Generic statements (‘Tigers have stripes’) are pervasive and developmentally early-emerging modes of generalization with a distinctive linguistic profile. Previous experimental work suggests that generics display a unique asymmetry between the prevalence levels required to accept them and the prevalence levels typically implied by their use. This asymmetry effect is thought to have serious social consequences: if speakers use socially problematic generics based on prevalence levels that are systematically lower than what is typically inferred by their recipients, then using generics will (...) likely exacerbate social stereotypes and biases. This paper presents evidence against the popular hypothesis that this asymmetry effect is unique to generics. Correcting for various shortcomings of previous studies, we found a generalized asymmetry effect across generics and various kinds of explicitly quantified statements (‘most’, ‘some’, ‘typically’, ‘usually’). In addition, to better understand the conditions under which generalized asymmetry effects may exacerbate biases, we examine whether speakers choose generalizing sentences based simply on their acceptance conditions, or are systematically sensitive to the implications likely drawn by their typical recipients. In support of the latter view, we found that, in neutral or cooperative scenarios, speakers reliably choose generalizing sentences whose implied prevalence levels closely match the actual ones. In non-cooperative scenarios, speakers exploit asymmetry effects to further their own goals by choosing generalizing sentences that are strictly true but likely to mislead their recipients. These results refine our understanding of the source of asymmetry effects and the conditions under which they may introduce biased beliefs into social networks. (shrink)

Friendship with the ancients is a set of imaginative exercises and engagements with the work of deceased authors that allows us to imagine them as friends. Authors from diverse cultures and times such as Mengzi, Niccolò Machiavelli, W.E.B Du Bois, and Clare Carlisle have engaged in it. The aim of this paper is to defend this practice, showing that friendship with the ancients is a species of philosophical friendship, which confers the unique benefits such friendships offer. It is conducive to (...) epistemic virtue, notably the related virtues of epistemic humility and of relational understanding. When we cultivate friendship with the ancients, we are not learning facts about them, but aim at understanding their views in their full scope in a way that a relationship between friends allows. (shrink)

In philosophical work on the ethics of conversational exchange, much has been written regarding the speaker side—i.e., on the rights and duties we have as speakers. This paper explores the relatively neglected topic of the duties pertaining to listeners’ side of the exchange. Following W.K. Clifford, we argue that it’s fruitful to think of our epistemic resources as common property. Furthermore, listeners have a key role in maintaining and improving these resources, perhaps a more important role than speakers. We develop (...) this idea by drawing from Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber’s “interactionist” picture of reason, which suggests that reasoning is essentially dialogical and relies on the epistemic vigilance of listeners. The paper defends an imperfect, prima facie duty to listen, one that is sufficiently strong to place substantial demands on individuals, but not so overly demanding as to be implausible. (shrink)

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 (...) the correct values. I argue that this theory fits better with relevant findings than motivated-reasoning theories of partisan epistemology. Finally, I suggest it has adequate explanatory power vis-à-vis patterns of misinformation belief. (shrink)

Why comply with epistemic norms? In this paper, I argue that complying with epistemic norms, engaging in epistemically responsible conduct, and being epistemically trustworthy are constitutive elements of maintaining good epistemic relations with oneself and others. Good epistemic relations are in turn both instrumentally and finally valuable: they enable the kind of coordination and knowledge acquisition underpinning much of what we tend to associate with a flourishing human life; and just as good interpersonal relations with others can be good for (...) their own sake, standing in good epistemic relations is good for its own sake. On my account, we have reason to comply with epistemic norms because it is a way of respecting the final value of something that also tends to be an instrumentally valuable thing: good epistemic relations. Situating the account within the recent social turn in debates about epistemic instrumentalism, I argue that the dual‐value aspect of good epistemic relations can explain important anti‐instrumentalist intuitions, in a well‐motivated way, within a broadly instrumentalist framework. (shrink)

Cumulative cultural knowledge [CCK], the knowledge we acquire via social learning and has been refined by previous generations, is of central importance to our species’ flourishing. Considering its importance, we should expect that our best epistemological theories can account for how this happens. Perhaps surprisingly, CCK and how we acquire it via cultural learning has only received little attention from social epistemologists. Here, I focus on how we should epistemically evaluate how agents acquire CCK. After sampling some reasons why extant (...) theories cannot account for CCK, I suggest that things aren’t as bleak as they might look. I explain how agents deserve epistemic credit for how CCK is transmitted in cultural learning by promoting a central need of their social group: The efficient and safe transmission of CCK. A good initial fit exists between this observation and Greco’s knowledge-economy framework. Ultimately, however, Greco’s account doesn’t straightforwardly account for CCK because of its strict focus on testimony. I point out two issues in the framework due to this focus. The resulting view advocates giving epistemic credit to agents when they act to promote their communities’ epistemic needs in the right way and highlights the various ways in which agents come to do this. (shrink)

The novice/expert problem is the problem of knowing which apparent expert to trust. Following Alvin Goldman’s lead, a number of philosophers have developed criteria that novices can use to distinguish more from less trustworthy experts. While the criteria the philosophers have identified are indeed useful in guiding expert choice, I argue, they can’t do the work that Goldman and his successors want from them: avoid a kind of testimonial scepticism. We can’t deploy them in the way needed to avoid such (...) scepticism, because it would take genuine expertise to do so. I argue that attempts to deploy them in this sort of deep way involve a kind of transgression akin to, and at least as unreliable as, epistemic trespassing. We should give up trying to solve the novice/expert problem and instead promote better epistemic trust. (shrink)

