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Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Authority, and Autonomy in Belief

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This book gives an extended argument for epistemic authority from the implications of reflective self-consciousness. Epistemic authority is compatible with autonomy, but epistemic self-reliance is incoherent. The book argues that epistemic and emotional self-trust are rational and inescapable, that consistent self-trust commits us to trust in others, and that among those we are committed to trusting are some whom we ought to treat as epistemic authorities, modelled on the well-known principles of authority of Joseph Raz. Some of these authorities can be in the moral and religious domains. The book investigates the way the problem of disagreement between communities or between the self and others is a conflict within self-trust, and argue against communal self-reliance on the same grounds as the book uses in arguing against individual self-reliance. The book explains how any change in belief is justified-by the conscientious judgment that the change will survive future conscientious self-reflection. The book concludes with an account of autonomy.

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... In her work on the nature of epistemic authority, Linda Zagzebski (2012) has used the term "epistemic egoism" to refer to the attitude of trusting only in oneself, rather than relying on the testimony of others. Although classical Protestantism encourages trusting in the testimony of the Bible, Zagzebski (2012, 1) nevertheless believes that "the Protestant Reformation, the political turmoil of the early modern period, and the rise of modern science all contributed to shattering the idea of authority." 1 Against such individualism, Zagzebski argues trusting others often makes it much more likely for us to attain true beliefs and avoid false beliefs. ...
... Within social epistemology, this kind of deference to a recognized authority recalls the "preemption view" of epistemic authority, defended by Zagzebski (2012), as well as Constantin and Grundmann (2020). On this view, once we have identified a relevant epistemic authority (such as an expert in some field), we should defer (submit) to their judgment over our own ideas, allowing their view to "preempt" our own reasoning. ...
... Even different statements of particular Church councils, which fulfil Wahlberg's formal criterion, and different statements within papal letters, need to be seen as having different levels of authority. 7 So, it 4 My analysis of the preemption view and the expert-as-advisor view draws on my previous work; see Kojonen, forthcoming a. 5 Raz 1988, 68-69;Zagzebski 2012, 114-117. 6 Lackey, 2021 See e.g. ...
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Although ecumenical dialogue has highlighted many commonalities between Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox, many issues still remain contentious. One often recurring suspicion is that the Protestant idea of sola scriptura inevitably leads to an individualistic religiosity, neglecting the importance of the divinely guided Christian tradition and Christian church teaching for understanding the Bible. In this article, I relate this critique to the idea of “epistemic egoism”, as defined by Linda Zagzebski, and develop an alternative Protestant social epistemology based on tradition as the “democracy of the dead”, error-corrected by sola scriptura. I test this Protestant theological epistemology against two recent criticisms: (1) the “Conciliar Argument Against Protestantism” (CAAP), arguing that Protestantism fails to provide consistent criteria for valuing conciliar authority as a guide to biblical interpretation, and (2) the “Scriptural Argument Against Dogmatic Protestantism”, arguing that sola scriptura, when understood in light of theological disagreement, ultimately becomes self-refuting in the absence of properly guiding theological authority. I argue, however, that sola scriptura is compatible with assigning an important epistemic role to both tradition and community, and that Protestant principles of theological reasoning can be defended further using recent theories in social epistemology.
... Some philosophers use the terms "authority" and "expert" interchangeably (Goldman, 1999;Lackey, 2018), but I do not. As a start, an authority is a person or source of information that is epistemically superior to the subject (Zagzebski, 2012, Jager 2016, Grundmann 2021. Often this will mean that the authority is an expert in the relevant domain (for example, they have gained the relevant background knowledge and skills through education). ...
... 13 In a case like this, I can predict that my belief will be less reliable if I rely on my own evidence. Since it would be irrational to pursue such a policy, the rational thing to do is ignore my evidence (Zagzebski, 2012, Grundmann, 2021. What marks the geologist as an authority and not merely an expert, is that it is reasonable to believe that they possess all (or nearly all) the same (relevant) evidence as me, are basing their judgment on that evidence, and are better positioned than me to reliably make a true judgment on that basis. ...
... By contrast, according to some philosophers, answering the question about the world is an act of deliberation, or evaluating reasons and evidence in order to answer a normative question, the question what one ought to believe. Call this the deliberative or agential transparency theory (Moran, 1988, 2001, 2012, Pickard 2004, Boyle, 2009, McGeer, 2007, 2015, Roessler, 2013, Parrott, 2015. The theory draws a distinction between two stances one can take toward one's mind: a deliberative stance and a theoretical or third-person stance. ...
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The paper focuses on self-knowledge of attitudes like belief, desire, and intention. It motivates a constraint on when it is rational to treat a source as an authority. Then, drawing on the “transparency” of belief and other attitudes, it argues that the constraint is not satisfied in the case of knowing one’s own mind by relying on AI or any other technology. Against some AI optimists, the paper argues that there are principled reasons why the task of knowing one’s mind should not be outsourced to computers. Neither is AI a threat to the practice of deferring to avowing subjects.
... 7 Extant views of epistemic autonomy share the idea that intellectually autonomous agents can and often ought to rely on others' cognitive work to gain knowledge and other epistemic goods (e.g., Elzinga, 2019;Fricker, 2006, pp. 243, 244;Goldberg, 2013;King, 2021;Vega-Encabo, 2008;Zagzebski, 2012Zagzebski, , 2013. Yet these views differ as regards the limits an autonomous agent should set to epistemic dependence and their proposed explanation of the compatibility between autonomy and dependence. ...
... In the remainder of this section, we analyze the main versions of these views and briefly discuss some further problems they need to address. The Authority View has been advocated, amongst others, by Elga (2007), Keren (2007), and Zagzebski (2012), and has been partly endorsed or revised in Constantin and Grundmann (2020), Croce (2018), Grundmann (2021), andMcMyler (2020). 8 The view gets its plausibility from everyday situations where people without the requisite knowledge in a field question the judgment of experts in that field. ...
... The most prominent strategy to defend the Authority View is the track record argument, originally formulated by Joseph Raz (1986) in a discussion about practical authority and adapted by Zagzebski (2012) to the debate on epistemic authority. 9 The argument has it that once we acknowledge that someone is (sufficiently reliable and) epistemically better off than we are in a given domain-namely, they have a better track-record in forming true beliefs-then we should take full advantage of their expertise and always defer to them. ...
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This paper investigates the topic of epistemic authority from the perspective of the ordinary people facing expert testimony. In particular, two central questions are discussed: how one should respond to expert testimony; and what should one do before expert disagreement.
... Para considerar si una IAD puede ser un igual epistémico primero hay que entender qué es un desacuerdo epistémico. Éstos se producen cuando dos personas, que se consideran iguales epistémicos, sostienen actitudes doxásticas diferentes después de haber examinado la misma evidencia de carácter público (Frances y Matheson 2019, Zagzebski 2012). 2 Una de las consecuencias de estar en desacuerdo es que cuando se nos revela que alguien a quien consideramos como un igual epistémico sostiene que no-P, podría ser razonable que dejemos de confiar en nuestra creencia sobre P (Cocchiaro y Frances 2021, p. 1063, Kelly 2013. ...
