Recent work on evaluative discourse and judgements of personal taste in particular has focused on active interpersonal disagreements. I explore the communicative import of judgements of taste: why we issue them, why we sometimes get involved in disputes about taste, and what acceptance or rejection of such judgements consists of. The view developed here – that the core use of such judgements lies in seeking to align our attitudes in view of a shared project – makes it plausible that the (...) use of a sentence of the form ‘a is F’ (where F is a predicate of taste) semantically expresses the simple, semantically articulated proposition that a is F, is subject to an unrelativized truth predicate and not enriched by personal standards or perspectives. Our model shows that personal standards or perspectives are, contrary to a widely shared assumption in the debate, not the entities or objects that require coordination. What is shared among interlocutors are projects that require the coordination of the participant’s strategic choices. The semantically articulated proposition functions as a focal point, proposed by the speaker, for coordinating their choices. (shrink)

One prominent argument for pragmatic encroachment (PE) is that PE is entailed by a combination of a principle that states that knowledge warrants proper practical reasoning, and judgments that it is more difficult to reason well when the stakes go up. I argue here that this argument is unsuccessful. One problem is that empirical tests concerning knowledge judgments in high-stakes situations only sometimes exhibit the result predicted by PE. I argue here that those judgments that appear to support PE are (...) better interpreted not as judgments that the epistemic demands for knowing increase as one’s practical situation becomes more demanding, but instead as judgments reflecting a different kind of normative epistemic evaluation, namely whether one is acting in an epistemically responsible way. The general idea is that when someone treats a proposition as a reason for acting we can evaluate them epistemically both in terms of whether they know that proposition, as well as in terms of whether they are acting on their knowledge in the right kind of way. My charge against the PE proponent, then, is that she is interpreting judgments that are indicative of whether we are adhering to certain normative epistemic requirements generally as being indicative of whether we have knowledge specifically. There are, however, normative epistemic requirements that make demands of us that are indicative of something other than our possession of knowledge. (shrink)

What makes beliefs thrive? In this paper, we model the dissemination of bona fide science versus pseudoscience, making use of Dan Sperber's epidemiological model of representations. Drawing on cognitive research on the roots of irrational beliefs and the institutional arrangement of science, we explain the dissemination of beliefs in terms of their salience to human cognition and their ability to adapt to specific cultural ecologies. By contrasting the cultural development of science and pseudoscience along a number of dimensions, we gain (...) a better understanding of their underlying epistemic differences. Pseudoscience can achieve widespread acceptance by tapping into evolved cognitive mechanisms, thus sacrificing intellectual integrity for intuitive appeal. Science, by contrast, defies those deeply held intuitions precisely because it is institutionally arranged to track objective patterns in the world, and the world does not care much about our intuitions. In light of these differences, we discuss the degree of openness or resilience to conceptual change (evidence and reason), and the divergent ways in which science and pseudoscience can achieve cultural “success”. (shrink)

Philosophers of science have given up on the quest for a silver bullet to put an end to all pseudoscience, as such a neat formal criterion to separate good science from its contenders has proven elusive. In the literature on critical thinking and in some philosophical quarters, however, this search for silver bullets lives on in the taxonomies of fallacies. The attractive idea is to have a handy list of abstract definitions or argumentation schemes, on the basis of which one (...) can identify bad or invalid types of reasoning, abstracting away from the specific content and dialectical context. Such shortcuts for debunking arguments are tempting, but alas, the promise is hardly if ever fulfilled. Different strands of research on the pragmatics of argumentation, probabilistic reasoning and ecological rationality have shown that almost every known type of fallacy is a close neighbor to sound inferences or acceptable moves in a debate. Nonetheless, the kernel idea of a fallacy as an erroneous type of argument is still retained by most authors. We outline a destructive dilemma we refer to as the Fallacy Fork: on the one hand, if fallacies are construed as demonstrably invalid form of reasoning, then they have very limited applicability in real life. On the other hand, if our definitions of fallacies are sophisticated enough to capture real-life complexities, they can no longer be held up as an effective tool for discriminating good and bad forms of reasoning. As we bring our schematic “fallacies” in touch with reality, we seem to lose grip on normative questions. Even approaches that do not rely on argumentation schemes to identify fallacies fail to escape the Fallacy Fork, and run up against their own version of it. (shrink)

