The my-side bias is a well-documented cognitive bias in the evaluation of arguments, in which reasoners in a discussion tend to overvalue arguments that confirm their prior beliefs, while undervaluing arguments that attack their prior beliefs. The first part of this paper develops and justifies a Bayesian model of myside bias at the level of individual reasoning. In the second part, this Bayesian model is implemented in an agent-based model of group discussion among myside-biased agents. The agent-based model is then (...) used to perform a number of experiments with the objective to study whether the myside bias hinders or enhances the ability of groups to collectively track the truth, that is, to reach the correct answer to a given binary issue. An analysis of the results suggests the following: First, whether the truth-tracking ability of groups is helped or hindered by myside bias crucially depends on how the strength of myside bias is differentially distributed across subgroups of discussants holding different beliefs. Second, small groups are more likely to track the truth than larger groups, suggesting that increasing group size has a detrimental effect on collective truth-tracking through discussion. (shrink)

ABSTRACT It is argued that, in certain particular conditions related to the intellectual character of the deliberators and their cognitive diversity, small research teams that engage in deliberation in the analysis of data and involve citizens can better promote good epistemic results than those teams which do not involve citizens. In particular, it is argued that certain communities within the social sciences that lack the relevant cognitive diversity among their professionals can take advantage of the diversity found in the citizenry (...) to increase the epistemic quality of their research, as long as the citizens possess the relevant virtues. (shrink)

In the philosophy of science, it is a common proposal that values are illegitimate in science and should be counteracted whenever they drive inquiry to the confirmation of predetermined conclusions. Drawing on recent cognitive scientific research on human reasoning and confirmation bias, I argue that this view should be rejected. Advocates of it have overlooked that values that drive inquiry to the confirmation of predetermined conclusions can contribute to the reliability of scientific inquiry at the group level even when they (...) negatively affect an individual’s cognition. This casts doubt on the proposal that such values should always be illegitimate in science. It also suggests that advocates of that proposal assume a narrow, individualistic account of science that threatens to undermine their own project of ensuring reliable belief formation in science. (shrink)

Many fields of study have shown that group discussion generally improves reasoning performance for a wide range of tasks. This article shows that most of the population, including specialists, does not expect group discussion to be as beneficial as it is. Six studies asked participants to solve a standard reasoning problem—the Wason selection task—and to estimate the performance of individuals working alone and in groups. We tested samples of U.S., Indian, and Japanese participants, European managers, and psychologists of reasoning. Every (...) sample underestimated the improvement yielded by group discussion. They did so even after they had been explained the correct answer, or after they had had to solve the problem in groups. These mistaken intuitions could prevent individuals from making the best of institutions that rely on group discussion, from collaborative learning and work teams to deliberative assemblies. (shrink)

The demarcation between science and pseudoscience is a long-standing problem in philosophy of science. Although philosophers have been hesitant to engage in this project since Larry Laudan announce...

Both science and religion are human endeavours that recruit and modify pre-existing human capacity to engage in epistemic vigilance. However, while science relies upon a focus on content vigilance, religion focusses on source vigilance. This difference is due, in turn, to the function of religious claims not being connected to their accuracy – unlike the function of scientific claims. Understanding this difference helps to understand many aspects of scientific and religious institutions.

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 (...) propagation of pseudoscience. We conclude by discussing the implications of our approach for the understanding of human irrationality. (shrink)

What is the epistemic position that a scientist must be in vis-à-vis a proposition, p, to be in a good enough epistemic position to assert that p to a fellow scientist within the scientific process? My aim is to provide an answer to this question and, more generally, to connect the epistemological debates about the epistemic norms of assertion to the debates about the nature of the scientific process. The question is important because science is a collaborative enterprise based on (...) a division of labor. It has even been suggested that such collaboration is a part of the scientific method. However, scientific collaboration depends upon communication between scientists—that is, intra-scientific testimony. After distinguishing some different kinds of intra-scientific testimony, I provide a specific proposal for an epistemic norm of assertion that generally governs such testimony. I argue that the proposal aligns with the requirements of three scientific virtues—replicability, revisability, and accountability. The discussion of replicability considers a prominent debate in the social and cognitive sciences. In conclusion, I consider some of the wider questions raised by characterizing scientific collaboration, division of labor, and more generally, scientific method via intra-scientific testimony. (shrink)

El objetivo del artículo consiste en poner en diálogo tres líneas de investigación dentro de la epistemología contemporánea: la Epistemología de la Virtud, el paradigma de la Racionalidad Limitada y la Teoría Argumentativa de la Razón. Frente al problema que interesa analizar aquí, a saber, la búsqueda de un marco teórico que permita diseñar estrategias pedagógicas (tanto al interior de la enseñanza de la filosofía como fuera de ella) sobre premisas realistas, la Epistemología de la Virtud será presentada como una (...) corriente marcadamente optimista desde el punto de vista epistémico. El paradigma de la Racionalidad Limitada representará la contrapartida de dicha corriente, en la medida en que parece conducir a un pesimismo marcado respecto de la posibilidad de diseñar estrategias que permitan perfeccionar las prácticas epistémicas de los sujetos. Frente a estos dos polos, se sugerirá que la Teoría Argumentativa de la Razón (desarrollada en la última década por Hugo Mercier y Dan Sperber) representa una alternativa prometedora por dos razones fundamentales: en primer lugar, porque ofrece una respuesta al problema (enfrentado por el paradigma de la Racionalidad Limitada) del carácter adaptativo de la razón humana desde un punto de vista evolutivo; en segundo lugar, porque permite superar el pesimismo epistémico esencial al paradigma de la Racionalidad Limitada al momento de planificar estrategias pedagógicas realistas y efectivas. (shrink)

