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  1. 'Explicating ways of consensus-making: Distinguishing the academic, the interface and the meta-consensus.Laszlo Kosolosky & Jeroen Van Bouwel - 2014 - In Martini Carlo (ed.), Experts and Consensus in Social Science. Springer. pp. 71-92.
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  • The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.David Bohm - 1964 - Philosophical Quarterly 14 (57):377-379.
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  • Democratic Authority: A Philosophical Framework.David Estlund - 2008 - Critica 42 (124):118-125.
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  • On fraud.Liam Kofi Bright - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (2):291-310.
    Preferably scientific investigations would promote true rather than false beliefs. The phenomenon of fraud represents a standing challenge to this veritistic ideal. When scientists publish fraudulent results they knowingly enter falsehoods into the information stream of science. Recognition of this challenge has prompted calls for scientists to more consciously adopt the veritistic ideal in their own work. In this paper I argue against such promotion of the veritistic ideal. It turns out that a sincere desire on the part of scientists (...)
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  • Social structure and the effects of conformity.Kevin James Spears Zollman - 2010 - Synthese 172 (3):317-340.
    Conformity is an often criticized feature of human belief formation. Although generally regarded as a negative influence on reliability, it has not been widely studied. This paper attempts to determine the epistemic effects of conformity by analyzing a mathematical model of this behavior. In addition to investigating the effect of conformity on the reliability of individuals and groups, this paper attempts to determine the optimal structure for conformity. That is, supposing that conformity is inevitable, what is the best way for (...)
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  • The Epistemic Benefit of Transient Diversity.Kevin J. S. Zollman - 2010 - Erkenntnis 72 (1):17-35.
    There is growing interest in understanding and eliciting division of labor within groups of scientists. This paper illustrates the need for this division of labor through a historical example, and a formal model is presented to better analyze situations of this type. Analysis of this model reveals that a division of labor can be maintained in two different ways: by limiting information or by endowing the scientists with extreme beliefs. If both features are present however, cognitive diversity is maintained indefinitely, (...)
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  • A Simulation Approach to Veritistic Social Epistemology.Erik J. Olsson - 2011 - Episteme 8 (2):127-143.
    In a seminal book, Alvin I. Goldman outlines a theory for how to evaluate social practices with respect to their “veritistic value”, i.e., their tendency to promote the acquisition of true beliefs in society. In the same work, Goldman raises a number of serious worries for his account. Two of them concern the possibility of determining the veritistic value of a practice in a concrete case because we often don't know what beliefs are actually true, and even if we did, (...)
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  • Reliability of testimonial norms in scientific communities.Conor Mayo-Wilson - 2014 - Synthese 191 (1):55-78.
    Several current debates in the epistemology of testimony are implicitly motivated by concerns about the reliability of rules for changing one’s beliefs in light of others’ claims. Call such rules testimonial norms (tns). To date, epistemologists have neither (i) characterized those features of communities that influence the reliability of tns, nor (ii) evaluated the reliability of tns as those features vary. These are the aims of this paper. I focus on scientific communities, where the transmission of highly specialized information is (...)
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  • Diversity and the Division of Cognitive Labor.Ryan Muldoon - 2013 - Philosophy Compass 8 (2):117-125.
    In epistemology and the philosophy of science, there has been an increasing interest in the social aspects of belief acquisition. In particular, there has been a focus on the division of cognitive labor in science. This essay explores several different models of the division of cognitive labor, with particular focus on Kitcher, Strevens, Weisberg and Muldoon, and Zollman. The essay then shows how many of the benefits of the division of cognitive labor flow from leveraging agent diversity. The essay concludes (...)
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  • Social network structure and the achievement of consensus.Kevin J. S. Zollman - 2012 - Politics, Philosophy and Economics 11 (1):26-44.
    It is widely believed that bringing parties with differing opinions together to discuss their differences will help both in securing consensus and also in ensuring that this consensus closely approximates the truth. This paper investigates this presumption using two mathematical and computer simulation models. Ultimately, these models show that increased contact can be useful in securing both consensus and truth, but it is not always beneficial in this way. This suggests one should not, without qualification, support policies which increase interpersonal (...)
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  • Should We Aim for Consensus?Alfred Moore & John Beatty - 2010 - Episteme 7 (3):198-214.