Over the years I’ve written many papers defending an idiosyncratic version of interest-relative epistemology. This book collects and updates the views I’ve expressed over those papers. -/- Interest-relative epistemologies all start in roughly the same way. A big part of what makes knowledge important is that it rationalises action. But for almost anything we purportedly know, there is some action that it wouldn’t rationalise. I know what I had for breakfast, but I wouldn’t take a bet at billion to one (...) odds about it. Knowledge has practical limits. The first idiosyncratic feature of my version of interest-relative epistemology is how those limits are identified. Other interest-relative philosophers typically say that the limits have to do with stakes; in high stakes situations knowledge goes away. That’s no part of my view. I think knowledge goes away in long odds situations. High stakes situations are almost always are long odds situations, for reasons to do with the declining marginal utility of money. But the converse isn’t true. On my view, knowledge often goes away in cases where it is trivial to check before action. This idea, that interests matter in long odds cases, and not just in high stakes cases, is the main constant in what I’ve written on interest-relativity over the years. -/- But there are three other respects in which the view I’m going to set out and defend in this book is very different from the view I set out in older papers. -/- I used to identify the practical limits on knowledge with cases where relying on the purported knowledge would get the wrong answer. I focused, that is, on the outputs of inquiry. Knowledge goes away if relying on it would lead one to make a mistake. I now think I was looking at the wrong end of inquiry. Knowledge goes away if the thinker starts conducting an inquiry where the purported knowledge is an inappropriate starting point, and inappropriate for the special reason that it might be false. Now one way we can tell that something is a bad starting point is that starting there will mean we end up at the wrong place. But it’s not the only way. Sometimes a bad starting point will lead to the right conclusion for the wrong reasons. As the Nyāya philosophers argued, rational inquiry starts with knowledge. If it would be irrational to start this inquiry with a particular belief, that belief isn’t knowledge. -/- Not all inquiries are practical inquiries, but many are. And practical inquiries are usually going to be at the center of attention in this book. But what is someone trying to figure out when they conduct a practical inquiry? I used to think that they were trying to figure out which option maximised expected utility, and to a first approximation identified knowledge with those things one could conditionalise on without changing the option that maximised expected utility. As noted in the previous paragraph, I no longer think that we can identify knowledge with what doesn’t change our verdicts. But more importantly, I no longer think that expected utility maximisation is as central to practical inquiry as I once did. There are some theoretical reasons from game theory that raise some doubts about expected utility maximisation. Weak dominance reasoning is part of our theory of rational choice, and can’t be modelled as expected utility maximisation. Perhaps some kinds of equilibrium seeking are parts of practical inquiry, and can’t be modelled as expected utility maximisation. But there are also very practical reasons to think that practical inquiry doesn’t aim at expected utility maximisation. When there are a lot of very similar options - think about selecting a can from a supermarket shelf - and it’s more trouble than it’s worth to figure out which of them maximises expected utility, it’s best to ignore the differences between them and just pick. As I’ll argue in Chapter 6, this makes a big difference to how interests and knowledge interact. -/- In the version of interest-relativity that I’m defending here, everything in epistemology is interest-relative. Knowledge, rational belief, and evidence are all interest-relative. But they are all interest-relative in slightly different ways. The main aim here is to defend the interest-relativity of knowledge. A common objection to interest-relative theories of knowledge is that they can’t be extended into theories of all the things we care about in epistemology. Here I try to meet that challenge. The way I do so is a little messy. It would be nice if there was some part of epistemology that’s interest-invariant, as I used to think, or if all the interest-relative notions were interest-relative in the same way, as other interest-relative epistemologists argue. For better or worse, that’s not the view I’m defending. Interests matter throughout epistemology, and we just have to go case by case to figure out how and why they matter. (shrink)

This paper will consider the extent to which patients' dependence on clinical expertise when making medical decisions threatens patient autonomy. I start by discussing whether or not dependence on experts isprima facietroubling for autonomy and suggest that it is not. I then go on to consider doctors' and other healthcare professionals' status as ‘medical experts’ of the relevant sort and highlight a number of ways in which their expertise is likely to be deficient. I then consider how this revised picture (...) of medical expertise should lead us to view the potential threat to patient autonomy that results from depending on such ‘experts’. I argue that, whether or not patients are aware of the limitations of medical expertise, in practice it is difficult to do other than defer to medical advice, and this presents a threat to patient autonomy that should be addressed. I conclude by suggesting some ways in which this threat to autonomy might be mitigated. (shrink)

Against philosophical orthodoxy, Hilary Kornblith has mounted an empirically grounded critique of the epistemic value of reflection. In this paper, I argue that this recent critique of the epistemic value of reflection fails even if we concede that (a) the empirical facts are as Kornblith says they are and (b) reliability is the only determinant of epistemic value. The critique fails because it seeks to undermine the reliability of reflection in general but targets only one of its variants, namely individual (...) reflection, while neglecting social reflection. This critique comprises two arguments which have a common structure: they both impose a requirement on the reliability of reflection, but deny, on empirical grounds, that the requirement is met. One argument imposes an introspection requirement, which I reject as superfluous. I show how reflection can proceed without introspection. The other argument imposes an efficacy requirement. This requirement concerns whether reflection is causally efficacious i.e., whether it leads us to change our minds for the better. I accept this as a genuine requirement. Even if we concede that individual reflection fails to meet this requirement, I argue that we have not been given sufficient evidence to believe that social reflection is bound to fail this requirement. Furthermore, my analysis of the conditions under which social reflection works best provides us with prima facie grounds for optimism regarding the reliability of social reflection. Ultimately, then, these arguments fail to undermine the epistemic value of reflection in general. (shrink)