... Los iguales comparten simetría en sus capacidades cognitivas, en aquello que saben sobre P y en el acceso a las evidencias. A la opinión de un igual siempre se le otorga cierto crédito, ya que se le considera como autoridad epistémica, aunque sea una autoridad de tipo débil, esto es, la autoridad del experto que lo es únicamente en el ámbito de las proposiciones sobre P (Zagzebski 2012). 3 Si alguien se ve en la posible obligación de re-evaluar su creencia 1 Traducimos "smart technology" por "tecnología inteligente", aunque consideramos que el término es confuso, pues contribuye a la idea errónea de que son "inteligentes". ...
... En cualquier caso, creemos que afrontar esta perspectiva evaluativa necesitaría un mayor espacio de elaboración, por lo que deberá ser abordada en otra circunstancia. deben tener un carácter público (Zagzebski 2012), entonces tanto el humano como la IAD pueden acceder en igualdad de condiciones a las evidencias, establecer relaciones y formar una proposición sobre si P. Pensemos que las series históricas que utiliza la IAD entrenada mediante aprendizaje automatizado son enormes en términos de cantidad de datos. Desde estas series de datos, que han sido generadas por seres humanos, identificará los patrones que servirán para dar una respuesta a la solicitud requerida (Kelleher 2019); por ejemplo, de la serie de datos sobre el comportamiento de todos los conductores que han pasado por las carreteras que van al aeropuerto durante los dos últimos meses se pueden extraer patrones que servirán para que la IAD reproduzca una actitud doxástica. ...
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La inteligencia artificial doxástica (IAD) es un tipo de inteligencia artificial que reproduce actitudes doxásticas. Si la IAD cumple con las condiciones de paridad epistémica que se le exige a un humano, ¿podría ser también un igual epistémico? Dos iguales epistémicos sostienen propiedades cognitivas simétricas como la inteligencia, el razonamiento o la ausencia de sesgos. Para evaluar si alguien es un igual se tendrán en cuenta estas condiciones: (1) la igualdad probatoria, (2) la igualdad cognitiva y (3) revelación completa. La IAD cumple tanto (1) como (2), pero es en (3) cuando se descubre que no puede ser un igual epistémico. Ésta responde con la opinión popular más aceptada estadísticamente, es incapaz de sostener y defender sus propias afirmaciones y éstas no son un genuino acto de habla. Es una máquina doxástica incapaz de señalar cuáles son las razones que guían su respuesta.
... The first thesis claims that it is not possible to attribute genuine epistemic expertise to AI systems, differently from what some scholars in literature seem to suggest. In fact, by discussing Croce and Zagzebski's accounts of expertise and authority in virtue epistemology (Croce, 2018(Croce, , 2019aZagzebski, 2012), we show that epistemic expertise requires a relationship with understanding and a demonstration of abilities that AI systems lack. As a result, we contend that no epistemic obligation arises from interacting with a highly accurate AI. ...
... 2 See, for instance, (Zagzebski, 2012;Jäger, 2016;Croce, 2018;Greco, 2002). ...
... Definition 2 (Epistemic authority (Zagzebski, 2012)) A subject X is an epistemic authority for a subject Y in the doxastic domain D if X does what Y would do if Y was more conscientious or better at satisfying the aim of conscientiousness, namely, getting the truth. ...
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The high predictive accuracy of contemporary machine learning-based AI systems has led some scholars to argue that, in certain cases, we should grant them epistemic expertise and authority over humans. This approach suggests that humans would have the epistemic obligation of relying on the predictions of a highly accurate AI system. Contrary to this view, in this work we claim that it is not possible to endow AI systems with a genuine account of epistemic expertise. In fact, relying on accounts of expertise and authority from virtue epistemology, we show that epistemic expertise requires a relation with understanding that AI systems do not satisfy and intellectual abilities that these systems do not manifest. Further, following the Distribution Cognition theory and adapting an account by Croce on the virtues of collective epistemic agents to the case of human-AI interactions we show that, if an AI system is successfully appropriated by a human agent, a hybrid epistemic agent emerges, which can become both an epistemic expert and an authority. Consequently, we claim that the aforementioned hybrid agent is the appropriate object of a discourse around trust in AI and the epistemic obligations that stem from its epistemic superiority.
... If cognitive and personality ontologies do shape our ideology, as recent research suggests (Zmigrod, 2022;Zmigrod et al., 2021), then the search for these building blocks should be also extended to related aspects of the cognitive and affective development of individuals. In an attempt to provide a developmentally informed perspective to the study of sociopolitical trust and political ideology and in line with such attempts in political psychology and neuroscience, we focus here on the key sociological, psychological, and philosophical construct (Faulkner, 2011;McLeod, 2018;Zagzebski, 2013) of epistemic trust. ...
... In an attempt to bring a developmentally informed perspective to the study of sociopolitical trust and political ideology, we focused here on the key sociological and philosophical construct (Faulkner, 2011;McLeod, 2018;Zagzebski, 2013) of epistemic trust and how it relates to key political dimensions, which could mediate the preference for political leaders. We used an SEM and a network analysis to investigate such links. ...
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There is growing concern about the impact of declining political trust on democracies. Psychological research has introduced the concept of epistemic (mis)trust as a stable disposition acquired through development, which may influence our sociopolitical engagement. Given trust’s prominence in current politics, we examined the relationship between epistemic trust and people’s choices of (un)trustworthy political leaders. In two representative samples in the UK and US ( N = 1096), we tested whether epistemic trust predicts political leader choices through three political dimensions: dogmatism, political trust, and ideology. Although epistemic trust did not directly predict choices of political leaders, it predicted dogmatism and political ideology, which in turn predicted choices of political leaders. A network analysis revealed that epistemic trust and political dimensions only interact through their common connection with dogmatism. These findings suggest that cognitive and affective development may underlie an individual’s political ideology and associated beliefs.
... Moreover, trusting one's own cognitive faculties may require us to give the benefit of the doubt to those of others (cf. Zagzebski 2012). Epistemic trust can be thought of as the fairly thin disposition to treat a state of some thinga cognitive faculty, a thermometer, a testifier making noiseas a reliable enough indicator of whether a proposition is true or false. ...
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Epistemic trust in others frequently cannot be disentangled from interpersonal trust more generally, but the epistemic implications of how we affectively express our trust in others are under-investigated. This essay claims that gratitude, despite its empirically undeniable importance to human flourishing generally, is also important epistemically and in several intersecting ways. To be grateful to a person is to represent the world differently in key respects. Gratitude, even if it is for past non-epistemic benefits, should play an important role in shaping who we epistemically rely on. Gratitude for specifically epistemic benefits is an important way in which we show our attunement to epistemic value and contribute to the incentive structures that make much of our public knowledge and informational ecosystems possible. Likewise, ingratitude is a crippling epistemic vice that renders our dependence on quality sources of information fragile and vulnerable to capture by misinformation.
... As for the skill-virtue distinction itself, it has sometimes been argued that virtues are skills (Annas 1995), at least in the epistemic domain (Sosa 2007). Another view is that epistemic virtues are closely associated with epistemic skills (Zagzebski 2012). From where I sit, there are good reasons to follow Zagzebski and hence draw a separation between skill and virtue. ...
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Why should you inquire for yourself as a novice in a domain of inquiry when, for most questions within most domains, there are established experts to consult instead? In the face of this question, recent discussants of “autonomous-yet-novice” inquiry have sought to defend its epistemic value for the inquirer. Here I argue that autonomous-yet-novice inquiry can also be epistemically beneficial for agents other than the inquirer herself. Paradigm cases are those in which one agent improves her zetetic skills or virtues through an encounter or interaction with a more skillful or virtuous autonomous-yet-novice inquirer.