This paper discusses the ecological case for epistemic innocence: does biased cognition have evolutionary benefits, and if so, does that exculpate human reasoners from irrationality? Proponents of ‘ecological rationality’ have challenged the bleak view of human reasoning emerging from research on biases and fallacies. If we approach the human mind as an adaptive toolbox, tailored to the structure of the environment, many alleged biases and fallacies turn out to be artefacts of narrow norms and artificial set-ups. However, we argue that (...) putative demonstrations of ecological rationality involve subtle locus shifts in attributions of rationality, conflating the adaptive rationale of heuristics with our own epistemic credentials. By contrast, other cases also involve an ecological reframing of human reason, but do not involve such problematic locus shifts. We discuss the difference between these cases, bringing clarity to the rationality debate. (shrink)

We reported a series of experiments carried out to confront the underlying intuitions of value-based argumentation frameworks (VAFs) with the intuitions of ordinary people. Our goal was twofold. On the one hand, we intended to test VAF as a descriptive theory of human argument evaluations. On the other, we aimed to gain new insights from empirical data that could serve to improve VAF as a normative model. The experiments showed that people’s acceptance of arguments deviates from VAF’s semantics and is (...) rather correlated with the importance given to the promoted values, independently of the perceptions of argument interactions through attacks and defeats. Furthermore, arguments were often perceived as promoting more than one value with different relative strengths. Individuals’ analyses of scenarios were also affected by external factors such as biases and arguments not explicit in the framework. Finally, we confirmed that objective acceptance, that is, the acceptance of arguments under any order of the values, was not a frequent behavior. Instead, participants tended to accept only the arguments that promoted the values they subscribe. (shrink)

Mercier and Sperber (MS) have ventured to undermine an age-old assumption in logic, namely the presence of premise-conclusion structures, in favor of two novel claims: that reasoning is an evolutionary product of a reason-intuiting module in the mind, and that theories of logic teach next to nothing about the mechanisms of how inferences are drawn in that module. The present paper begs to differ: logic is indispensable in formulating conceptions of cognitive elements of reasoning, and MS is no less exempt (...) from taking notice of premise-conclusion structures than the commonplace theories of reasoning are. Our counterclaim is realized in terms of diagrammatic reasoning dating back to Charles Peirce’s pragmaticism. The upshot is that pragmatist logic restores the premise-conclusion structures in argumentation, supplants reason-intuition module with logical content, and validates good reasoning as an indispensable resource evident to all rational minds that claim ownership of reason and understanding. (shrink)

Why do irrational beliefs adopt the trappings of science, to become what is known as “pseudoscience”? Here, we develop and extend an epidemiological framework to map the factors that explain the form and the popularity of irrational beliefs in scientific garb. These factors include the exploitation of epistemic vigilance, the misunderstanding of the authority of science, the use of the honorific title of “science” as an explicit argument for belief, and the phenomenon of epistemic negligence. We conclude by integrating the (...) various factors in an epidemiological framework and thus provide a comprehensive cultural evolutionary account of science mimicry. (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)

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)

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...

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)

Vice essentialism is the view that epistemic vices have robustly negative effects on our epistemic projects. Essentialists believe that the manifestation of epistemic vices can explain many of our epistemic failures, but few, if any, of our epistemic successes. The purpose of this paper is to argue that vice essentialism is false. In §1, I review the case that some epistemic vices, such as closed-mindedness and extreme epistemic deference, have considerably beneficial effects when manifested in collectivist contexts. In §2, I (...) add that there are putative epistemic vices whose repeated manifestation leads to significant epistemic achievements over time. Epistemic recklessness is one such unstable vice. Though Sosa argues that epistemically reckless judgements cannot constitute knowing full well, the repeated manifestation of epistemic recklessness is essential to our becoming fully well knowledgeable in the long run. Without making incompetent judgements in environments that offer unambiguous, actionable feedback, we could not develop the intuitive and reflective competences and meta-competences required for knowing full well. (shrink)

