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  1. The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread.Cailin O'Connor & James Owen Weatherall - 2019 - New Haven, CT, USA: Yale University Press.
    "Why should we care about having true beliefs? And why do demonstrably false beliefs persist and spread despite consequences for the people who hold them? Philosophers of science Cailin O’Connor and James Weatherall argue that social factors, rather than individual psychology, are what’s essential to understanding the spread and persistence of false belief. It might seem that there’s an obvious reason that true beliefs matter: false beliefs will hurt you. But if that’s right, then why is it irrelevant to many (...)
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  • Scientific polarization.Cailin O’Connor & James Owen Weatherall - 2017 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 8 (3):855-875.
    Contemporary societies are often “polarized”, in the sense that sub-groups within these societies hold stably opposing beliefs, even when there is a fact of the matter. Extant models of polarization do not capture the idea that some beliefs are true and others false. Here we present a model, based on the network epistemology framework of Bala and Goyal, 784–811 1998), in which polarization emerges even though agents gather evidence about their beliefs, and true belief yields a pay-off advantage. As we (...)
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  • The Duty to Listen.Hrishikesh Joshi & Robin McKenna - forthcoming - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
    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 (...)
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  • (2 other versions)How to Beat Science and Influence People: Policymakers and Propaganda in Epistemic Networks.James Owen Weatherall, Cailin O’Connor & Justin P. Bruner - 2018 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 71 (4):1157-1186.
    In their recent book, Oreskes and Conway describe the ‘tobacco strategy’, which was used by the tobacco industry to influence policymakers regarding the health risks of tobacco products. The strategy involved two parts, consisting of promoting and sharing independent research supporting the industry’s preferred position and funding additional research, but selectively publishing the results. We introduce a model of the tobacco strategy, and use it to argue that both prongs of the strategy can be extremely effective—even when policymakers rationally update (...)
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  • Science, assertion, and the common ground.Corey Dethier - 2022 - Synthese 200 (1):1-19.
    I argue that the appropriateness of an assertion is sensitive to context—or, really, the “common ground”—in a way that hasn’t previously been emphasized by philosophers. This kind of context-sensitivity explains why some scientific conclusions seem to be appropriately asserted even though they are not known, believed, or justified on the available evidence. I then consider other recent attempts to account for this phenomenon and argue that if they are to be successful, they need to recognize the kind of context-sensitivity that (...)
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  • Causal Inference from Clinical Experience.Hamed Tabatabaei Ghomi & Jacob Stegenga - forthcoming - Philosophical Studies:1-21.
    How reliable are causal inferences in complex empirical scenarios? For example, a physician prescribes a drug to a patient, and then the patient undergoes various changes to their symptoms. They then increase their confidence that it is the drug that causes such changes. Are such inferences reliable guides to the causal relation in question, particularly when the physician can gain a large volume of such clinical experience by treating many patients? The evidence-based medicine movement says no, while some physicians and (...)
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  • Epistemic Inclusion as the Key to Benefiting from Cognitive Diversity in Science.Vlasta Sikimić - 2023 - Social Epistemology 37 (6):753-765.
    Throughout scientific history, there have been cases of mainstream science dismissing novel ideas of less prominent researchers. Nowadays, many researchers with different social and academic backgrounds, origins and gender identities work together on topics of crucial importance. Still, it is questionable whether the privileged groups consider the views of underprivileged colleagues with sufficient attention. To profit from the diversity of thoughts, the scientific community first has to be open to minority viewpoints and epistemically include them in mainstream research. Moreover, the (...)
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  • When philosophy (of science) meets formal methods: a citation analysis of early approaches between research fields.Guido Bonino, Paolo Maffezioli, Eugenio Petrovich & Paolo Tripodi - 2022 - Synthese 200 (2).
    The article investigates what happens when philosophy meets and begins to establish connections with two formal research methods such as game theory and network science. We use citation analysis to identify, among the articles published in Synthese and Philosophy of Science between 1985 and 2021, those that cite the specialistic literature in game theory and network science. Then, we investigate the structure of the two corpora thus identified by bibliographic coupling and divide them into clusters of related papers by automatic (...)