    There can be good reasons to doubt the authority of a group of scientists. But those reasons do not include lack of unanimity among them. Indeed, holding science to a unanimity or near-unanimity standard has a pernicious effect on scientific deliberation, and on the transparency that is so crucial to the authority of science in a democracy. What authorizes a conclusion is the quality of the deliberation that produced it, which is enhanced by the presence of a non-dismissible minority. Scientists (...)
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  • Introduction: Computer Simulations in Social Epistemology.Igor Douven - 2009 - Episteme 6 (2):107-109.
    Over recent decades, computer simulations have become a common tool among practitioners of the social sciences. They have been utilized to study such diverse phenomena as the integration and segregation of different racial groups, the emergence and evolution of friendship networks, the spread of gossip, fluctuations of housing prices in an area, the transmission of social norms, and many more. Philosophers of science and others interested in the methodological status of these studies have identified a number of distinctive virtues of (...)
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  • Knowledge in a social world.Alvin I. Goldman - 1991 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Knowledge in a Social World offers a philosophy for the information age. Alvin Goldman explores new frontiers by creating a thoroughgoing social epistemology, moving beyond the traditional focus on solitary knowers. Against the tides of postmodernism and social constructionism Goldman defends the integrity of truth and shows how to promote it by well-designed forms of social interaction. From science to education, from law to democracy, he shows why and how public institutions should seek knowledge-enhancing practices. The result is a bold, (...)
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  • Modelling collective belief.Margaret Gilbert - 1987 - Synthese 73 (1):185-204.
    What is it for a group to believe something? A summative account assumes that for a group to believe that p most members of the group must believe that p. Accounts of this type are commonly proposed in interpretation of everyday ascriptions of beliefs to groups. I argue that a nonsummative account corresponds better to our unexamined understanding of such ascriptions. In particular I propose what I refer to as the joint acceptance model of group belief. I argue that group (...)
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  • Epistemic democracy: Generalizing the Condorcet jury theorem.Christian List & Robert E. Goodin - 2001 - Journal of Political Philosophy 9 (3):277–306.
    This paper generalises the classical Condorcet jury theorem from majority voting over two options to plurality voting over multiple options. The paper further discusses the debate between epistemic and procedural democracy and situates its formal results in that debate. The paper finally compares a number of different social choice procedures for many-option choices in terms of their epistemic merits. An appendix explores the implications of some of the present mathematical results for the question of how probable majority cycles (as in (...)
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  • An epistemic conception of democracy.Joshua Cohen - 1986 - Ethics 97 (1):26-38.
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  • (2 other versions)Deliberating groups vs. prediction markets (or Hayek's challenge to habermas).Cass R. Sunstein - 2006 - Episteme 3 (3):192-213.
    For multiple reasons, deliberating groups often converge on falsehood rather than truth. Individual errors may be amplifi ed rather than cured. Group members may fall victim to a bad cascade, either informational or reputational. Deliberators may emphasize shared information at the expense of uniquely held information. Finally, group polarization may lead even rational people to unjustifi ed extremism. By contrast, prediction markets often produce accurate results, because they create strong incentives for revelation of privately held knowledge and succeed in aggregating (...)
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  • Some remarks on the probability of cycles - Appendix 3 to 'Epistemic democracy: generalizing the Condorcet jury theorem'.Christian List - 2001 - Journal of Political Philosophy 9 (3):277-306.
    This item was published as 'Appendix 3: An Implication of the k-option Condorcet jury mechanism for the probability of cycles' in List and Goodin (2001) http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/705/. Standard results suggest that the probability of cycles should increase as the number of options increases and also as the number of individuals increases. These results are, however, premised on a so-called "impartial culture" assumption: any logically possible preference ordering is assumed to be as likely to be held by an individual as any other. (...)
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  • (1 other version)Masking disagreement among experts.John Beatty - 2006 - Episteme 3 (1-2):52-67.
    There are many reasons why scientific experts may mask disagreement and endorse a position publicly as “jointly accepted.” In this paper I consider the inner workings of a group of scientists charged with deciding not only a technically difficult issue, but also a matter of social and political importance: the maximum acceptable dose of radiation. I focus on how, in this real world situation, concerns with credibility, authority, and expertise shaped the process by which this group negotiated the competing virtues (...)
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