... In such cases, medical doctors are typically able to make some of their reasoning explicit, for instance by visually double-checking whether the mole has the well-known typical characteristics of malignant melanoma or of a benign melanocytic nevus. Another difference is that, as some philosophers have argued, self-trust in one's own capacities, together with the conscientious employment of these capacities, is an essential precondition for having justified beliefs and knowledge in the first place (Zagzebski, 2012;Dormandy, 2020). By contrast, trust in AI systems is not essentially tied up with our human abilities to justifiably believe and know. ...
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Artificial intelligent (AI) systems used in medicine are often very reliable and accurate, but at the price of their being increasingly opaque. This raises the question whether a system’s opacity undermines the ability of medical doctors to acquire knowledge on the basis of its outputs. We investigate this question by focusing on a case in which a patient’s risk of recurring breast cancer is predicted by an opaque AI system. We argue that, given the system’s opacity, as well as the possibility of malfunctioning AI systems, practitioners’ inability to check the correctness of their outputs, and the high stakes of such cases, the knowledge of medical practitioners is indeed undermined. They are lucky to form true beliefs based on the AI systems’ outputs, and knowledge is incompatible with luck. We supplement this claim with a specific version of the safety condition on knowledge, Safety*. We argue that, relative to the perspective of the medical doctor in our example case, his relevant beliefs could easily be false, and this despite his evidence that the AI system functions reliably. Assuming that Safety* is necessary for knowledge, the practitioner therefore doesn’t know. We address three objections to our proposal before turning to practical suggestions for improving the epistemic situation of medical doctors.
... (p.viii) In some corners, the outright opposition to scholarly advocacy work is not related to questions of 'epistemic authority' (Zagzebski, 2012). Instead, the scepticism stems from the argument that valuable knowledge should not be used to call for action (Wells, 2018). ...
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Engaged scholarship plays a crucial role in shaping collective narratives and fostering inclusive societies. This article explores the concept of engaged scholarship, highlighting both its transformative potential and the discontents that accompany it. Informed by existing literature and personal reflections, the discussion is divided into three key sections. The first section provides a concise overview of engaged scholarship and outlines the conditions that enable its practice. The second section delves into the main discontents of engaged scholarship: narrow definitions of academic work, polarised views on knowledge and truth, restrictive professional guidelines, the potential for backlash, and the risk of burnout. These pitfalls create an environment where scholars may hesitate to engage fully, despite the pressing need for their contributions to public discourse. In the third and final section, the article emphasises the moral imperative of using research for social change and advocates for the creation of supportive ecosystems to help scholars navigate the challenges of public engagement.
... Since the superintelligence is better at cognitive work than we are, it may see past the errors and confusions that cloud our thinking" [3: 211]. 13 For a detailed account of the concept of epistemic authority, see Linda Zagzebski [41]. ...
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Phronesis, or practical wisdom, is a capacity the possession of which enables one to make good practical judgments and thus fulfill the distinctive function of human beings. Nir Eisikovits and Dan Feldman convincingly argue that this capacity may be undermined by statistical machine-learning-based AI. The critic questions: why should we worry that AI undermines phronesis? Why can’t we epistemically defer to AI, especially when it is superintelligent? Eisikovits and Feldman acknowledge such objection but do not consider it seriously. In this paper, we argue that there is a way to reconcile Eisikovits and Feldman with their critic by adopting the principle of epistemic heed, according to which we should exercise our rational capacity as much as possible while heeding a superintelligence’s output whenever possible.
... To understand when and how environmentalism can threaten epistemic autonomy, we first need to get a grip on what "epistemic autonomy," in the relevant sense, is. It is by now a familiar point (expressed, e.g., by Zagzebski, 2012;Bullock, 2018, 441-442;Matheson, 2023, 84-89) that epistemic autonomy, in the sense in which it is important and valuable, should be understood as self-governance rather than self-reliance. 1 So, "epistemic autonomy" in the relevant sense does not mean achieving valuable epistemic results by oneself-for example, refusing to consider expert testimony as evidence and figuring everything out on one's own. It means, instead, exercising rational control over one's beliefs: subjecting one's beliefs to scrutiny and governing them conscientiously, instead of uncritically accepting whatever beliefs one finds oneself having and instead of having one's beliefs governed by others. ...
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I will clarify when and how a tension arises between epistemic environmentalism (a new focus on assessing and improving the epistemic environment) and respect for epistemic autonomy (allowing, empowering, and requiring people to each govern their own beliefs). Using the example of participatory conceptual engineering (improving the linguistic environment through rational discussion with broad participation), I will also identify an option for avoiding the tension—namely, participatory environmentalism. This means a new focus on how people can each contribute to improving the shared epistemic environment through rational deliberation and thereby govern their own beliefs that are shaped by that environment.
... We do not deny that seemings -ways the world seems to us -can justify religious beliefs (Gage and McAllister 2020). We do not think testimony is a bad or defective way to acquire knowledge, or that authority is epistemically worthless (Zagzebski 2012). We do not reject the possibility of special divine action, and so, the potential legitimacy of revelation (see Larmer 2015 and other contributions in the same issue). ...
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The dominance of the Abrahamic tradition in contemporary analytic philosophy of religion has led some to call for greater exploration of alternatives to the traditional conception of God, such as Pantheism, Ultimism, and Axiarchism. While we think this call for alternatives is important, we go in a different direction. Rather than explore and defend alternative conceptions of God, we defend a range of fairly traditional but non-religious conceptions of God. This range of views, from deism to philosophical theism, enjoys a variety of benefits over its religious competitors and deserves greater attention.
... A common characteristic of false authorities (fake and unintended authorities) is that they spread false information instead of valid knowledge (J€ ager, 2024). Another shared characteristic of false authorities is that their authority is subjectively recognized-which, through the lens of purely subjectivist definitions (Kruglanski, 1989;Zagzebski, 2012) would be sufficient to qualify them as epistemic authorities. ...
Article
We develop an integrative conceptual framework and research agenda for studying epistemic authorities in the digital age. Consulting epistemic authorities (e.g., professional experts, well-informed laypeople, technologies) can be an efficient fast-track to knowledge. To fulfill this functional role, those who claim epistemic authority need to be both subjectively recognized (have a perceived advantage in knowledge) and objectively justified (have an actual advantage in knowledge). In a digital media context, new and unconventional knowledge sources have emerged that can fulfill the functional role of epistemic authorities. But false authorities that disseminate misinformation have emerged as well while other sources with important knowledge remain unrecognized. We further analyze the functional role of epistemic intermediaries that can mitigate such problematic developments by correcting false authorities and by providing endorsement for unrecognized authorities. We conclude with a research agenda to study functional forms of epistemic authorities and epistemic intermediaries in the digital public sphere.
... Siyasette epistemik krize neden olan bir başka etken, felsefi kuramlarda siyasi otorite ve liderlerin epistemik yönden yeterince tartışılmamış olmasıdır. Otoritenin şimdiye kadar sadece politik güç, özgürlük ve adalet gibi konularla ele alınması, otorite ve liderin epistemik kusurları doğuran yönünü görmemizi engelliyor (Zagzebski, 2012). Otorite, epistemik açıdan ele alındığında, doğruluk koşullarını değiştirmedeki rolü ve bu değişimin toplumun yapısal düzenlemelerine etkisi belirgin hale gelecektir. ...