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  • Collective Virtue Epistemology and the Value of Identity Diversity.Brian Kim - 2022 - Social Epistemology 36 (4):486-501.
    Discussions of diversity tend to paint a mixed picture of the practical and epistemic value of diversity. While there are expansive and detailed accounts of the value of cognitive diversity, explorations of identity diversity typically focus on its value as a source or cause of cognitive diversity. The resulting picture on which identity diversity only possesses a derivative practical and epistemic value is unsatisfactory and fails to account for some of its central epistemic benefits. In response, I propose that collective (...)
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  • Online astroturfing: A problem beyond disinformation.Jovy Chan - 2024 - Philosophy and Social Criticism 50 (3):507-528.
    Coordinated inauthentic behaviours online are becoming a more serious problem throughout the world. One common type of manipulative behaviour is astroturfing. It happens when an entity artificially creates an impression of widespread support for a product, policy, or concept, when in reality only limited support exists. Online astroturfing is often considered to be just like any other coordinated inauthentic behaviour; with considerable discussion focusing on how it aggravates the spread of fake news and disinformation. This paper shows that astroturfing creates (...)
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  • Research environments vis-à-vis biological environments: ontological parallels, epistemic parallax, and metaphilosophical parallelization.Alejandro Fábregas-Tejeda - 2024 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 14 (3):1-23.
    In a recent development of what may be called biological philosophy of science, scholars have proposed that aligning notions of research environments with biological concepts of environment holds great promise for understanding the socio-material contexts in and through which science happens. Here, I explore the prospects and potential shortcomings of building sound research environment concepts by contrasting them with biological environment concepts. In doing so, I emphasize the importance of adhering to two central desiderata: the need to clarify what is (...)
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  • What We Talk about When We Talk about Truth: Dewey, Wittgenstein, and the Pragmatic Test.John Capps - 2021 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 29 (2):159-180.
    Pragmatic theories of truth need to pass the pragmatic test: they need to make a difference. Unfortunately, defenders of the pragmatic theory have rarely applied this test. I argue that a Deweyan pragmatic account of truth passes the test by identifying the political and epistemic dangers of certain types of social networks that create a durable consensus around false beliefs. To better understand Dewey’s account of truth I propose an excursion through Wittgenstein’s later views on knowledge and certainty.
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  • Modeling How False Beliefs Spread.Cailin O'Connor & James Owen Weatherall - unknown
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  • Modeling Innovations: Levels of Complexity in the Discovery of Novel Scientific Methods.José Ferraz-Caetano - 2025 - Philosophies 10 (1):1.
    Scientists often disagree on the best theory to describe a scientific event. While such debates are a natural part of healthy scientific discourse, the timeframe for scientists to converge on an ideal method may not always align with real-life knowledge dynamics. In this article, I use an event from the history of chemistry as inspiration to develop Agent-Based Models of epistemic networks, exploring method selection within a scientific community. These models reveal several situations where incorrect, simpler methods can persist, even (...)
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  • Tradition–invention dichotomy and optimization in the field of science.Mukta Watve & Milind Watve - 2022 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 45:e272.
    The central idea of the bifocal stance theory (BST) by Jagiello et al. has substantial relevance to scientific research. Both tradition-following and exploration-innovation are important in science and researchers subconsciously try to optimize their strategies. We outline three important dimensions of this optimization and argue that attempts to understand this complex process can help us design better science education, research training, investigation, and science publication.
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  • Evolution, Cultural Evolution, and Epistemic Optimism: Alberto Acerbi. Cultural Evolution in the Digital Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 272pp. ISBN: 9780198835943. Hugo Mercier. Not Born Yesterday: The Science of Who We Trust and What We Believe. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 384pp. ISBN: 9780691178707. [REVIEW]Andrew Buskell - 2020 - Acta Biotheoretica 69 (2):173-183.
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