This article is an exercise in the virtue epistemology of the internet, an area of applied virtue epistemology that investigates how online environments impact the development of intellectual virtues, and how intellectual virtues manifest within online environments. I examine online echo chambers and epistemic bubbles (Nguyen 2020, Episteme 17(2), 141–61), exploring the conceptual relationship between these online environments and the virtue of open-mindedness (Battaly 2018b, Episteme 15(3), 261–82). The article answers two key individual-level, virtue epistemic questions: (Q1) How does immersion (...) in online echo chambers and epistemic bubbles affect the cultivation and preservation of open-mindedness, and (Q2) Is it always intellectually virtuous to exhibit open-mindedness in the context of online echo chambers and epistemic bubbles? In response to Q1, I contend that both online echo chambers and online epistemic bubbles threaten to undermine the cultivation and preservation of open-mindedness, albeit via different mechanisms and to different degrees. In response to Q2, I affirm that both a deficiency and an excess of open-mindedness can be virtuous in these online environments, depending on the epistemic orientation of the digital user. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of who should be trusted as an expert and when, particularly in the context of public deliberation. Trust in experts is crucial in making decisions about public policies that involve complex information beyond the expertise of most people. However, fruitful deliberation also requires being able to resist misinformation campaigns, no matter how widespread these might be; being able, in general, to evaluate the evidence at our disposal and form our own opinions. The purpose of this (...) paper is to reflect on this apparent tension between epistemic deference and epistemic independence. The paper has two goals. First, it aims at providing a more nuanced understanding of the question of who should be trusted as an expert by examining cases in which seemingly factual claims are made in public settings by experts. Second, it emphasizes the need to pay attention to the conditions under which we actually trust each other. We suggest that fostering trust in science may be better approached by modifying the conditions under which scientific dialogue takes place, rather than trying to convince the public to trust experts, or blaming them for not doing so. (shrink)

(English:) The article introduces conspiracy beliefs and considers the most relevant literature in the field. The main purpose of the article is phenomenological: it proposes to understand conspiracy beliefs within the broader genre of what I call general conceptual beliefs (or simply, general beliefs), whose central features are big issues, logical-conceptual fallacies, pseudorationality, bad faith, and monological bias. I claim that general beliefs are functional to a motivationally biased and inherently dishonest communication (the same one that conspiracy narratives share with (...) political extremism, religious fundamenta-lism and other eccentric belief systems), which is essentially conceived for practical and self-representational purposes (not for knowledge). The article argues against the mere stigmatization of this phenomenon and rather seeks to understand it by looking at a broader and murkier region of human experience, for which we are all responsible in some way. -/- (Castellano:) El artículo introduce al análisis de las creencias conspirativas y considera la literatura más relevante sobre el tema. El objetivo del escrito es fenomenológico: entender las creencias conspirativas colocándolas en un género más amplio, las creencias conceptuales generales (o, simple-mente, creencias generales), cuyas carac-terísticas esenciales son: grandes temas, falacias lógico-conceptuales, pseudoracionalidad, mala fe y tendencia monológi-ca. Las creencias generales son funcionales a una comunicación sesgada y tendencialmente deshonesta, la misma que las his-torias conspirativas comparten con ex-tremismos políticos, fundamentalismos religiosos y otros sistemas de creencias excéntricos, cuya finalidad es eminentemente práctica y autorepresentativa (no teorética). El artículo se opone a la mera estigmatización del fenómeno y trata más bien de comprenderlo, observando una región más amplia y turbia de la experiencia humana, de la que todos somos responsables de alguna manera. (shrink)

According to an influential view, asserting a proposition involves undertaking some “commitment” to the truth of that proposition. But accounts of what it is for someone to be committed to the truth of a proposition are often vague or imprecise, and are rarely put to work to define assertion. This article aims to fill this gap. It offers a precise characterisation of assertoric commitment, and applies it to define assertion. On the proposed view, acquiring commitment is not sufficient for asserting: (...) To assert, commitment must be acquired by explicitly presenting a proposition as true. (shrink)

The theory of epistemic vigilance posits that -- to quote the eponymous paper that introduced the theory -- “humans have a suite of cognitive mechanisms for epistemic vigilance, targeted at the risk of being misinformed by others." Despite the widespread acceptance of the theory of epistemic vigilance, however, I argue that the theory is a poor fit with the evidence: while there is good reason to accept that people ARE vigilant, there is also good reason to believe that their vigilance (...) is NOT epistemic. Rather, the evidence actually supports an alternative theory, one that I dub the theory of "Machiavellian vigilance": humans have a suite of cognitive mechanisms for Machiavellian vigilance, targeted at tracking others' relative social status and maintaining or enhancing one's own status. The evidence against epistemic vigilance stems from three sources: (a) data demonstrating that people are terrible at detecting honesty or competence, (b) data demonstrating that our vigilance is phylogenetically prior to the development of homo sapiens, and therefore was not designed to be sensitive to linguistic communication, and (c) data demonstrating that people's sources of information are distributed, and not detectable through individual vigilance. The evidence in favor of Machiavellian vigilance is the mirror image of the evidence against epistemic vigilance: (a) data demonstrating that people are very accurate at detecting status, (b) data demonstrating that social species, including bonobos and chimps, track the social status of their conspecifics, and (c) data demonstrating that people can quickly track status even in new social groups. (shrink)

The nature of linguistic understanding is a much-debated topic. Among the issues that have been discussed, two questions have recently received a lot of attention: (Q1) ‘Are states of understanding direct (i.e. represent solely what is said) or indirect (i.e. represent what is said as being said/asserted)?’ and (Q2) ‘What kind of mental attitude is linguistic understanding (e.g. knowledge, belief, seeming)?’ This paper argues that, contrary to what is commonly assumed, there is no straightforward answer to either of these questions. (...) This is because linguistic understanding cannot be identified with a single mental attitude towards a particular representation. Instead, we should characterize states of linguistic understanding as involving complex representational structures generated by a dual-stream process. The first stream operates on direct representations of what is said, while the second operates on representations of what is said as being said/asserted by a given source. Both these streams feed a situation model, i.e. a complex representation of a state of affairs described by a given piece of discourse. (shrink)

Verbal communication leaves room for interpretative disputes. Speakers can argue about what they mean by their words and negotiate their commitments in conversation. This article examines the deniability of implicitly communicated contents and addresses the question of what makes an act of denial seem more or less plausible to the addressee. I argue that denials bring about a process of reconstruction of the context of interpretation of the speaker's utterance and I illustrate how considerations of cognitive utility are the key (...) determinant for distinguishing plausible from merely possible deniability. (shrink)

To secure cooperative opportunities people align their beliefs with the normative expectations of their social environment. These expectations are continuously managed by interactive reasoning, a process that results in dynamical pools of reasons. When people are more concerned about their social standing and reputation than truth, pools of reasons give rise to collective irrationalities. They determine what people should believe if they want to be known as a reliable group member. This account has implications for our understanding of human irrationality (...) and how to deal with it. (shrink)