... Thus, fact-checkers demonstrate their epistemic authority, which can be understood as "a set of relationships between knowledge creators and those pursuing this knowledge" (Carlson, 2022, p. 67). This relationship is based on trust between the information sender and receiver, although such authority is neither given nor static but rather constantly contested and reconstructed (Carlson, 2020;Zagzebski, 2012). Media professionals need to establish such authority or its perception to achieve the status of the "credible spokespersons of real-life events" (Zelizer, 1992, p. 8). ...
Article
The prevalence of disinformation in media ecosystems has spurred efforts by researchers from various disciplines and media professionals to find effective methods for verifying information at scale. Automated fact-checking has emerged as a promising solution to combat disinformation. However, fully automated tools have not yet materialized. This technographic case study of a start-up company, “X,” investigated the challenges associated with this process. By conceptualizing automated fact-checking as a technological innovation within journalistic knowledge production, the article uncovered the reasons behind the gap between “X's” initial enthusiasm about AI's capabilities in verifying information and the actual performance of such tools. These reasons cross the disciplinary boundaries relating to the technological aspects of automated fact-checking and a requirement for such tools to be epistemically authoritative. The study revealed significant hurdles faced by the start-up, including issues with the accuracy of the AI editor and its adoption by the industry. Key obstacles included the elusive nature of truth claims, the rigidity of so-called binary epistemology (ascribing true/false values to information claims), data scarcity, algorithmic deficiencies, issues with the transparency of results, and industry-tool compatibility. While focused on a single company's experience, the study offers valuable insights for researchers and practitioners navigating the evolving landscape of automated fact-checking.
... The pandemic made it clear that only physicians, government officials, and individuals deemed experts were considered credible in their knowledge and as having the authority with which to engage in a public discourse about what was happening in LTC. Where the epistemic authority of the physician or expert becomes problematic is when it goes unquestioned, garners blind obedience, or suppresses the testimony of others (Zagzebski, 2012). On the other hand, Gadamer (1993Gadamer ( /1996 considered genuine authority to be that which recognizes its own limitations in the posing of questions, and the other as knowledgeable or true. ...
Article
Confronted by an unprecedented number of deaths in Long-Term Care (LTC) during the COVID-19 pandemic, society had no choice but to engage in a public discourse about the state of death and dying in LTC, and the staff who were caring for residents: healthcare aides. Despite being places where older adults die, death and dying has largely been hidden within LTC homes, serving to complicate and conceal healthcare aides’ experiences at a time when LTC residents were visibly dying. Although being the subject of public discourse, healthcare aides remained voiceless during the pandemic, their experiences of caring for dying residents overlooked by the testimony of experts. Instead of healthcare aides being invited into a conversation to share their unique knowledge of death and dying in LTC, namely through that of touch and practical wisdom, they experienced a lack of epistemic credibility, having been served a testimonial injustice.
... However, Christian evangelical missionary work has been relatively unexplored. While it is true that epistemologists in general and Christian philosophers in particular have been concerned with the nature and epistemic value of testimony (see Callahan 2023), the nature of and rational response to disagreement (see Belby 2023), and the nature of epistemic authority (see Zagzebski 2015), the nature of specifically evangelical missionary work is far less frequently explored. 1 One reason evangelical missionary work may not be frequently explored is that philosophers might assume that specifically missionary evangelizing is not philosophically interesting over and above the apologetic or other content missionaries invoke in these contexts. ...
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A missionary religious tradition such as Christianity is distinguished from some other traditions by a commitment to the goal of converting others. However, the very nature of this goal and the norms that govern the successful realization of this goal are not often explored. In this article, I argue that evangelization can be undertaken for several distinct reasons, including epistemic reasons, particularly in cases in which evangelizers are aiming at the multivalent goal of fellowship. I argue that this account illuminates several possible models of mission, that it can provide resources for further evaluation and modeling of evangelical efforts, and that it might signify the need for theologically informed positions in the contemporary meta-epistemological debate about epistemic reasons.
... In particular, examination of CA in relation to other authority conceptualizations, specifically that of epistemic authority (Croce, 2019) and work within the broader research area of social epistemology may prove fruitful. Wilson used the concept of CA, perhaps because he found little relevance of the philosophical writings on epistemic authority at the time (see Wilson, 1983) as they often highlighted epistemic autonomy, that is, reliance on one's own knowledge as superior to second-hand sources (Zagzebski, 2012). However, according to Croce (2019), research on epistemic authority has matured considerably during the past years and the concept has become central to social epistemology. ...
Article
This article provides a scoping review of 25 years of research on the notion of cognitive authority (CA), examining its conceptualization and empirical examination. The review follows the PRISMA statement and its extension for scoping reviews. Peer‐reviewed journal articles on CA were identified through database searching with the specific search term “cognitive authorit*” in the title or abstract and covering work published in 2022 or earlier. In total, 235 unique references were identified, and their abstracts and then selected full texts were screened according to predetermined exclusion criteria. In total, 40 articles were included in the review, extracted, and analyzed with qualitative content analysis focusing on the conceptualization of CA, the methodological approach taken to examine it, and the different spheres of knowledge and levels of activity the research addressed. Based on this analysis, four parallel lines of research were identified including studies conceptualizing CA: (1) as an indicator of information source quality, (2) as discursively constructed, (3) as situated in social mechanisms and settings, and (4) as institutional legitimacy of science and professions. This body of research has extended Wilson's (1983; Second‐hand knowledge: An inquiry into cognitive authority . Greenwood Press) original work contributing to our understanding of CA at individual, communal, and societal levels.
... Dies ist aber nicht der einzige Grund, warum Wissenschaftskommunikation auch auserkenntnistheoretischer SichtDialog braucht.Imvorigen Abschnitt habe ich vorgeschlagen, PUSa ls epistemisches Ziel vonW issenschaftskommunikation als eineF orm vonV erstehen zu konzeptualisieren, die zwar eineg ewisse Überlappungm it wissenschaftlichem Verstehen hat,s ich aber auch wesentlich davon unterscheidet,i ndem zum Beispiel Verstehen vonW issenschaft als sozialem Prozess sowie ein Verstehen der kognitivenA rbeitsteilunge in zentraler Bestandteil davons ind.S ov erstandene nthält PUSg erade ein Verständnis dafür, dass manchmal Vertrauen die rationalere Strategie ist,als alles selbst herausfindenzuwollen (vgl. Zagzebski, 2012Zagzebski, ,2013. Dieses Vertrauen muss aber selbst gerechtfertigt seinwas wiederum ein gewisses wissenschaftlichesG rundverstehen voraussetzt,u m herauszufinden, wann Vertrauen angebracht ist. ...
... Por ejemplo: La comunidad científica afirma que la tierra ha aumentado su temperatura, con respecto a los últimos 10 años. La segunda corresponde al testimonio de personas que no poseen especialización en un área específica del conocimiento, generalmente la familia, las amistades u otro testimonio de las redes sociales (Bokros, 2021;Núñez Ladevéze et al., 2017;Zagzebski, 2012). Por ejemplo: Mi madre me ha dicho que los cambios de temperatura hacen que me resfríe. ...
