Boaz Miller | Zefat Academic College (original) (raw)
Papers by Boaz Miller
Asian Journal of Philosophy
We present a novel model of individual people, online posts, and media platforms to explain the o... more We present a novel model of individual people, online posts, and media platforms to explain the online spread of epistemically toxic content such as fake news and suggest possible responses. We argue that a combination of technical features, such as the algorithmically curated feed structure, and social features, such as the absence of stable social-epistemic norms of posting and sharing in social media, is largely responsible for the unchecked spread of epistemically toxic content online. Sharing constitutes a distinctive communicative act, governed by a dedicated norm and motivated to a large extent by social identity maintenance. But confusion about this norm and its lack of inherent epistemic checks lead readers to misunderstand posts, attribute excess or insufficient credibility to posts, and allow posters to evade epistemic accountability—all contributing to the spread of epistemically toxic content online. This spread can be effectively addressed if (1) people and platforms a...
Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal
Social inequality may obstruct the generation of knowledge, as the rich and powerful may bring ab... more Social inequality may obstruct the generation of knowledge, as the rich and powerful may bring about social acceptance of skewed views that suit their interests. Epistemic equality in the context of justification is a means of preventing such obstruction. Drawing on social epistemology and theories of equality and distributive justice, we provide an account of epistemic equality. We regard participation in, and influence over a knowledge-generating discourse in an epistemic community as a limited good that needs to be justly distributed among putative members of the community. We argue that rather than trying to operationally formulate an exact criterion for distributing this good, epistemic equality may be realized by insisting on active participation of members of three groups in addition to credited experts: relevant disempowered groups, relevant uncredited experts, and relevant stakeholders. Meeting these conditions fulfills the political, moral, and epistemic aims of epistemic equality.
David Chalmers thinks his iPhone exemplifies the extended mind thesis by meeting the criteria th... more David Chalmers thinks his iPhone exemplifies the extended mind thesis by meeting the criteria that he and Andy Clark established in their well-known 1998 paper. Andy Clark agrees. We take this proposal seriously, evaluating the case of the GPS-enabled smartphone as a potential mind extender. We argue that the “trust and glue” criteria enumerated by Clark and Chalmers are incompatible with both the epistemic responsibilities that accompany everyday activities and the practices of trust that enable users to discharge them. Prospects for revision of the original criteria are dim. We therefore call for a rejection of the trust criterion and a reevaluation of the extended mind thesis.
There is an existing debate regarding the view that technological instruments, devices, or machin... more There is an existing debate regarding the view that technological instruments, devices, or machines can assert or testify. A standard view in epistemology is that only humans can testify. However, the notion of quasi-testimony acknowledges that technological devices can assert or testify under some conditions, without denying that humans and machines are not the same. Indeed, there are four relevant differences between humans and instruments. First, unlike humans, machine assertion is not imaginative or playful. Second, machine assertion is prescripted and context restricted. As such, computers currently cannot easily switch contexts or make meaningful relevant assertions in contexts for which they were not programmed. Third, while both humans and computers make errors, they do so in different ways. Computers are very sensitive to small errors in input, which may cause them to make big errors in output. Moreover, automatic error control is based on finding irregularities in...
The Oxford Handbook of Assertion, 2019
There is an existing debate regarding the view that technological instruments, devices, or machin... more There is an existing debate regarding the view that technological instruments, devices, or machines can assert or testify. A standard view in epistemology is that only humans can testify. However, the notion of quasi-testimony acknowledges that technological devices can assert or testify under some conditions, without denying that humans and machines are not the same. Indeed, there are four relevant differences between humans and instruments. First, unlike humans, machine assertion is not imaginative or playful. Second, machine assertion is prescripted and context restricted. As such, computers currently cannot easily switch contexts or make meaningful relevant assertions in contexts for which they were not programmed. Third, while both humans and computers make errors, they do so in different ways. Computers are very sensitive to small errors in input, which may cause them to make big errors in output. Moreover, automatic error control is based on finding irregularities in data wit...
• My aim is identifying the role of non-epistemic values, especially social values, in the justif... more • My aim is identifying the role of non-epistemic values, especially social values, in the justification of beliefs/theories. I will propose a new theory of the relation between social values and evidence.
Philosophy of Science, 2021
Normatively inappropriate scientific dissent prevents warranted closure of scientific controversi... more Normatively inappropriate scientific dissent prevents warranted closure of scientific controversies and confuses the public about the state of policy-relevant science, such as anthropogenic climate change. Against recent criticism by de Melo-Martín and Intemann of the viability of any conception of normatively inappropriate dissent, I identify three conditions for normatively inappropriate dissent: its generation process is politically illegitimate, it imposes an unjust distribution of inductive risks, and it adopts evidential thresholds outside an accepted range. I supplement these conditions with an inference-to-the-best-explanation account of knowledge-based consensus and dissent to allow policy makers to reliably identify unreliable scientific dissent.