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" (...) well-being, rather than mere pleasure. This perspective is not particularly original, as it was advocated quite clearly by Aristotle. However, we must ask: what guarantees that virtue will lead to well-being? Can we really ignore the common-sense doubt that virtue (and moral life), as Kant points out, may not be rewarded with any form of well-being or "happiness" in the broadest sense during our earthly existence? How might we address this doubt? If questions about the relationship between happiness and virtue have been asked since ancient times, why don't we have definitive answers yet? Perhaps there is something wrong with the questions themselves, as is often the case in philosophy. Views on this relationship have influenced the modification of theories that philosophers have put forth in order to provide satisfactory answers. One such theory is the renewed and modernized ethics of virtue, which places the greatest emphasis on building an individual's moral character, assuming that Aristotelian character virtues such as courage, honesty, generosity, prudence, self-control, and compassion will enable us to lead a happy and fulfilling life. "Virtues" refer to a wide range of "excellences" or activities that individuals can use to perfect themselves. For example, an ordinary person might accept that courage can make their life more fulfilling, but it's important to recognize that virtues cannot be acquired overnight. Furthermore, many people believe that virtues are innate qualities that one either possesses or lacks. In contrast, ethics of virtue provides guidance and instructions for developing virtues over extended periods of time, as well as for continuously "practicing" the development of moral characteristics that will make us better individuals. The central and most significant concept in ethics of virtue is the golden mean, which can be interpreted in various ways. Essentially, ethics of virtue offers a path to a life filled with pleasure, harmony, and virtuous action. However, this collection of essays, Virtues and Vices: Between Ethics and Epistemology, is not exclusively concerned with virtues or ethics. Knowledge, as well as the processes of belief formation and justification of those beliefs, are also essential to ethics of virtue. Going back to the systematic Greek philosopher and his teacher, we can emphasize that virtues and knowledge are inseparable. Without the epistemology of virtues, even a thematic collection like this one would be incomplete. The Epistemology of Virtue is a relatively new branch of philosophy that has emerged as a response to questions about the value-neutrality of science. For a long time, the separation of values and scientific inquiry has been viewed as the correct methodological approach. However, it is clear that every scientist is also a human being with their own virtues and flaws. It is naive to assume that a scientist can leave their values and moral qualities outside the laboratory and treat their colleagues in the team differently than they would treat other people in their everyday life. Taking this into account, we can notice that Epistemology of Virtue is a theory that examines the influence of virtues on the processes of acquiring knowledge. Epistemic virtues refer to qualities that enable individuals to acquire knowledge and make reliable judgments. These virtues include traits such as openness to diverse testimonies and arguments, critical thinking, a tendency to question one's own assumptions, and the ability to identify errors in one's own thought processes. Just like in virtue ethics, the Epistemology of Virtue raises the question of how we can cultivate the necessary virtues and how these virtues can have a positive impact on both individuals and society. The field also explores how epistemic virtues can be put into practice, such as in educational settings, scientific research, and various social activities. Finally, we turn to a topic that is often overlooked in philosophy - human flaws. While ethics typically views flaws as the opposite of virtues, requiring correction both individually and socially, the Epistemology of Virtue questions what happens when flaws occur in knowledge-related qualities. Do these flaws also need to be eliminated, or are they an inherent part of the process of acquiring knowledge and making judgments? At first glance, prejudices, stereotypes, dogmatism, conformism, closed-mindedness towards arguments and evidence, as well as uncritical acceptance of authority, can all hinder our ability to acquire knowledge. Epistemologists view these qualities as vices, rather than flaws like ethicists do. The Epistemology of Vices is the newest of the three branches of philosophy covered in this thematic collection, and it examines the ways in which false and untrue beliefs develop and persist in society. This area of study seeks to answer questions about how people form delusions and whether it is possible to overcome them. On the other hand, the Epistemology of Virtue is like the "older brother" that supervises these vices. It contributes to the investigation and overcoming of vices by developing virtues that enable individuals to more accurately assess the truthfulness of their beliefs. However, even though vices can have a destructive impact on knowledge acquisition, the question remains: are vices always detrimental in every context? Conversely, can virtues be detrimental? For example, does a virtue like solidarity sometimes hinder the efficient formation of true beliefs in time-sensitive situations such as finding a vaccine to combat a virus pandemic? Can vices be useful? Can stubbornness and uncooperativeness sometimes help a research team by allowing two sides to reach the same goal through different paths? Within this collection, some of these questions will receive answers, some of which may confirm existing impressions, while others may surprise readers. The thematic collection, Virtues and Vices: Between Ethics and Epistemology, consists of four interesting chapters and 21 papers that cover the selected topic through the prism of philosophical disciplines such as ethics, epistemology, the history of philosophy, philosophy of mind, political philosophy, and philosophy of science. In this introduction, we will not discuss the contents of the articles so as not to disrupt the intended integral approach to reading the collection. A significant feature of this collection is the continuity that extends from one paper to another, from topic to topic, and from problem to problem. Lastly, we would like to express our gratitude to the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Belgrade for their support in realizing this collection, as well as to our colleagues from the Department and Institute of Philosophy who have made this collection a relevant and significant achievement with their contributions. We are also thankful to the reviewers of the collection as a whole, as well as to the referees of individual articles, who have provided us with detailed comments and remarks that have made this collection clearer and more comprehensive. We owe a special thanks to our colleagues from Zagreb, Rijeka, and Maribor, whose exceptional papers have contributed to making this collection an unabashed international contribution to debates about the ethics and epistemology of virtues and vices. (shrink)