Mark Alfano claims that the heuristics and biases literature supports inferential cognitive situationism, i.e., the view that most of our inferential beliefs are arrived at and retained by means of unreliable heuristics rather than intellectual virtues. If true, this would present virtue reliabilists with an unpleasant choice: they can either accept inferential skepticism, or modify or abandon reliabilism. Alfano thinks that the latter course of action is most plausible, and several reliabilists seem to agree. I argue that this is not (...) the case. If situationism is true, then inferential non-skepticism is no more plausible than reliabilism. But inferential cognitive situationism is false. The heuristic-based inferences that facilitate successful perception and communication have proven remarkably accurate, and even the psychological research on inductive reasoning does not support Alfano’s situationism. More generally, negative assessments of human reasoning tend to ignore the fact that the research on cognitive biases focuses primarily on the performance of individuals in isolation. Several studies suggest that we reason much more effectively when in critical dialogue with others, which highlights the fact that our epistemic performance depends not only on the inner workings of our cognitive processes, but on the environments in which they operate. (shrink)

This paper examines three programmatic responses to the problem of cognitive bias: virtue epistemology, epistemic paternalism, and epistemic collectivism. Each of these programmes focuses on asinglelevel of epistemic analysis: virtue theorists on individuals, paternalists on environments, and collectivists on groups. I argue that this is a mistake in light of the fact that cognitive biases arise frominteractionsbetween these three domains. Consequently, epistemologists should spend less time defending these programmes, and more timecoordinatingthem. This paper offers empirically based arguments for the interactionist (...) approach, and contends that its adoption is an essential step for minimizing bias in empirical science. (shrink)

Often, when several norms are present and may be in conflict, individuals will display a self-serving bias, privileging the norm that best serves their interests. Xiao and Bicchieri (J Econ Psychol 31(3):456–470, 2010) tested the effects of inequality on reciprocating behavior in trust games and showed that—when inequality increases—reciprocity loses its appeal. They hypothesized that self-serving biases in choosing to privilege a particular social norm occur when the choice of that norm is publicly justifiable as reasonable, even if not optimal (...) for one of the parties. In line with the literature on motivated reasoning, this justification should find some degree of support among third parties. The results of our experimental survey of third parties support the hypothesis that biases are not always unilateral selfish assessments. Instead, they occur when the choice to favor a particular norm is supported by a shared sense that it is a reasonable and justifiable choice. (shrink)

Using an economic bargaining game, we tested for the existence of two phenomena related to social norms, namely norm manipulation – the selection of an interpretation of the norm that best suits an individual – and norm evasion – the deliberate, private violation of a social norm. We found that the manipulation of a norm of fairness was characterized by a self-serving bias in beliefs about what constituted normatively acceptable behaviour, so that an individual who made an uneven bargaining offer (...) not only genuinely believed it was fair, but also believed that recipients found it fair, even though recipients of the offer considered it to be unfair. In contrast, norm evasion operated as a highly explicit process. When they could do so without the recipient's knowledge, individuals made uneven offers despite knowing that their behaviour was unfair. (shrink)

Many agree that one cannot consciously form a belief just because one wants to. And many also agree this is a puzzling component of our conscious belief-forming processes. I will look at three views on how to make sense of this puzzle and show that they all fail in some way. I then offer a simpler explanation that avoids all the pitfalls of those views, which is based instead on an analysis of our conscious reasoning combined with a commonly accepted (...) account of the concept of belief. I conclude that no epistemic norm or aim is actually needed to explain why we cannot deliberatively believe whatever we want. (shrink)

Many agree that one cannot consciously form a belief just because one wants to. And many also agree this is a puzzling component of our conscious belief-forming processes. I will look at three views on how to make sense of this puzzle and show that they all fail in some way. I then offer a simpler explanation that avoids all the pitfalls of those views, which is based instead on an analysis of our conscious reasoning combined with a commonly accepted (...) account of the concept of belief. I conclude that no epistemic norm or aim is actually needed to explain why we cannot deliberatively believe whatever we want. (shrink)