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En este trabajo se estudia cómo el alumnado justifica proposiciones de la vida cotidiana, del ámbito científico y del pseudocientífico, y también si reconoce el tipo de justificaciones que usa para posicionarse. Para ello, se trabaja con 54 estudiantes de 3º de enseñanza secundaria obligatoria en la materia de biología y geología, en la cual se implementan dos actividades de aprendizaje diseñadas para trabajar la evaluación de proposiciones. Los resultados aportan información sobre la preferencia del alumnado para usar las justificaciones relacionadas con los hábitos y las explicaciones en la evaluación de las proposiciones de la vida cotidiana, y las relacionadas con testimonios de expertos/as y de características de la personalidad en la evaluación de las proposiciones científicas y pseudocientíficas. Estos resultados nos proporcionan antecedentes útiles para reflexionar sobre cómo trabajar la cognición epistémica en el aula y de esta forma ampliar los marcos conceptuales sobre esta.
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Causation in Physics demonstrates the importance of causation in the physical world. It details why causal mastery of natural phenomena is an important part of the effective strategies of experimental physicists. It develops three novel arguments for the viewpoint that causation is indispensable to the ontology of some of our best physical theories. All three arguments make much of the successes of experimental physics. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
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Deflationism about group knowledge is the view that a group has knowledge if and only if most of its members have that knowledge. The case against deflationism has revolved around epistemic divergence arguments, which typically aim to show that members’ knowledge isn’t necessary for group knowledge. This paper is instead devoted to objections against members’ knowledge being sufficient for group knowledge. Focusing on structured groups in which members occupy roles that are connected by internal links in a social network, we develop a notion of knowledge qua such occupancy. We proceed to argue that if deflationists adopt such knowledge-qua as what constitutes structured group knowledge, they have the resources to counter worries about the sufficiency condition. If instead groups are taken to be feature collectives, then similar worries are much less pressing. Finally, we elaborate on the societal function of knowledge-qua, as well as the different epistemic assessments that arise, depending on whether the role or its occupant is considered.
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This study addresses how religious affective content in digital media influences epistemic authority, social imaginaries, and religious beliefs. It draws on data from 64 in-depth interviews with Generation Y and Generation Z individuals with a higher-education background who identified as Christian, Muslim, or Hindu, conducted in Mumbai, India. While influencers are increasingly playing a significant role in the daily lives of the respondents, the impact of family on religious behavior appears to be more substantial than the epistemic sources on social media. In this context, accrued social capital can help individuals develop resilience or resistance to online disinformation, hate speech, and radicalization. Furthermore, while individuals exhibited animosity toward politicians and journalists, they also expressed nationalist attitudes, e.g., a shared Indian identity and common cultural capital, which may serve as ‘superglue’ for living peacefully in the current climate shaped by religious fundamentalist movements. In general, this field study contributes to the ongoing scholarly growth of the interdisciplinary focus of digital religion studies, and particularly on the impact of the social media domain on fundamentalist beliefs.
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In this article, I argue in defense of responsibility for bad beliefs from the perspective of ethics of belief and cognitive science, providing a classification of bad beliefs into three types. I also present arguments in support of the regulative value of truth. Metaethical moral relativism alters the understanding of the basic tenets of the ethics of beliefs and also undermines the idea of truth as a fundamental epistemic good. There are potential epistemic pitfalls associated with moral relativism, including its use to support bad beliefs, where truth becomes relative to the benefit of a group or those in power, thus undermining the very concept of truth. Although Clifford’s classic principle is overly demanding, moral responsibility should be required for the way beliefs are acquired, since epistemically ill-formed beliefs tend to become morally and epistemically bad under unfavorable social conditions.
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The symptoms and associated features of mental disorders can include profound and often debilitating effects on behaviour, mood and attitude, social interactions, and engagement with the world more generally. One area of living that is closely tied to mental disorder is that of our intellectual lives, pursuits, and projects. If the symptoms and features of mental disorders can have significance when it comes to intellectual activity, however, it is plausible that they can also have significance when it comes to epistemic-normative questions. I.e., questions concerning whether a person conducts their intellectual activities as they should and what is the normative status of the outputs of those activities. In this paper, I introduce the concepts of epistemic health and epistemic disorder as tools to examine and help understand the relationship between mental health, mental disorders, and epistemic agency. To do so, I explore the connections between a key aspect of our epistemic lives, epistemic self-trust and its associated maladjustments, self-distrust and excess self-trust, and a specific mental disorder, bipolar disorder. Drawing upon empirical work on metacognition and extracts from Kay Redfield Jamison’s bipolar memoir An Unquiet Mind, I argue that there is a significant association between bipolar disorder, the symptoms of depression and mania, and the risk of self-distrust and excess self-trust. In this light, I suggest that consideration of this relationship helps us to recognise how self-trust can be the site of a significant vulnerability with respect to one’s epistemic agency that merits the label of an epistemic disorder.
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Explanations are conceived to ensure the trustworthiness of AI systems. Yet, relying solemnly on algorithmic solutions, as provided by explainable artificial intelligence (XAI), might fall short to account for sociotechnical risks jeopardizing their factuality and informativeness. To mitigate these risks, we delve into the complex landscape of ethical risks surrounding XAI systems and their generated explanations. By employing a literature review combined with rigorous thematic analysis, we uncover a diverse array of technical risks tied to the robustness, fairness, and evaluation of XAI systems. Furthermore, we address a broader range of contextual risks jeopardizing their security, accountability, reception alongside other cognitive, social, and ethical concerns of explanations. We advance a multi-layered risk assessment framework, where each layer advances strategies for practical intervention, management, and documentation of XAI systems within organizations. Recognizing the theoretical nature of the framework advanced, we discuss it in a conceptual case study. For the XAI community, our multifaceted investigation represents a path to practically address XAI risks while enriching our understanding of the ethical ramifications of incorporating XAI in decision-making processes.
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Straipsnyje analizuojama mokslinio autoriteto kaip argumento viešajame diskurse problematika. Mokslinio autoriteto funkcionavimo dėsningumą iliustruoja autoritetą žyminčių leksemų vartojimas internetinės žiniasklaidos straipsnių antraštėse. Tyrimas atskleidžia, kad apeliavimas į autoritetą – argumentum ad verecundiam – yra gyvybinga ir intensyviai antraštėse pasitelkiama retorinio paveikumo technika. Tekstyno analizės metodu atrinkus ir susisteminus duomenis atlikta retorinė diskurso analizė: atskleisti mokslinį autoritetą žyminčių dėmenų vartojimo polinkiai, nustatytos būdingosios autoriteto charakteristikos, veiklos sritys, aptartos retorinio paveikumo prielaidos.
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In this paper, I provide a characterisation of a neglected form of humility: magnanimous humility. Unlike most contemporary analyses of humility, magnanimous humility is not about limitations but instead presupposes that one possesses some entitlement in a context. I suggest that magnanimous intellectual humility (IH) consists in a disposition to appropriately refrain from exercising one's legitimate epistemic entitlements because one is appropriately motivated to pursue some epistemic good. I then shown that Magnanimous IH has an important role to play in contexts of disagreement and oppression. It calls on knowing parties to refrain from pressing their epistemic entitlements to facilitate mutual understanding. And it is a virtue that oppressed persons have good reason to cultivate in order to develop meta‐lucidity in themselves and others.