Overconfidence is typically damaging to one’s reputation as a trustworthy source of information. Previous research shows that the reputational cost associated with conveying a piece of false information is higher for confident than unconfident speakers. When judging speaker trustworthiness, individuals do not exclusively rely on past accuracy but consider the extent to which speakers expressed a degree of confidence that matched the accuracy of their claims (their “confidence-accuracy calibration”). The present study experimentally examines the interplay between confidence, accuracy and a (...) third factor, namely evidence, in the assessment of speaker trustworthiness. Experiment 1 probes the hypothesis that overconfidence does not backfire when a confident but inaccurate claim is justified: the trustworthiness of a confident speaker who turns out to be wrong is restored if the confidence expressed is based on strong evidence (good confidence-evidence calibration). Experiment 2 investigates the hypothesis that confidence can backfire if a confident and accurate claim is not justified: the trustworthiness of a confident speaker who turns out to be right is damaged if the confidence expressed is based on weak evidence (bad confidence-evidence calibration). Our results support both hypotheses and thus suggest that “confidence-evidence calibration” plays a crucial role in the assessment of speaker trustworthiness. (shrink)

This paper replies to the contributors to a symposium on the book Bad Beliefs. It groups the criticisms and concerns of the contributors under the headings “Gaps and Holes”, “Rationality”, “Epistemic Virtue”, “Agency and Control” and “Nudges”. It defends the view that bad belief formation and maintenance is very importantly rational, though it also acknowledges gaps, limitations and unanswered questions.

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 (...) truth. Almost everyone’s beliefs are explained by rationally warranted trust in some sources rather than others. This allows us to explain why people have false beliefs. (shrink)

In relevance-theoretic pragmatics thelower-levelorfirst-order explicatureis a propositional form resulting from a series of inferential developments of the logical form. It amounts to the message the speaker communicates explicitly. Thehigher-levelorsecond-order explicatureis a description of the speech act that the speaker performs, her affective attitude towards what she says or her epistemic stance to the communicated information. Information about the speaker’s affective attitude or epistemic stance need not solely be represented in the latter, though. It could be included as beliefs in the (...) mental files of pragmatically adjusted conceptual representations featuring in lower-level explicatures. Those beliefs would originate as lexical pragmatic processes operate and their representation would be triggered by elements like evaluative morphemes, expressive expletives, insulting terms and evidential participles. Although they may be true or false in their own right, such beliefs would not affect the truth-conditional content of the expressed proposition. (shrink)

Our ordinary assertions are often imprecise, insofar as the way we represent things as being only approximates how things are in the actual world. The phenomenon of assertoric imprecision raises a challenge to standard accounts of both the norm of assertion and the connection between semantics and the objects of assertion. After clarifying these problems in detail, I develop a framework for resolving them. Specifically, I argue that the phenomenon of assertoric imprecision motivates a rejection of the widely held belief (...) that a semantic theory for a language associates a single semantic value with each of the simple and complex expressions of that language, relative to the contexts in which they occur. Instead, I propose that we adopt a framework I call semantic pluralism. (shrink)

The common consent argument claims that widespread belief in God is good evidence for God’s existence. Though taken seriously throughout the history of philosophy, the argument died in the 1800s. Our philosophy of religion textbooks ignore it. In this paper, we hope to resuscitate it drawing upon the demographics of religious belief, the cognitive science of religion, and contemporary epistemology. We develop and defend two common consent arguments, which maintain that widespread belief in a High God is good evidence for (...) theism over metaphysical naturalism. (shrink)

I present a detailed ethnographic study of magic and divination of the Nuosu people in southwest China and offer a cognitive account of the surprising prevalence of these objectively ineffective practices in a society that has ample access to modern technology and mainstream Han culture. I argue that in the belief system of the Nuosu, ghosts, divination, and magical healing rituals form a closely interconnected web that gives sense and meaning to otherwise puzzling practices, and such a belief system is (...) importantly supported and reinforced by individual’s everyday experiences. Contemporary Nuosu people overwhelmingly treat these practices as instruments for achieving specific ends and often entertain considerable uncertainty regarding their efficacy, which may be overestimated for a number of reasons, including the following: (1) the intuitive plausibility of divination for ghost identification and exorcist rituals is enhanced by the belief in the existence of ghosts as a result of abductive reasoning, (2) negative instances (divinatory or healing ritual failures) are underreported, and (3) people’s misperception of the probability of uncertain events’ occurrence often prevents them from realizing that the efficacies of magical/divinatory practices do not outperform chance. I conclude with some comments on the generalizability of the psychological and social mechanisms discussed. (shrink)

This paper argues for the existence of a certain type of defeater for one’s belief that P—the presence of social incentives not to share evidence against P. Such pressure makes it relatively likely that there is unpossessed evidence that would provide defeaters for P because it makes it likely that the evidence we have is a lopsided subset. This offers, I suggest, a rational reconstruction of a core strand of argument in Mill’s On Liberty. A consequence of the argument is (...) that on morally and politically laden issues in particular, a high degree of doxastic openness might be appropriate. (shrink)

It is often suggested that we are equipped with a set of cognitive tools that help us to filter out unreliable testimony. But are these tools effective? I answer this question in two steps. Firstly, I argue that they are not real-time effective. The process of filtering, which takes place simultaneously with or right after language comprehension, does not prevent a particular hearer on a particular occasion from forming beliefs based on false testimony. Secondly, I argue that they are long-term (...) effective. Some hearers sometimes detect false testimony, which increases speakers’ incentives for honesty and stabilizes the practice of human communication in which deception is risky and costly. In short, filtering prevents us from forming a large number of beliefs based on false testimony, not by turning each of us into a high-functioning polygraph but by turning the social environment of human communication into one in which such polygraphs are not required. Finally, I argue that these considerations support strong anti-reductionism about testimonial entitlement. (shrink)