This paper will highlight how the existing approaches to the Strawman Fallacy and the Principle of Charity are unable to fully accommodate the problems of interpreting children’s arguments. A lack of charity is as problematic as an excess of charity when arguing with children, and can contribute to misinterpretation of arguments. An application of moderate charity avoids the pitfalls of misrepresenting children. However, interpreting children’s arguments with the appropriate amount of charity is a challenging task. The argumentative context is relevant (...) in determining the interpretive approach and the extent of charity that can be justified. The context of arguing with children necessitates an Ethics of Care-based approach to interpretation. Michael Gilbert’s concept of coalescent argumentation exemplifies how Ethics of Care can be realized during argumentative exchanges involving children. (shrink)

This study tested the hypothesis that in the minds of adult religious adherents, acquired beliefs about the extraordinary characteristics of God coexist with, rather than replace, an initial representation of God formed by co-option of the evolved person concept. In three experiments, Christian religious adherents were asked to evaluate a series of statements for which core intuitions about persons and acquired Christian beliefs about God were consistent or inconsistent. Participants were less accurate and slower to respond to inconsistent versus consistent (...) statements, suggesting that the core intuitions both coexisted alongside and interfered with the acquired beliefs. In Experiment 2 when responding under time pressure participants were disproportionately more likely to make errors on inconsistent versus consistent statements than when responding with no time pressure, suggesting that the resolution of interference requires cognitive resources the functioning of which decreases under cognitive load. In Experiment 3 a plausible alternative interpretation of these findings was ruled out by demonstrating that the response accuracy and time differences on consistent versus inconsistent statements occur for God—a supernatural religious entity—but not for a natural religious entity. (shrink)

Among various kinds of disclosures typically required in research as well as in clinical scenarios, risk information figures prominently. A key question is, what kinds of risk information would the reasonable person want to know? I will argue, however, that the reasonable person construct is and always has been incapable of settling this very question. After parsing the nebulous if not “contentless” character of the reasonable person, I will explain how Western courts have actually adjudicated cases of “negligent nondisclosure,” that (...) is, cases in which patient‐plaintiffs allege that their informed consent rights were violated by the failure of their health providers to inform them of reasonably foreseeable risks that subsequently materialized. To support my argument, I will scrutinize the landmark decision by the United Kingdom's Supreme Court in Montgomery v. Lanarkshire Health Board and, in particular, Justice Brenda Hale's concurrence. (shrink)

Epistemic trespassers judge matters outside their field of expertise. Trespassing is ubiquitous in this age of interdisciplinary research and recognizing this will require us to be more intellectually modest.

Influential work on reasoning and decision-making has popularised the idea that sound reasoning requires correction of fast, intuitive thought processes by slower and more demanding deliberation. We present seven studies that question this corrective view of human thinking. We focused on the very problem that has been widely featured as the paradigmatic illustration of the corrective view, the well-known bat-and-ball problem. A two-response paradigm in which people were required to give an initial response under time pressure and cognitive load allowed (...) us to identify the presumed intuitive response that preceded the final response given after deliberation. Across our studies, we observe that correct final responses are often non-corrective in nature. Many reasoners who manage to answer the bat-and-ball problem correctly after deliberation already solved it correctly when they reasoned under conditions that minimised deliberation in the initial response phase. This suggests that sound bat-and-ball reasoners do not necessarily need to deliberate to correct their intuitions; their intuitions are often already correct. Pace the corrective view, findings suggest that in these cases, they deliberate to verify correct intuitive insights. (shrink)