Many cognitive and evolutionary theories of religion argue that supernatural explanations are byproducts of our cognitive adaptations. An influential argument states that our supernatural explanations result from a tendency to generate anthropomorphic explanations, and that this tendency is a byproduct of an error management strategy because agents tend to be associated with especially high fitness costs. We propose instead that anthropomorphic and other supernatural explanations result as features of a broader toolkit of well-designed cognitive adaptations, which are designed for explaining (...) the abstract and causal structure of complex, unobservable, and uncertain phenomena that have substantial impacts on fitness. Specifically, we argue that (1) mental representations about the abstract vs. the supernatural are largely overlapping, if not identical, and (2) when the data-generating processes for scarce and ambiguous observations are complex and opaque, a naive observer can improve a bias-variance trade-off by starting with a simple, underspecified explanation that Western observers readily interpret as “supernatural.” We then argue that (3) in many cases, knowledge specialists across cultures offer pragmatic services that involve apparently supernatural explanations, and their clients are frequently willing to pay them in a market for useful and effective services. We propose that at least some ethnographic descriptions of religion might actually reflect ordinary and adaptive responses to novel problems such as illnesses and natural disasters, where knowledge specialists possess and apply the best available explanations about phenomena that would otherwise be completely mysterious and unpredictable. (shrink)

Motivated reasoning occurs when we reason differently about evidence that supports our prior beliefs than when it contradicts those beliefs. Adult participants (N = 377) from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) system completed written responses critically evaluating strengths and weaknesses in a vignette on the topic of anthropogenic climate change (ACC). The vignette had two fictional scientists present prototypical arguments for and against anthropogenic climate change that were constructed with equally flawed and conflicting reasoning. The current study tested and found support (...) for three main hypotheses: cognitive style, personality, and ideology would predict both motivated reasoning and endorsement of human caused climate change; those who accept human-caused climate change will be less likely to engage in biased reasoning and more likely to engage in objective reasoning about climate change than those who deny human activity as a cause of climate change. (144 words). (shrink)

Science is a collaborative effort to produce knowledge. Scientists thus must assess what information is trustworthy and who is a competent and honest source and partner. Facing the problem of trust, we can expect scientists to be vigilant. In response to their peers’ vigilance scientists will provide reasons, not only to convince their colleagues to adopt their practices or beliefs, but also to demonstrate that their beliefs and practices are justified. By justifying their beliefs and practices, scientists also justify themselves. (...) Reasons in science thus do not only function as tools of persuasion but also to manage reputation. This analysis strongly suggests that science constitutes a moral system, which has implications for the study and philosophy of science. (shrink)

The social epistemology of science would benefit from paying more attention to the nature of argumentative exchanges. Argumentation is not only a cognitive activity but a collaborative social activity whose functioning needs to be understood from a psychological and communicative perspective. Thus far, social and organizational psychology has been used to discuss how social diversity affects group deliberation by changing the mindset of the participants. Argumentative exchanges have comparable effects, but they depend on cognitive diversity and emerge through critical interaction. (...) An example of a cognitive psychological theory is discussed that explains how mutual reasoning affects how we think, make decisions, and solve problems, as well as how cognitive biases may facilitate an efficient division of cognitive labor. These observations are compared with the existing results in the social epistemology of science. Moreover, I explicate the conceptual differences between the distributed and social processing of information. While argumentative exchanges belong to the latter domain, most existing simulations model distributed processing, which may compromise their real-world relevance and proper conceptual interpretation. However, I aim not to criticize the existing simulation methods but to promote an approach from the cognitive psychology of reasoning that complements the current use of organizational psychology and computer simulations by investigating a different set of mechanisms relating to similar phenomena of interest in the social epistemology of science. (shrink)

Dubourg and Baumard explain why fictional worlds are attractive to consumers. A complete account of fictional worlds, however, should also explain why some people create them. Creation is a costly and time-consuming process that does not resemble exploration but does resemble the culturally universal phenomenon of knowledge specialization.

Psychological and neuroscientific data suggest that a great deal, perhaps even most, of our reasoning turns out to be rationalizing. The reasons we give for our positions are seldom either the real reasons or the effective causes of why we have those positions. We are not as rational as we like to think. A second, no less disheartening observation is that while we may be very effective when it comes to giving reasons, we are not that good at getting reasons. (...) We are not as reasons-responsive as we like to think. Reasoning and argumentation are, on this view, charades without effect. This paper begins by identifying a range of theoretical responses to the idea that reasoning and argumentation have little casual role in our thoughts and actions, and, consequently, that humans are not the reasons-giving, reasons-responsive agents that we imagine ourselves to be. The responses fall into three categories: challenging the data and their interpretations; making peace with the loss of autonomy that is implied; and seeking ways to expand the causal footprint of reasoning and argumentation, e.g., by developing argumentative virtues. There are indeed possibilities for becoming more rational and more reasons-responsive, so the reports of our demise as the rational animal are greatly exaggerated. (shrink)