Expert knowledge regularly informs personal and civic-decision making. To decide which experts to trust, lay publics —including policymakers and experts from other domains—use different epistemic and non-epistemic cues. Epistemic cues such as honesty, like when experts are forthcoming about conflicts of interest, are a popular way of understanding how people evaluate and decide which experts to trust. However, many other epistemic cues, like the evidence supporting information from experts, are inaccessible to lay publics. Therefore, lay publics simultaneously use second-order social (...) cues in their environment to inform decisions to trust. These second-order social cues, or ‘social indicators of trust’, prevent lay publics from having to trust blindly. Social indicators of trust therefore inform lay publics’ epistemic vigilance, or constant low level-monitoring of testimony from experts. This special issue examines the nature, acquisition and application of social indicators of trust for scientific experts and institutions. It also raises questions about the types of trust asked of lay publics and challenges traditional normative assumptions about the relationship between science and lay publics through study of attitudes, values, and experiences. The issue descriptively re-examines the structure of institutions, their role and methods for ferrying information, as well as how social indicators operate in times of crisis. In this collection of works, we bridge history, science, philosophy of science, science and technology studies, science communication and social epistemology, to broaden the discourse on trust in experts and more accurately reflect the imperfect yet indispensable endeavour that trusting is. (shrink)

Publics trust experts for personal and pro-social reasons. Scientists are among the experts publics trust most, and so, epistemic trust is routinely afforded to them. The call for epistemic trust to be more socially situated in order to account for the impact of science on society and public welfare is at the forefront of enhanced epistemic trust. I argue that the value-free ideal for science challenges establishing enhanced epistemic trust by preventing the inclusion of non-epistemic values throughout the evaluation of (...) evidence and communication of these values. By selectively silencing non-epistemic values, the ideal cannot take into account publics’ social and moral responses to inductive risk, which are instrumental for defining and determining public welfare. Furthermore, by emphasising epistemic values almost exclusively in science education and communication, the value-free ideal is presented to publics in such a way that it becomes a social indicator of trust. I show this through examination of the importance of values in decisions to trust, and conclude that values (and restrictions on them) can be used by lay publics to help decide which experts to trust. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the analysis of conspiracy beliefs and conspiracy theories by taking into consideration some of the major contributions about the topic presently provided by several disciplines. A definition is given that helps illustrate the most prominent features of these beliefs, namely monological bias, logical and conceptual fallacies, dispositional influence and pseudorationality. Other important psychological preconditions are also provided (such as, among others, credulity, hypersensitive agency detection devices and proneness to self-deception), but, as the paper argues, they are (...) features shared to a greater or lesser extent with other belief systems, like radical political ideologies and religious fundamentalisms. As a result, it is suggested that a more proper understanding of the phenomenon is attainable by approaches combining psychological data with the analysis of groups and sociopolitical dynamics. Exceptional contingencies and shifts in power distribution among group/social actors seem to be the most influential factors that explain formation, spread and salience of this kind of beliefs. (shrink)

This article is about truth and relevance. It first discusses the concept of truth in formal semantics and pragmatics, mainly the Gricean, neo-Gricean and post-Gricean approaches to meaning. What is particularly crucial is the relationship between pragmatic meaning and truth, since, from a Gricean perspective, meaning is defined as non-truth-conditional, which in turn raises the question of how truth can be a pragmatic issue. A second issue is the relationship between truth and relevance, as developed in relevance theory. A third (...) key point is how truth matters as regards the common ground. In order to illustrate how truth is connected to the common ground, bullshit, post-truth, fake news and lies are discussed, which raise the issue of how truth can be defeated in verbal communication, and mainly how false assumptions can be entertained as true. (shrink)

This article is about truth and relevance. It first discusses the concept of truth in formal semantics and pragmatics, mainly the Gricean, neo-Gricean and post-Gricean approaches to meaning. What is particularly crucial is the relationship between pragmatic meaning and truth, since, from a Gricean perspective, meaning is defined as non-truth-conditional, which in turn raises the question of how truth can be a pragmatic issue. A second issue is the relationship between truth and relevance, as developed in relevance theory. A third (...) key point is how truth matters as regards the common ground. In order to illustrate how truth is connected to the common ground,bullshit, post-truth, fake newsandliesare discussed, which raise the issue of how truth can be defeated in verbal communication, and mainly how false assumptions can be entertained as true. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 3, Page 206-216, July 2022. This paper develops the claim that epistemic feelings are affective experiences. To establish some diagnostic criteria, characteristic features of affective experiences are outlined: valence and arousal. Then, in order to pave the way for showing that epistemic feelings have said features, an initial challenge coming from introspection is addressed. Next, the paper turns to empirical findings showing that we can observe physiological and behavioural proxies for valence and arousal in epistemic (...) tasks that typically rely on epistemic feelings. Finally, it is argued that the affective properties do not only correlate with epistemic feelings but that we, in fact, capitalise on these affective properties to perform the epistemic tasks. In other words: the affective properties in question constitute epistemic feelings. (shrink)

The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the considerable challenge of sourcing expertise and determining which experts to trust. Dissonant information fostered controversy in public discourse and encouraged an appeal to a wide range of social indicators of trustworthiness in order to decide whom to trust. We analyze public discourse on expertise by examining how social indicators inform the reputation of Dr. Didier Raoult, the French microbiologist who rose to international prominence as an early advocate for using hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19. To (...) comprehend how these indicators came to inform his reputation, we outline Dr. Raoult's rise to fame based on discourse about hydroxychloroquine. We then discuss why we trust in experts like scientist-practitioners. This is followed by an examination of how social indicators of trust like status, epistemic authority, influence and values have informed Dr. Raoult's reputation. We conclude with recommendations for how to improve the selection and evaluation social indicators of trust and reputations. Our aim here, instead of making a claim about the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine or Dr. Raoult's reputation per se, is to outline through this case study how social indicators of trust inform reputation and the challenge they present to evaluating expertise. (shrink)

The Cognitive Reflection Test is a widely used measure of the degree to which individuals override an intuitive response and engage in reflection. For both theoretical and practical reasons, it is widely taken to assess an important component of rational thought. In this paper, I will argue that while doing well on the CRT requires valuable cognitive capacities and dispositions, doing badly does not always indicate a lack of such capacities and dispositions. The CRT, I argue, offers respondents implicit (but (...) misleading) testimony: some of those who do badly do so due to a stronger disposition to defer to testimony. Since deference is not irrational, those who do badly need not be irrational, not even in part. (shrink)