Dual-Process Theories (D-PTs) claim there are two qualitatively different types of processes in the human brain-mind. Despite forming the basis for several areas of cognitive science, they are still shrouded in ambiguity: critics erroneously attack D-PTs as a whole (e.g., Evans and Stanovich Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8(3), 2013), the qualitative/quantitative distinction is not clear enough (De Neys Perspectives on Psychological Science 16 (6): 1412–1427, 2021; Dewey 2022) and, given this criterion, deciding between qualitative or quantitative differences may even be (...) scientifically irrelevant (De Neys 2021). As a way of disambiguating the discussion and clarifying what exactly means to claim the existence of a second type of process, I define two possible categories of D-PT: The substantial and the instrumental. In the substantial case, Type 2 processes are subpersonal level ones. In the instrumental case, Type 2 processing is a personal level phenomenon that does not necessarily imply subpersonal level Type 2 processes. Discussing the different implications of each of the categories, I use as a main example to illustrate the ambiguity – and the exercise of disambiguation – the model proposed by Evans and Stanovich (2013), making clear its substantial character, and contrast it with Frankish’ (2009) – a clear case of instrumental D-PT. Finally, I discuss the contributions this distinction can make. By making the discussion clearer, it can provide a relatively unanimous framework for dual- and single-process theorists (the instrumental version) and clearer desiderata for those wishing to defend the substantive one. (shrink)

The Duhem-Quine thesis famously holds that a single hypothesis cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed in isolation, but instead only in conjunction with other background hypotheses. This article argues that this has important and underappreciated implications for metaethics. Section 1 argues that if one begins metaethics firmly wedded to a naturalistic worldview—due (e.g.) to methodological/epistemic considerations—then normativity will appear to be reducible to a set of social-psycho-semantic behaviors that I call the ‘normative stance.’ Contra Hume and Bedke (2012), I argue that (...) the normative stance provides semantically-grounded entailments from natural truths to normative truths, reducing the latter to the former. Specifically, the normative stance explains the truth-conditions, truth-values, and truth-makers of normative propositions in terms of socially grounded cognitive-behavioral rules and other natural facts, thus explaining how there can be bona fide normative facts and properties in a wholly naturalistic world. I then show that the normative stance explains the apparent stance-independence and non-naturalness of normative reasons, intrinsic value, and categoricity of moral reasons as ‘user-illusions’ generated by people having strong psycho-social propensities—rooted in evolution and social cooperation—to take these normative stances. Section 2 then argues that while the normative stance may appear to naturalists to successfully explain normativity, it will not appeal to those who come to metaethics with different background commitments. I conclude that naturalists should take the normative stance to be a promising metaethical theory of normativity, and that whether it is a true theory of normativity is something that can only be ascertained by determining which background hypotheses—naturalistic or otherwise—we should have when doing metaethics. (shrink)

Recent debates on mental extension and distributed cognition have taught us that environmental resources play an important and often indispensable role in supporting cognitive capacities. In order to clarify how interactions between the mind –particularly memory– and the world take place, this paper presents the “selection problem” and the “endorsement problem” as structural problems arising from such interactions in cases of mental scaffolding. On the one hand, the selection problem arises each time an agent is confronted with a cognitive problem, (...) since she has to choose whether to solve it internally or externally. How does she choose? On the other hand, when confronted with the internally or externally retrieved solution to a cognitive task, the subject has to decide whether to endorse the information. How does the subject decide whether to endorse it or not? The last section proposes a solution to each problem in terms of metamemory and metacognitive feelings. Metamemory evaluates memory each time the subject is confronted with a memory task and elicits either a positive or negative metacognitive feeling that guides the decision. (shrink)

The development of a framework for coding argumentations schemes in the transcripts of classroom dialogical deliberations on controversial, socioscientific topics is described. Arriving at a coding framework involved resolving a number of complex issues and challenges that are discussed in order to create practical remedies. The description of the development process is based on audio recordings and written exchanges between the authors as they attempted to resolve differences in the interpretation and application of argumentation schemes . These deliberations address theoretical (...) and practical concerns for adapting notions of argumentation schemes to the practical context of analyzing authentic classroom interactions. The framework was developed to accommodate research and curriculum development in school science education. A practical framework for analyzing argumentation in authentic classroom contexts is proposed and implications for science education and argumentation theory are raised. (shrink)

