “numeracy effect” is supposed to come about. (...)
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  • Philosophy’s other climate problem☆.Michael Brownstein & Neil Levy - 2021 - Journal of Social Philosophy 52 (4):536-553.
    Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.
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  • Reasonable Irrationality: the Role of Reasons in the Diffusion of Pseudoscience.Stefaan Blancke, Maarten Boudry & Johan Braeckman - 2019 - Journal of Cognition and Culture 19 (5):432-449.
    Pseudoscience spreads through communicative and inferential processes that make people vulnerable to weird beliefs. However, the fact that pseudoscientific beliefs are unsubstantiated and have no basis in reality does not mean that the people who hold them have no reasons for doing so. We propose that, reasons play a central role in the diffusion of pseudoscience. On the basis of cultural epidemiology and the interactionist theory of reasoning, we will here analyse the structure and the function of reasons in the (...)
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  • Politics of Folk Psychology: Believing what Others Believe.Uku Tooming - 2021 - Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 36 (3):361-374.
    In this paper, I argue that by attributing beliefs the attributer is pushed toward taking a stand on the content of those beliefs and that what stand they take partially depends on the relationship between the attributer and the attributee. In particular, if the attributee enjoys a higher social standing than the attributer, the latter is disposed to adopt the attributed belief, as long as certain other conditions are met. I will call this view the Adoption-by-Attribution model. Because of the (...)
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  • Taking responsibility for health in an epistemically polluted environment.Neil Levy - 2018 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 39 (2):123-141.
    Proposals for regulating or nudging healthy choices are controversial. Opponents often argue that individuals should take responsibility for their own health, rather than be paternalistically manipulated for their own good. In this paper, I argue that people can take responsibility for their own health only if they satisfy certain epistemic conditions, but we live in an epistemic environment in which these conditions are not satisfied. Satisfying the epistemic conditions for taking responsibility, I argue, requires regulation of this environment. I describe (...)
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  • Expert testimony and practical interests.Nicholas Tebben & John Philip Waterman - 2024 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 67 (9):3393-3419.
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  • Rationalization enables cooperation and cultural evolution.Neil Levy - 2020 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 43:e40.
    Cushman argues that the function of rationalization is to attribute mental representations to ourselves, thereby making these representations available for future planning. I argue that such attribution is often not necessary and sometimes maladaptive. I suggest a different explanation of rationalization: making representations available to other agents, to facilitate cooperation, transmission, and the ratchet effect that underlies cumulative cultural evolution.
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  • Broad Medical Uncertainty and the ethical obligation for openness.Rebecca C. H. Brown, Mícheál de Barra & Brian D. Earp - 2022 - Synthese 200 (2):1-29.
    This paper argues that there exists a collective epistemic state of ‘Broad Medical Uncertainty’ regarding the effectiveness of many medical interventions. We outline the features of BMU, and describe some of the main contributing factors. These include flaws in medical research methodologies, bias in publication practices, financial and other conflicts of interest, and features of how evidence is translated into practice. These result in a significant degree of uncertainty regarding the effectiveness of many medical treatments and unduly optimistic beliefs about (...)
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  • Ingroup Attitude: A Reliance-Based Analysis.Xin Zhang - unknown
    People as group members tend to exhibit a partial attitude to either conform to the dominant group view or form beliefs—such as climate change denial and religious belief—based on other ingroup members’ testimony when the evidence for such a belief is insufficient. Philosophers have conceptualized this phenomenon of ingroup attitudes in terms of belief. In this paper, I argue that reliance, a cognitive attitude that is goal-oriented and primarily regulated by pragmatic concerns, is more fitting to illuminate cases of ingroup (...)
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