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 (...) are not to blame, because belief calibration in an echo chamber is a rational process; moreover, the epistemically constitutive properties of echo chambers are not optional for epistemically social animals like us. There is no special problem of echo chambers; rather, there is a problem of misleading evidence (especially higher-order evidence). Accordingly, we ought to respond to misinformation about COVID neither by attempting to dismantle echo chambers nor by attempting to make people more rational, but rather by attempting to supplant unreliable higher-order evidence with better evidence. (shrink)

Much of what we know we know through testimony, and knowing on the basis of testimony requires some degree of trust in speakers. Trust is therefore very valuable. But in trusting, we expose ourselves to risks of harm and betrayal. It is therefore important to trust well. In this paper, I discuss two recent cases of the betrayal of trust in (broadly) academic contexts: one involving hoax submissions to journals, the other faking an identity on social media. I consider whether (...) these betrayals suggest that we ought to be less trusting in contexts like these. I argue that we should not: the acquisition of knowledge is dependent on trust, and we cannot intentionally reduce the extent to which we trust in these kinds of contexts without risking destroying it utterly. Instead, we must trust in our epistemic networks and the way they work to filter out deception. (shrink)

Can people efficiently navigate the modern communication environment, and if yes, how? We hypothesize that in addition to psychological capacities of epistemic vigilance, which evaluate the epistemic value of communicated information, some social institutions have evolved for the same function. Certain newspapers for instance, implement processes, distributed among several experts and tools, whose function is to curate information. We analyze how information curation is done at the institutional level and what challenges it meets. We also investigate what factors favor the (...) cultural evolution of institutions of epistemic vigilance: these include people’s preference for accurate and reliable information and their ability to assess communicated information in view of the source’s epistemic authority; but also contingent historical factors that make it worth—or not—to contribute to the maintenance of institutions of epistemic vigilance. We conclude the paper by considering the challenges and vulnerabilities of these institutions in the Digital Age. (shrink)

I argue that introspection recruits the same mental mechanism as that which is required for the production of ordinary speech acts. In introspection, in effect, we intentionally tell ourselves that we are in some mental state, aiming thereby to produce belief about that state in ourselves. On one popular view of speech acts, however, this is precisely what speakers do when speaking to others. On this basis, I argue that every bias discovered by social epistemology applies to introspection and other (...) forms of self-directed representation. If so, it becomes unclear in what sense social epistemology is social. (shrink)

Human behavior and thought often exhibit a familiar pattern of within group similarity and between group difference. Many of these patterns are attributed to cultural differences. For much of the history of its investigation into behavior and thought, however, cognitive science has been disproportionately focused on uncovering and explaining the more universal features of human minds—or the universal features of minds in general. -/- This entry charts out the ways in which this has changed over recent decades. It sketches the (...) motivation behind the cultural turn in cognitive science, and situates some of its central findings with respect to the questions that animate it and the debates that it has inspired. Woven throughout the entry are examples of how the cognitive science of culture, and especially its elevated concern with different forms of diversity and variation, continues to influence and be influenced by philosophers. -/- One cluster of philosophical work falls within the traditional subject matter of philosophy of science, in this case of the cognitive and social sciences. Philosophers have analyzed and assessed the methods and evidence central to the scientific study of cognition and culture, and have offered conceptual scrutiny, clarification, and synthesis. Research in a second vein sees philosophers themselves contributing more directly to cognitive scientific projects, (co)constructing theories, helping build computational models, even gathering empirical data. A third kind of work is naturalistic philosophy or philosophy of nature, wherein philosophers seek to use results from the cognitive science of culture to inform or transform debates over long-standing philosophical questions, including questions about the nature of philosophy and philosophical methodology itself. (shrink)

When public opinion gets polarized, the population’s beliefs can experience two different changes: they can become more extreme in their contents or they can be held with greater confidence. These two possibilities point to two different understandings of the rupture that characterizes political polarization: extremism and radicalism. In this article, I show that from the close examination of the best available evidence regarding how we get polarized, it follows that the pernicious type of political polarization has more to do with (...) radicalism than with extremism. Reinforcing the confidence in the core beliefs of the group we identify with makes our beliefs immune to the reasons coming from the other political side. Finally, I also suggest that the rise of political polarization is not necessarily the result of an irrational process. (shrink)

Faced with current urgent calls for more trust in experts, especially in high impact and politically sensitive domains, such as climate science and COVID-19, the complex and problematic nature of public trust in experts and the need for a more critical approach to the topic are easy to overlook. Scepticism – at least in its Humean mitigated form that encourages independent, questioning attitudes – can prove valuable to democratic governance, but stands in opposition to the cognitive dependency entailed by epistemic (...) trust. In this paper, we investigate the tension between the value of mitigated scepticism – understood as the exercise of reason-based doubt in a particular domain – and the need for trust in experts. We offer four arguments in favour of mitigated scepticism: the argument from loss of intellectual autonomy; the argument from democratic deficit; the argument from the normative failures of science; and the argument from past and current injustices. These arguments highlight the tension between the requirements for trust and justified scepticism about the role of experts. One solution, which we reject, is the idea that reliance, rather than trust, is sufficient for the purposes of accommodating experts in policy matters. The solution we endorse is to create a ‘climate of trust’, where questioning experts and expertise is welcomed, but the epistemic trust necessary for action upon information which the public cannot obtain first-hand is enabled and encouraged through structural, institutional, and justice-based measures. (shrink)

YouTube has been implicated in the transformation of users into extremists and conspiracy theorists. The alleged mechanism for this radicalizing process is YouTube’s recommender system, which is optimized to amplify and promote clips that users are likely to watch through to the end. YouTube optimizes for watch-through for economic reasons: people who watch a video through to the end are likely to then watch the next recommended video as well, which means that more advertisements can be served to them. This (...) is a seemingly innocuous design choice, but it has a troubling side-effect. Critics of YouTube have alleged that the recommender system tends to recommend extremist content and conspiracy theories, as such videos are especially likely to capture and keep users’ attention. To date, the problem of radicalization via the YouTube recommender system has been a matter of speculation. The current study represents the first systematic, pre-registered attempt to establish whether and to what extent the recommender system tends to promote such content. We begin by contextualizing our study in the framework of technological seduction. Next, we explain our methodology. After that, we present our results, which are consistent with the radicalization hypothesis. Finally, we discuss our findings, as well as directions for future research and recommendations for users, industry, and policy-makers. (shrink)