AI has become the poster child for a certain kind of thinking which holds that some technologies can become objective, independent and emergent entities which can evolve beyond the control of their creators. This thinking is not new however. It is a product of certain philosophical ideas such as materialism, a common-sense world of objective and independent objects, a correspondence theory of truth, and so forth, which are centered around the pre-eminence of science, epistemology, and logical reasoning, among others, as (...) the supremely valid modes of engaging experience. This paper aims to critically examine the synthesis of the development program for AI to be found in the writings of computer scientist John McCarthy (1927–2011). McCarthy has been called one of the founding fathers of AI. First, some of the main themes which recur in his writings from as early as the mid nineteen fifties in the Dartmouth proposal, up to his late writings, are considered. A discussion of the goals that such a program implies, follows, in terms of society’s relation with AI based technology and the nature and purpose of AI itself. These implications are arguably related to social control and are also moral. Ultimately, McCarthy’s idea that AI is and can be built upon a paradigm of reasoning and logic so as to simulate a perfectly rational abstraction of human thinking is shown to be motivated by his view that AI systems should be controlled, as servants. This understanding of human thinking is questionable, however, given current research on human irrationality, as well as on the argumentative role of reasoning. And yet, the process of development toward the unachievable goal of controllable, rational, logical AI systems, has handily come to serve as a blind for increasing techno-corporate control of society, with techno-corporate interests displacing blame for devaluations and harms caused by their push to develop the technology to AI systems which they can conveniently ‘lose control of.’. (shrink)

People tend to be biased and irrational about politics. Should this constrain what our normative theories of democracy can require? David Estlund argues that the answer is ‘no’. He contends that even if such facts show that the requirements of a normative theory are very unlikely to be met, this need not imply that the theory is unduly unrealistic. I argue that the application of Estlund’s argument to political irrationality depends on a false presupposition: mainly, that being rational about politics (...) is something people could easily do if they tried. Since the empirical evidence shows that being rational about politics is actually quite difficult, Estlund’s argument comes up short. Moreover, I argue that the argument cannot plausibly be extended to insulate normative theories of democracy from facts about political irrationality because of the need for constraints of realism to explain the crucial role that appeals to (reasonable) disagreement play within such theories. (shrink)

We agree with Cushman that rationalizations are the product of biological adaptations, but we disagree about their function. The data available do not show that rationalizations allow us to reason better and make better decisions. The data suggest instead that rationalizations serve reputation management goals, and that they affect our behaviors because we are held accountable by our peers.

Mindreading capacity has been widely understood as the human ability to gain knowledge about the inner processes and states of others that bring about the behavior of these agents. This paper argues against this epistemic view of mindreading on the basis of different empirical studies in linguistics and social and developmental psychology: we are systematically biased in attributing mental states, and many everyday uses of mental ascription sentences do not reflect an epistemic function in our social interactions. We introduce an (...) alternative view of mental ascriptions, the social cover view, which is consistent with the evidence. The social cover view holds that the main function of mental ascriptions is to cover the social status and reputation of an agent rather than to gain knowledge about her inner processes and states. Finally, we discuss two possible objections to our proposal. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between informal reasoning, creativity in mathematics, and problem solving. It underscores the importance of environments that promote interaction, hypothesis generation, examination, refutation, derivation of new solutions, drawing conclusions, and reasoning with others, as key factors in enhancing mathematical creativity. Drawing on argumentation logic, the paper proposes a novel approach to uncover specific characteristics in the development of formalized proving using “proof-events.” Argumentation logic can offer reasoning mechanisms that facilitate these environments. This paper proposes how argumentation (...) can be implemented to discover certain characteristics in the development of formalized proving with “proof-events”. The concept of a proof-event was introduced by Goguen who described mathematical proof as a multi-agent social event involving not only “classical” formal proofs, but also other informal proving actions such as deficient or alleged proofs. Argumentation is an integral component of the discovery process for a mathematical proof since a proof necessitates a dialogue between provers and interpreters to clarify and resolve gaps or assumptions. By formalizing proof-events through argumentation, this paper demonstrates how informal reasoning and conflicts arising during the proving process can be effectively simulated. The paper presents an extended version of the proof-events calculus, rooted in argumentation theories, and highlights the intricate relationships among proof, human reasoning, cognitive processes, creativity, and mathematical arguments. (shrink)