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In this practice note, the authors reflect on the use and utility of expert panels in evaluation. They apply the describe, analyze, theorize, act model using interviews with evaluators, insights from peer-reviewed literature and their own professional observations. Connections are made to larger evaluation discourses regarding reflection, expert opinion, expertise, epistemic authority, and lived experience. It was found that expert panels are generally underutilized in evaluation due to a lack of awareness among evaluators as well as the perceived complexity associated with this method. However, the literature and interviews were clear that, when managed properly, expert panels can add tremendous value to an evaluation. There is therefore merit for more seriously considering panels in future evaluations. This note provides recommendations for evaluators and the evaluation community at large.
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In his account of phenomenological psychopathology, Karl Jaspers advocates for the central role of subjective experience, something which he maintains cannot be accessed through intellectual effort, but through “empathic understanding” alone. In contradistinction to Jaspers’ account, I propose that phenomenology, as a process of inquiry and investigation, is fundamentally epistemological. Accordingly, I offer an intellectual virtue characterization of phenomenological psychopathology, using open-mindedness to illustrate the close conceptual links between the phenomenological endeavor and the intellectual virtues. By introducing the intellectual virtue lexicon into the phenomenological psychopathology discourse, I then offer three preliminary recommendations for the training and education of phenomenological clinicians. Centering the educational recommendations on the psychiatric interview, I suggest that good questioning, listening, and reflecting necessarily require cultivation for intellectually virtuous phenomenological inquiry.
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Die aktuelle Diskussion zu künstlicher Intelligenz und Vertrauen ist einerseits durch etwas geprägt, was man „Vertrauens-Enthusiasmus“ nennen könnte. Dabei wird Vertrauen als eine Einstellung konzeptualisiert, die wir gegenüber KI-Systemen prinzipiell ausbilden können und – sofern und sobald diese Systeme entsprechend ausgereift sind – auch ausbilden sollten. Auf der anderen Seite wird diese Verwendungsweise des Vertrauens-Begriffs in einem signifikanten Teil der philosophischen Literatur mit großer Skepsis betrachtet. Zwei der in diesem Zusammenhang maßgeblichen Argumente lauten, erstens, dass ein Vertrauen in KI-Systeme nicht mit der für diese Systeme charakteristischen Intransparenz kompatibel sei, und zweitens, dass es auf eine Art Kategorienfehler hinauslaufe, zu sagen, man könne solchen Systemen „vertrauen“. Ich möchte in diesem Aufsatz für die Auffassung argumentieren, dass sowohl die enthusiastische als auch die skeptische Position problematisch sind. Gegen die skeptische Position wende ich ein, dass weder das Intransparenz- noch das Kategorienfehler-Argument letztlich überzeugen, und argumentiere, dass es zumindest eine natürliche Verwendungsweise des Vertrauensbegriffs gibt – Vertrauen als Haltung des Nicht-Hinterfragens –, die auch auf die Beziehung zu KI-Systemen angewandt werden kann. Andererseits wende ich gegen den Vertrauens-Enthusiasmus ein, dass dieser ein zu unkritisches Bild von Vertrauen zeichnet und dazu tendiert, dessen Risiken und Schattenseiten zu vernachlässigen. Ich setze dem enthusiastischen Bild das Prinzip Caveat usor entgegen und argumentiert, dass vernünftig dosiertes Vertrauen in KI-Systeme stets mit epistemischer Wachsamkeit einhergehen sollte.
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A limited understanding of science results in a reliance on trusting science experts on science-related issues. To avoid misplacing trust and to be empowered to make decisions related to science issues, students need to learn the nature of science (NOS). Questions such as “How does science work?”, “How do scientists reach conclusions?”, or “When should we be sceptical about science?’ serves as meaningful starting points for students’ learning of NOS. A practice-oriented approach to learning NOS that emphasizes the use of NOS understanding has been shown to support students’ evaluation of science-related issues. However, its impact on students’ epistemic growth beyond cognition remains underexplored. Contextualized within the Covid-19 pandemic in a lesson unit guided by a practice-oriented approach to NOS, this qualitative case study examines students’ growth in understanding and concern about trust in science. Here, 73 undergraduate students enrolled in a general education course on making sense of science-related social issues participated in this study. Reflective journals were used to chart participants’ epistemic growth. Findings revealed an increased understanding and concern related to trust and the use of NOS understanding. Challenges faced by participants and their responses to these challenges were identified. The chapter concludes by calling for a practice turn that goes beyond cold cognition and considers a warm trend to learning NOS.
Article
What do judges know, or think they know? What do judges not know, and not know that they do not know? When and why do judges sort themselves into competing “tribes”? The answer is that like everyone else, judges are part of epistemic communities. Consider some illustrations. In the last two decades, there has been an extraordinary outpouring of careful historical work on two of the most fundamental questions in constitutional law: (1) whether Congress may delegate open-ended discretionary power to the executive branch (or others) and (2) whether Congress may restrict the president’s power to remove high-level officials in the executive branch. The best reading of the new evidence is that there was no robust nondelegation doctrine during the founding period, if there was a nondelegation doctrine at all. Though the issue is closer, the best reading of the new evidence is that during the founding period, the Constitution was understood to authorize Congress to restrict the president’s power of removal, even over principal officers (with important qualifications). What is remarkable is that in both contexts, no originalist on the Court has been convinced by the relevant evidence, or even seriously grappled with it. There are three plausible explanations for the apparent impotence of historical evidence in this context (and others). The first points to optimal search, and hence to simple lack of awareness of the relevant evidence. The second is Bayesian and spotlights rational updating. The third points to motivated reasoning. All three accounts offer lessons for lawyers and others seeking to marshal historical or other evidence to disrupt engrained judicial beliefs.
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La epistemología política es un ámbito de investigación en progresiva construcción que se sitúa en la intersección de la filosofía política y de la epistemología, que, quizás por su reciente aparición en la literatura académica, tiene más un aire de familia, que muestran las colecciones de temas (injusticia epistémica, ignorancia estructural, democracia y expertos) que una construcción conceptual que dé cuenta de tal intersección de lo político y lo epistemológico. Este trabajo propone una explicación de este espacio de confluencia y lo entiende como la interacción (positiva y negativa) de las posiciones sociales y cognitivas de los agentes. En este espacio, las demandas de justicia y conocimiento se influyen reforzándose o debilitándose. La dinámica común (justicia-conocimiento) es lo que constituye este campo de investigación en el que la diversidad de temas que han sido tratados hasta el momento son expresiones de las situaciones y circunstancias sociales en las que las virtudes de la justicia y el conocimiento se constriñen mutuamente.
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The following reviews recent developments in the cognitive and evolutionary psychology of religion, and argues for an adaptationist stance.
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In this paper I examine the sixth century Rule of St. Benedict, and argue that the authority structure of Benedictine communities as described in that document satisfies well-known principles of authority defended by Joseph Raz. This should lead us to doubt the common assumption that pre-modern models of authority violate the modern ideal of the autonomy of the self. I suggest that what distinguishes modern liberal authority from Benedictine authority is not the principles that justify it, but rather the first order beliefs for the sake of which authority is sought by the individual, and the degree of trust between the authority and the subject.
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How do we acquire knowledge from either the spoken or written word of others? This is the question at the center of The Epistemology of Testimony, a collection of essays devoted to the epistemological issues that arise from an examination of testimonial knowledge. Despite its historical neglect, recent years have seen an explosion of interesting and innovative philosophical work on this topic. This book builds on and further develops this work by bringing together new papers by some of the leading scholars in the field. Since this volume is the only collection of papers on testimony strictly within the analytic tradition, it represents a new and significant contribution to this fertile epistemological literature.