It has become almost a cliché to say that we live in a post-truth world; that people of all trades speak with an indifference to truth. Speaking with an indifference to how things really are is famously regarded by Harry Frankfurt as the essence of bullshit. This paper aims to contribute to the philosophical and theoretical pragmatics discussion of bullshit. The aim of the paper is to offer a new theoretical analysis of what bullshit is, one that is more encompassing (...) than Frankfurt’s original characterization. I part ways with Frankfurt in two points. Firstly, I propose that we should not analyze bullshit in intentional terms (i.e. as indifference). Secondly, I propose that we should not analyze it in relation to truth. Roughly put, I propose that bullshit is best characterized as speaking with carelessness toward the evidence for one’s conversational contribution. I bring forward, in the third section, a battery of examples that motivate this characterization. Furthermore, I argue that we can analyze speaking with carelessness toward the evidence in Gricean terms as a violation of the second Quality maxim. I argue that the Quality supermaxim, together with its subordinate maxims, demand that the speaker is truthful (contributes only what she believes to be true) and reliable (has adequate evidence for her contribution). The bullshitter’s main fault lies in being an unreliable interlocutor. I further argue that we should interpret what counts as adequate evidence, as stipulated by the second Quality Maxim, in contextualist terms: the subject matter and implicit epistemic standards determine how much evidence one needs in order to have adequate evidence. I contrast this proposed reading with a subjectivist interpretation of what counts as having adequate evidence and show that they give different predictions. Finally, working with a classic distinction, I argue that we should not understand bullshit as a form of deception but rather as a form of misleading speech. (shrink)

Riassunto: Nell’età dello sviluppo, i bambini iniziano a comprendere e a produrre le prime espressioni ironiche, in particolare nel contesto familiare. Sebbene sia comprensione sia produzione di ironia richiedano abilità linguistiche, pragmatiche, di Teoria della Mente e di tipo socio-comunicativo, non è ancora chiaro come tali abilità entrino in gioco nel caso della produzione del sarcasmo. Questo contributo ripercorre gli studi principali sulla comprensione vs. produzione dell’ironia in età evolutiva, mettendo in evidenza il ruolo delle capacità affettive e argomentative necessarie (...) alla produzione dell’ironia e del sarcasmo. In riferimento a studi recenti, si ipotizza che le capacità di Mind-mindedness genitoriale possano influenzare lo sviluppo delle capacità di lettura della mente e, più in particolare, gli aspetti affettivi e relazionali nel processo di comprensione dell’ironia. Si ipotizza altresì che la produzione dell’ironia, e in particolare del sarcasmo, sia modulata non solo dalle capacità affettive ma anche da quelle argomentative in via di sviluppo. Parole chiave: Produzione del sarcasmo; Capacità affettive; Capacità argomentative; Comprensione; Teoria della mente Comprehension vs. Production of Sarcasm: The role of the affective and argumentative capacities in childhood: Children start comprehending and producing their first ironic expressions quite early especially in the family environment. The comprehension and the production of irony require linguistic, pragmatic, social and communicative capacities as well as abilities related to the Theory of Mind. However, it is not yet clear how these abilities are involved in the production of sarcasm. In this manuscript we review the main studies on the production of irony in childhood in order to identify the affective and argumentative capacities that are needed for the production of irony and sarcasm and the specific role they play in that. On the basis of these studies, we hypothesize that parental mind-mindedness promote children’s development of mindreading capacities and, more specifically, of those affective and relational aspects needed for the comprehension of irony. Moreover, we also argue that the production of irony and even more of sarcasm depends not only on the affective capacities but also on the developing argumentative capacities of the children. Keywords: Production of Sarcasm; Affective Capacities; Argumentative Capacities; Comprehension, Theory of Mind. (shrink)

What justifies our beliefs about what other people say? According to epistemic inferentialism​, the justification of comprehension-based beliefs depends on the justification of other beliefs, e.g., beliefs about what words the speaker uttered or even what sounds they produced. According to epistemic non-inferentialism, the justification of comprehension-based beliefs ​does not depend on the justification of other beliefs. This paper offers a new defense of epistemic non-inferentialism. First, I discuss three counterexamples to epistemic non-inferentialism provided recently by Brendan Balcerak Jackson. I (...) argue that only one of Balcerak Jackson’s counterexamples is effective, and that it is effective against only one version of epistemic non-inferentialism, viz. language comprehension dogmatism. Second, I propose an alternative version of epistemic non-inferentialism, viz. comprehension-process reliabilism, which is immune to these counterexamples. I conclude that we should follow Balcerak Jackson in his rejection of language comprehension dogmatism but not all the way to the endorsement of epistemic inferentialism. Comprehension-process reliabilism is superior to both these alternatives. (shrink)

In this paper, I describe some strategies for teaching an introductory philosophy of science course to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) students, with reference to my own experience teaching a philosophy of science course in the Fall of 2020. The most important strategy that I advocate is what I call the “Second Philosophy” approach, according to which instructors ought to emphasize that the problems that concern philosophers of science are not manufactured and imposed by philosophers from the outside, but (...) rather are ones that arise internally, during the practice of science itself. To justify this approach, I appeal to considerations from both educational research and the epistemology of testimony. In addition, I defend some distinctive learning goals that philosophy of science instructors ought to adopt when teaching STEM students, which include rectifying empirically well-documented shortcomings in students’ conceptions of the “scientific method” and the “nature of science.” Although my primary focus will be on teaching philosophy of science to STEM students, much of what I propose can be applied to non-philosophy majors generally. Ultimately, as I argue, a successful philosophy of science course for non-philosophy majors must be one that advances a student’s science education. The strategies that I describe and defend here are aimed at precisely that end. (shrink)