Humans have distinctive powers of reflection: no other animal seems to have anything like our capacity for self-examination. Many philosophers hold that this capacity has a uniquely important guiding role in our cognition; others, notably Hilary Kornblith, draw attention to its weaknesses. Kornblith chiefly aims to dispel the sense that there is anything ‘magical’ about second-order mental states, situating them in the same causal net as ordinary first-order mental states. But elsewhere he goes further, suggesting that there is something deeply (...) misleading about reflection’s first-person view of cognition. This chapter takes a closer look at the conditions under which reflection is misleading. Even if humans are the only reflective animals, we are no longer the only creatures that can be questioned about their claims. Chatbots can also be asked to explain themselves, and by studying the conditions under which they produce clarification as opposed to confabulation, we can develop a non-skeptical account of the epistemic value of reflection. I argue that this capacity naturally supports the distribution of complex problem solving among multiple agents. (shrink)

Social scientific reasoning (SSR) is essential to social science education and to a democratic society as a whole. Students are challenged to analyze and reason about social problems such as social inequality, crime, and poverty. However, students experience difficulties with SSR. This study addresses the research question: Which design principles can guide teachers in designing lessons that promote social scientific reasoning? In this design-based research, four social science teachers employed a conceptualization of SSR and its levels together with three initial (...) design principles to develop curriculum materials and activities. These design principles and curriculum materials were piloted in two secondary education classes (9th and 10th grades) and evaluated by four social science teachers, four social science teacher educators and 90 students. The study produced six design principles that can promote students’ SSR. In combination with the curriculum materials, those design principles can help develop teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and guide the design of tasks and units that develop SSR. (shrink)

Controversy over the epistemology of disagreement endures because there is an unnoticed factor at work: the intrinsic value we give to self-trust. Even if there are many instances of disagreement where, from a strictly epistemic or rational point of view, we ought to suspend belief, there are other values at work that influence our all-things considered judgments about what we ought to believe. Hence those who would give equal-weight to both sides in many cases of disagreement may be right, from (...) the perspective of pure rationality. But their critics are right too, in seeing something undesirable in the consequences of giving equal weight. Among epistemologists, there is a tendency to set aside trust and other such non-epistemic factors, on the grounds that these are not germane to their topic. But ultimately, the value of self-trust shows signs of encroaching on the strictly epistemic question of when our beliefs may be said to be justified. Hence again, even if the equal-weighters are right about what is rational, they may be wrong about what knowledge requires. (shrink)

Computational models have shown how polarisation can rise among deliberating agents as they approximate epistemic rationality. This paper provides further support for the thesis that polarisation can rise under condition of epistemic rationality, but it does not depend on limitations that extant models rely on, such as memory restrictions or biased evaluation of other agents’ testimony. Instead, deliberation is modelled through agents’ purposeful introduction of arguments and their rational reactions to introductions of others. This process induces polarisation dynamics on its (...) own. A second result is that the effect size of polarisation dynamics correlates with particular types of argumentative behaviour. Polarisation effects can be soothed when agents take into account the opinions of others as premises, and they are amplified as agents fortify their own beliefs. These results underpin the relevance of argumentation as a factor in social-epistemic processes and indicate that rising issue polarisation is not a reliable indicator of epistemic shortcomings. (shrink)

Disproof of heaven? -- Brain and gods -- The rational stance -- Reason and belief in God -- Against naturalism -- Atheism, inference, and IQ -- Atheism, autism, and intellectual humility -- Googling God -- Inference, intuition, and rationality.

The paper argues that much of the difficulty with making progress on the issue of the normativity of logic for thought, as discussed in the literature, stems from a misapprehension of what logic is normative for. The claim is that, rather than mono-agent mental processes, logic in fact comprises norms for quite specific situations of multi-agent dialogical interactions, in particular special forms of debates. This reconceptualization is inspired by historical developments in logic and mathematics, in particular the pervasiveness of such (...) dialogical conceptions in the early days of logic in ancient Greece. The multi-agent, dialogical perspective then allows for the formulation of compelling 'bridge principles’ between the relation of logical consequence and dialogical normative principles, something that is notoriously difficult to achieve in a mono-agent setting pertaining exclusively to thought and belief. The upshot is also that the truth-preserving rules of logic generally do not have a primary normative bearing on mono-agent mental processes, and in this sense the paper sides with Harman's critique of the idea that logic has a normative import for thought and belief. (shrink)

Social knowledge, for the most part, is knowledge through testimony. This essay is an overview of the epistemology of testimony. The essay separates knowledge from justification, characterizes testimony as a source of belief, explains why testimony is a source of knowledge, canvasses arguments for anti-reductionism and for reductionism in the reductionism vs. anti-reductionism debate, addresses counterexamples to knowledge transmission, defends a safe basis account of testimonial knowledge, and turns to social norms as a partial explanation for the reliability of testimony.