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This chapter argues that epistemic self-trust is more basic than what we take to be reasons for belief, and that consistent self-trust commits us to trust in others. Epistemic self-trust is rationally inescapable, given that the search for reasons leads to epistemic circularity, and the more basic fact that we have no way to tell that there is any connection at all between reasons and truth without trust in ourselves when we are epistemically conscientious. The chapter then argues that when we are conscientious we will inevitably come to believe that other persons have the same quality of conscientiousness in virtue of which we trust ourselves, and so we owe them epistemic trust in advance of reasons for thinking they are reliable. The fact that someone else has a belief gives me a prima facie reason to believe it myself, and the reason is stronger when large numbers of people share the belief. The conclusion is that consistent epistemic selftrust supports common agreement arguments, and in particular, it supports a form of the consensus gentium argument for theism.
Article
Much of what we know is acquired by taking things on the word of other people whom we trust and treat as authorities concerning what to believe. But what exactly is it to take someone's word for something? What is it to treat another as an authority concerning what to believe, and what is it to then trust her for the truth? This book argues that philosophers have failed to appreciate the nature and significance of our epistemic dependence on the word of others. What others tell us is the case-their testimony, as philosophers use the term-provides us with a reason for belief that is fundamentally unlike the kind of reason for belief provided by other kinds of impersonal evidence. Unlike a footprint in the snow or a bloody knife left at the scene of a crime, a speaker's testimony provides an audience with what the book calls a second-personal reason for belief, a reason for belief that serves to parcel out epistemic responsibility for the belief interpersonally between speaker and audience. This book explains how this position relates to the historical development of philosophical questions about testimony, draws out what is at stake between this position and other competing positions in the contemporary epistemological literature on testimony, highlights and clarifies what is so controversial about this position, and shows how this position connects to broader philosophical issues concerning trust, the second person, and the role of authority in both theoretical and practical rationality.
Article
This text collects all Austin’s published articles plus a new one, ch. 13, hitherto unpublished. The analysis of the ordinary language to clarify philosophical questions is the common element of the 13 papers. Chapters 2 and 4 discuss the nature of knowledge, focusing on ‘performative utterances’. The doctrine of ‘speech acts’, i.e. a statement may be the pragmatic use of language, is discussed in Chs 6 and 10. Chapters 8, 9, and 12 reflect on the problems the language encounters in discussing actions and consider the cases of excuses, accusations, and freedom. The ‘correspondence theory’, i.e. a statement is truth when it corresponds to a fact, is presented in Chs 5 and 6. Finally, Chs 1 and 3 study how a word may have different but related senses considering Aristotle’s view. Chapters 11 and 13 illustrate the meaning of ‘pretending’ and a Plato’s text respectively.
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This chapter develops an account of the circumstances in which it is epistemically apt to defer to another's judgement about some topic, expressed in her testimony. This can include aesthetic and moral matters. The extent to which this compromises our epistemic autonomy is investigated, and it is argued that, by being discriminating in whom we trust, we can still maintain responsibility for our own beliefs. The supposedly ideal epistemically autonomous agent, who trusts no-one else's word, is shown to be really an irrational dogmatist.
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This chapter introduces many of the central philosophical puzzles about peer disagreement. It starts with a discussion of disagreements in religion, and then extends the discussion to philosophical, political, and other disagreements. It assesses arguments for and against the skeptical view that the symmetry present in cases of peer disagreements makes suspension of judgment the appropriate attitude. The author of the chapter is unable to give up his beliefs in many of these cases and unable to accept the conclusion that his own beliefs are not rational, but is also unable to answer satisfactorily the arguments for the skeptical view.
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Party platforms differ sharply from one another, especially on issues with religious content, such as abortion or gay marriage. Given the high return to attracting the median voter, why do vote-maximizing politicians take extreme positions? In this paper we find that strategic extremism depends on an intensive margin where politicians want to induce their core constituents to vote (or make donations) and the ability to target political messages toward those core constituents. Our model predicts that the political relevance of religious issues is highest when around one-half of the voting population attends church regularly. Using data from across the world and within the United States, we indeed find a nonmonotonic relationship between religious extremism and religious attendance.
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A travers l'exemple du mensonge d'Abraham au roi Abimelek dans la «Genese», 20, l'A. evalue la these traditionnelle de la preference morale pour la tromperie intentionnelle plutot que pour le mensonge. Mesurant les consequences personnelles et les consequences sociales de la certitude, l'A. montre que la distinction morale entre le mensonge et la tromperie n'est pas valide des lors qu'elle est appliquee a la tromperie communicative. De facon generale, les normes de la pratique communicative dementent la these d'une asymetrie ethique en faveur de la tromperie
Article
According to the standard conception of the “value problem ” in epistemology, the problem originates with a compelling pretheoretical intuition to the effect that knowledge is more valuable than true belief. 1 Call this the “guiding intuition. ” The guiding intuition is thought to motivate a constraint on an analysis of knowledge such that any plausible analysis must entail that knowledge is more valuable than true belief. A problem emerges in light of two additional considerations. The first is that knowledge is roughly justified or warranted true belief. 2 The second is that given certain popular accounts of knowledge, the value of justification or warrant is apparently derivative from and reducible to the value of true belief. 3 But if knowledge is justified true belief, then these accounts apparently fail to entail that knowledge has value over and above the value of true belief and so fail to satisfy the relevant constraint. Defenders of these theories of knowledge have generally responded by attempting to show that the value of justification as they conceive of it is not entirely derivative from the value of true belief and hence that their theories do satisfy the relevant constraint and so are able to overcome the value problem. 4 I argue here that the value problem conceived in the foregoing way is unmotivated and
Article
How should you live? Should you devote yourself to perfecting a single talent or try to live a balanced life? Should you lighten up and have more fun, or buckle down and try to achieve greatness? Should you try to be a better friend? Should you be self-critical or self-accepting? And how should you decide among the possibilities open to you? Should you consult experts, listen to your parents, or should you do lots of research? Should you make lists of pros and cons, or go with your gut? These are not questions that can be answered in general or in the abstract. Rather, these questions are addressed to the first person point of view, to the perspective each of us occupies when we reflect on how to live without knowing exactly what we're aiming for. To answer them, this book focuses on the process of living one's life from the inside, rather than on defining goals from the outside. Drawing on traditional philosophical sources as well as literature and recent work in social psychology, this book argues that to live well, we need to develop reflective wisdom: to care about things that will sustain us and give us good experiences, to have perspective on our successes and failures, and to be moderately self-aware and cautiously optimistic about human nature. Further, we need to know when to think about our values, character, and choices, and when not to. A crucial part of wisdom, the book maintains, is being able to shift perspectives: to be self-critical; to be realistic; to examine life when reflection is appropriate, but not when we should lose ourselves in experience.
Article
In this paper I argue that to understand the ethics of belief we need to put it in a context of what we care about. Epistemic values always arise from something we care about and they arise only from something we care about. It is caring that gives rise to the demand to be epistemically conscientious. The reason morality puts epistemic demands on us is that we care about morality. But there may be a (small) class of beliefs which it is not wrong to hold unconscientiously. I also argue that epistemic values enjoy a privileged place in the panorama of what we care about because they are entailed by anything we care about. That means that when there is a conflict between caring about knowledge or true belief and caring about something else, that conflict cannot be resolved simply by following the one we care about the most because caring about knowledge in any domain is entailed by caring about that domain. Finally, I argue that whereas caring demands different degrees of conscientiousness in different contexts, contextualism about knowledge is less plausible.
