Switch to: Citations

Add references

You must login to add references.
  1. Epistemic Vigilance.Dan Sperber, Fabrice Clément, Christophe Heintz, Olivier Mascaro, Hugo Mercier, Gloria Origgi & Deirdre Wilson - 2010 - Mind and Language 25 (4):359-393.
    Humans massively depend on communication with others, but this leaves them open to the risk of being accidentally or intentionally misinformed. To ensure that, despite this risk, communication remains advantageous, humans have, we claim, a suite of cognitive mechanisms for epistemic vigilance. Here we outline this claim and consider some of the ways in which epistemic vigilance works in mental and social life by surveying issues, research and theories in different domains of philosophy, linguistics, cognitive psychology and the social sciences.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   269 citations  
  • Bad Beliefs: Why They Happen to Good People.Neil Levy - 2021 - Oxford University Press.
    This book challenges the view that bad beliefs - beliefs that blatantly conflict with easily available evidence - can largely be explained by widespread irrationality, instead arguing that ordinary people are rational agents whose beliefs are the result of their rational response to the evidence they're presented with.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   59 citations  
  • A tribal mind: Beliefs that signal group identity or commitment.Eric Funkhouser - 2022 - Mind and Language 37 (3):444-464.
    People are biased toward beliefs that are welcomed by their in-group. Some beliefs produced by these biases—such as climate change denial and religious belief—can be fruitfully modeled by signaling theory. The idea is that the beliefs function so as to be detected by others and manipulate their behavior, primarily for the benefits that accrue from favorable tribal self-presentation. Signaling theory can explain the etiology, distinctive form, proper function, and alterability of these beliefs.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   21 citations  
  • Motivated ignorance, rationality, and democratic politics.Daniel Williams - 2020 - Synthese 198 (8):7807-7827.
    When the costs of acquiring knowledge outweigh the benefits of possessing it, ignorance is rational. In this paper I clarify and explore a related but more neglected phenomenon: cases in which ignorance is motivated by the anticipated costs of possessing knowledge, not acquiring it. The paper has four aims. First, I describe the psychological and social factors underlying this phenomenon of motivated ignorance. Second, I describe those conditions in which it is instrumentally rational. Third, I draw on evidence from the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  • Against Democracy: New Preface.Jason Brennan - 2016 - Princeton: Princeton University Press.
    Hobbits and hooligans -- Ignorant, irrational, misinformed nationalists -- Political participation corrupts -- Politics doesn't empower you or me -- Politics is not a poem -- The right to competent government -- Is democracy competent? -- The rule of the knowers -- Civic enemies.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   219 citations  
  • [Book review] the racial contract. [REVIEW]Charles W. Mills - 1997 - Social Theory and Practice 25 (1):155-160.
    White supremacy is the unnamed political system that has made the modern world what it is today. You will not find this term in introductory, or even advanced, texts in political theory. A standard undergraduate philosophy course will start off with plato and Aristotle, perhaps say something about Augustine, Aquinas, and Machiavelli, move on to Hobbes, Locke, Mill, and Marx, and then wind up with Rawls and Nozick. It will introduce you to notions of aristocracy, democracy, absolutism, liberalism, representative government, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   560 citations  
  • Socially adaptive belief.Daniel Williams - 2020 - Mind and Language 36 (3):333-354.
    I clarify and defend the hypothesis that human belief formation is sensitive to social rewards and punishments, such that beliefs are sometimes formed based on unconscious expectations of their likely effects on other agents – agents who frequently reward us when we hold ungrounded beliefs and punish us when we hold reasonable ones. After clarifying this phenomenon and distinguishing it from other sources of bias in the psychological literature, I argue that the hypothesis is plausible on theoretical grounds and I (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   36 citations  
  • The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter.J. Henrich - unknown
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   191 citations  
  • Social functionalist frameworks for judgment and choice: Intuitive politicians, theologians, and prosecutors.Philip E. Tetlock - 2002 - Psychological Review 109 (3):451-471.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   45 citations