Great effort is invested in identifying ways to change people's minds on an issue. A first priority should perhaps be enriching their thinking about the issue. With a goal of enriching their thinking, we studied the views of community adults on the DACA issue—young adults who entered the United States illegally as children. A dialogic method was employed, offering dual benefits in providing participants the opportunity to further develop their own ideas and to consider differing ideas. Yet, participants engaged in (...) dialog only vicariously by observing the talk of a pair of actors who held opposing positions on DACA. The effect on participants’ thinking was greatest in the condition in which they viewed a dialog between the two actors, rather than a comparison condition in which the actors individually expressed their positions. In control conditions, no presentation was observed. Probing questions included in all conditions encouraged a participant to examine and clarify for themselves their own position, potentially enriching it. This condition proved unsuccessful in enriching thinking; participants’ justifications for their own positions in fact became simpler and less qualified. In contrast, observing a video of a like-minded and opposing other did enrich observers’ thinking, yet to a greater degree in the dialogic than nondialogic condition. The findings thus suggest observed dialog as a promising practical approach in promoting deeper thinking. (shrink)

Mandevillian intelligence is a specific form of collective intelligence in which individual cognitive shortcomings, limitations and biases play a positive functional role in yielding various forms of collective cognitive success. When this idea is transposed to the epistemological domain, mandevillian intelligence emerges as the idea that individual forms of intellectual vice may, on occasion, support the epistemic performance of some form of multi-agent ensemble, such as a socio-epistemic system, a collective doxastic agent, or an epistemic group agent. As a specific (...) form of collective intelligence, mandevillian intelligence is relevant to a number of debates in social epistemology, especially those that seek to understand how group (or collective) knowledge arises from the interactions between a collection of individual epistemic agents. Beyond this, however, mandevillian intelligence raises issues that are relevant to the research agendas of both virtue epistemology and applied epistemology. From a virtue epistemological perspective, mandevillian intelligence encourages us to adopt a relativistic conception of intellectual vice/virtue, enabling us to see how individual forms of intellectual vice may (sometimes) be relevant to collective forms of intellectual virtue. In addition, mandevillian intelligence is relevant to the nascent sub-discipline of applied epistemology. In particular, mandevillian intelligence forces us see the potential epistemic value of (e.g., technological) interventions that create, maintain or promote individual forms of intellectual vice. (shrink)

This paper disputes the widespread assumption that beliefs and desires may be attributed as theoretical entities in the service of the explanation and predic- tion of human behavior. The literature contains no clear account of how beliefs and desires might generate actions, and there is good reason to deny that principles of rationality generate a choice on the basis of an agent’s beliefs and desires. An alter- native conception of beliefs and desires is here introduced, according to which an attribution (...) of belief is, in a certain sense, an assertion on the believer’s behalf and an attribution of desire is, in a certain sense, a command on the desirer’s behalf. In terms of this conception of the attribution of beliefs and desires, we can begin to understand how attributions of beliefs and desires can be explanatory, although we still cannot expect the attribution of beliefs and desires to generate predictions based on an assumption of rationality. Finally, the reality of beliefs and desires is likened to the reality of money; it is the reality of things governed by objective norms. (shrink)

‘Self-Refutation’ in Early Chinese Argumentative Prose: Sidelights on the Linguistic Prehistory of Incipient Philosophy in: R.C. Steineck, R. Weber, R.H. Gassmann & E.L. Lange, eds., Concepts of Philosophy in Asia and the Islamic world, Leiden: Brill/Rodopi, 2018.