Article
INTRODUCTION As it is currently understood, the notion of autonomy, both as something that belongs to human beings and human nature, as such, and also as the source or basis of morality (that is, duty), is bound up inextricably with the philosophy of Kant. The term “autonomy” itself derives from classical Greek, where (at least in surviving texts) it was applied primarily or even exclusively in a political context, to civic communities possessing independent legislative and self-governing authority. The term was taken up again in Renaissance and early modern times with similar political applications, but was applied also in ecclesiastical disputes about the independence of reformed churches from the former authority in religious matters of the church of the Roman popes. Kant's innovation consisted in conceiving of (finite) individual rational persons, as such, as lawgivers or legislators to themselves, and to all rational beings (or rather to all that are not perfect and holy wills), for their individual modes of behavior. For Kant, rational beings possess a power of legislating for themselves individually, according to which they each set their own personal ends and subject that selection, and their pursuit of the ends in question, to a universal principle, which is expressed in Kant's categorical imperative. The categorical imperative requires that one set one’s own ends only within a framework that would warrant acceptance by all other such beings.
Article
Epistemic subjectivism, as I am using the term, is a view in the same spirit as relativism, rooted in skepticism about the objectivity or universality of epistemic norms. I explore some ways that we might motivate subjectivism drawing from some common themes in analytic epistemology. Without diagnosing where the arguments go wrong, I argue that the resulting position is untenable.
Article
I examine ways in which belief can and cannot be coerced. Belief simply cannot be coerced in a way analogous to central cases of coerced action, for it cannot be coerced by threats which serve as genuine reasons for belief. But there are two other ways in which the concept of coercion can apply to belief. Belief can be indirectly coerced by threats which serve as reasons for acting in ways designed to bring about a belief, and it can be coercively compelled by threats which non‐rationally cause belief. The former is often a necessary and epistemically acceptable feature of compulsory education, but the latter produces beliefs which even if true are epistemically problematic.
Article
I defend the acceptance principle for testimony (APT), that hearers are justified in accepting testimony unless they have positive evidence against its reliability, against Elizabeth Fricker's local reductionist view. Local reductionism, the doctrine that hearers need evidence that a particular piece of testimony is reliable if they are to be justified in believing it, must on pain of scepticism be complemented by a principle that grants default justification to some testimony; I argue that (APT) is the principle required. I consider two alternative weaker principles as complements to local reductionism; one yields counter–intuitive results unless we accept (APT) as well, while the other is too weak to enable local reductionism to avoid scepticism.
Article
Knowledge has almost always been treated as good, better than mere true belief, but it is remarkably difficult to explain what it is about knowledge that makes it better. I call this "the value problem." I have previously argued that most forms of reliabilism cannot handle the value problem. In this article I argue that the value problem is more general than a problem for reliabilism, infecting a host of different theories, including some that are internalist. An additional problem is that not all instances of true belief seem to be good on balance, so even if a given instance of knowing will be good enough to explain why knowledge has received so much attention in the history of philosophy. The article aims to answer two questions: (1) What makes knowing p better than merely truly believing p? The answer involves an exploration of the connection between believing and the agency of the knower. Knowing is an act in which the knower gets credit for achieving truth. (2)What makes some instances of knowing good enough to make the investigation of knowledge worthy of so much attention? The answer involves the connection between the good of believing truths of certain kinds and a good life. In the best kinds of knowing, the knower not only gets credit for getting the truth but also gets credit for getting a desirable truth. The kind of value that makes knowledge a fitting object of extensive philosophical inquiry is not independent of moral value and the wider values of a good life.
Article
States claim to be entitled to tell you what to do, and to force you to do as you are told. This dual claim to authority and coercion is familiar in the context of the criminal law. It claims to apply even, perhaps especially, to those who reject its claims. But it is also a familiar feature of the tax code, and the law of private remedies. If I owe you (or the IRS) money, the law says I must pay, where "must" here means something like "on pain of having my assets attached, or wages garnished." And that "must" applies to me no matter what I happen to think about it.The dominant tradition in political philosophy over the past century and a half has contended, implicitly or explicitly, that the state's claim to authority takes priority over the claim to coerce. As a result, this tradition contends that the primary normative question of political philosophy concerns the authority of society over the individual. Thus, the principal task of political philosophy is to define the moral limits of the state's authority. Questions about coercion are regarded as secondary, and as governed by additional considerations, about such matters as efficacy or fair opportunities to avoid sanction.My aim in this article is to propose and defend a different view about the relation between authority and coercion, according to which the state's claim to authority is inseparable from the rationale for coercion. Instead of asking what people ought to do, or what the state ought to tell them to do, and then asking which of those things they may be forced to do, we ask when the use of force is legitimate. On the view I will defend here, both the use of official force and the claim of states to tell people what to do are justified because, in their absence, arbitrary individual force prevails, even if people act in good faith. I will present my account, and offer support for it, through a discussion of Kant's views on the matter. Kant's views about coercion have, I think, been widely misunderstood, no doubt in part because they have been assimilated to the dominant tradition. In order to highlight their distinctiveness, then, I will begin by saying something about the dominant view, before turning to Kant's approach.
Article
In my book How the Mind Works, I defended the theory that the human mind is a naturally selected system of organs of computation. Jerry Fodor claims that ‘the mind doesn’t work that way’(in a book with that title) because (1) Turing Machines cannot duplicate humans’ ability to perform abduction (inference to the best explanation); (2) though a massively modular system could succeed at abduction, such a system is implausible on other grounds; and (3) evolution adds nothing to our understanding of the mind. In this review I show that these arguments are flawed. First, my claim that the mind is a computational system is different from the claim Fodor attacks (that the mind has the architecture of a Turing Machine); therefore the practical limitations of Turing Machines are irrelevant. Second, Fodor identifies abduction with the cumulative accomplishments of the scientific community over millennia. This is very different from the accomplishments of human common sense, so the supposed gap between human cognition and computational models may be illusory. Third, my claim about biological specialization, as seen in organ systems, is distinct from Fodor's own notion of encapsulated modules, so the limitations of the latter are irrelevant. Fourth, Fodor's arguments dismissing of the relevance of evolution to psychology are unsound.
Article
This paper explores the nature of curiosity from an epistemological point of view. First it motivates this exploration by explaining why epistemologists do and should care about what curiosity is. Then it surveys the relevant literature and develops a particular approach.
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Two models of assertion are described and their epistemological implications considered. The assurance model draws a parallel between the ethical norms surrounding promising and the epistemic norms which facilitate the transmission of testimonial knowledge. This model is rejected in favour of the view that assertion transmits knowledge by expressing belief. I go on to compare the epistemology of testimony with the epistemology of memory.
Article
This paper defends the theory that knowledge is credit-worthy true belief against a family of objections, two instances of which were leveled against it in a recent paper by Jennifer Lackey. Lackey argues that both innate knowledge (if there is any) and testimonial knowledge are too easily come by for it to be plausible that the knower deserves credit for it. If this is correct, then knowledge would appear not to be a matter of credit for true belief. I will attempt to neutralize these objections by drawing a distinction between credit as praiseworthiness and credit as attributability.