Boa z Miller The debate about global warming and the science supporting it is one of the most hea... more Boa z Miller The debate about global warming and the science supporting it is one of the most heated discussions in international public life. The debate has been heavily politicized. In the United States, for example, Al Gore, who served as vice-president during the Clinton administration, continues to be a major spokesperson for the reliability of climate science, whereas conservative leaders strongly argue that the theory of human-caused global warming is not sufficiently supported by evidence. In this debate, public intellectuals play a special role, as they are perceived by the public as having special cognitive authority and trustworthiness. In this chapter, I critically examine the views of two leading Canadian public intellectuals, David Suzuki and Margaret Atwood, on the science of global warming. I argue that the social epistemic models of science to which they are implicitly committed face difficulties in sustaining the positions they advocate.
New Media & Society, 2020
Journalism and media studies lack robust theoretical concepts for studying journalistic knowledge... more Journalism and media studies lack robust theoretical concepts for studying journalistic knowledge generation. More specifically, conceptual challenges attend the emergence of big data and algorithmic sources of journalistic knowledge. A family of frameworks apt to this challenge is provided by “social epistemology”: a young philosophical field which regards society’s participation in knowledge generation as inevitable. Social epistemology offers the best of both worlds for journalists and media scholars: a thorough familiarity with biases and failures of obtaining knowledge, and a strong orientation toward best practices in the realm of knowledge-acquisition and truth-seeking. This article articulates the lessons of social epistemology for two central nodes of knowledge-acquisition in contemporary journalism: human-mediated knowledge and technology-mediated knowledge.
Science, Technology, & Human Values, 2020
According to the Value-Neutrality Thesis (VNT), technology is morally and politically neutral, ne... more According to the Value-Neutrality Thesis (VNT), technology is morally and politically neutral, neither good nor bad. A knife may be put to bad use to murder an innocent person or to good use to peel an apple for a starving person, but the knife itself is a mere instrument, not a proper subject for moral or political evaluation. While contemporary philosophers of technology widely reject the VNT, it remains unclear whether claims about values in technology are just a figure of speech or nontrivial empirical claims with genuine factual content and real-world implications. This paper provides the missing argument. I argue that by virtue of their material properties, technological artifacts are part of the normative order rather than external to it. I illustrate how values can be empirically identified in technology. The reason why value-talk is not trivial or metaphorical is that due to the endurance and longevity of technological artifacts, values embedded in them have long-term impli...
Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018
David Chalmers thinks his iPhone exemplifies the extended-mind thesis by meeting the criteria tha... more David Chalmers thinks his iPhone exemplifies the extended-mind thesis by meeting the criteria that he and Andy Clark established in their well-known paper (1998). Andy Clark agrees. This chapter takes this proposal seriously, evaluating the case of the GPS-enabled smartphone as a potential mind extender. It is argued here that the “trust and glue” criteria enumerated by Clark and Chalmers are incompatible with both the epistemic responsibilities that accompany everyday activities and the practices of trust that enable users to discharge them. Prospects for revision of the original criteria are dim. The chapter therefore calls for a rejection of the trust criterion and a reevaluation of the extended-mind thesis. It also addresses the extended mind, extended knowledge, digital technology and devices, varying stakes and GESs.
New Media & Society, 2016
Information providing and gathering increasingly involve technologies like search engines, which ... more Information providing and gathering increasingly involve technologies like search engines, which actively shape their epistemic surroundings. Yet, a satisfying account of the epistemic responsibilities associated with them does not exist. We analyze automatically generated search suggestions from the perspective of social epistemology to illustrate how epistemic responsibilities associated with a technology can be derived and assigned. Drawing on our previously developed theoretical framework that connects responsible epistemic behavior to practicability, we address two questions: first, given the different technological possibilities available to searchers, the search technology, and search providers, who should bear which responsibilities? Second, given the technology’s epistemically relevant features and potential harms, how should search terms be autocompleted? Our analysis reveals that epistemic responsibility lies mostly with search providers, which should eliminate three cate...
Foundations of Science, 2014
A consensus in a scientific community is often used as a resource for making informed public-poli... more A consensus in a scientific community is often used as a resource for making informed public-policy decisions and deciding between rival expert testimonies in legal trials. This paper contains a social-epistemic analysis of the high-profile Bendectin drug controversy, which was decided in the courtroom inter alia by deference to a scientific consensus about the safety of Bendectin. Drawing on my previously developed account of knowledge-based consensus, I argue that the consensus in this case was not knowledge based, hence courts' deference to it was not epistemically justified. I draw sceptical lessons from this analysis regarding the value of scientific consensus as a desirable and reliable means of resolving scientific controversies in public life.
Synthese, 2015
According to Ian Hacking's Entity Realism, unobservable entities that scientists carefully manipu... more According to Ian Hacking's Entity Realism, unobservable entities that scientists carefully manipulate to study other phenomena are real. Although Hacking presents his case in an intuitive, attractive, and persuasive way, his argument remains elusive. I present five possible readings of Hacking's argument: a no-miracle argument, an indispensability argument, a transcendental argument, a Vichian argument, and a non-argument. I elucidate Hacking's argument according to each reading, and review their strengths, their weaknesses, and their compatibility with each other.
European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 2014
Philosophers have recently argued, against a prevailing orthodoxy, that standards of knowledge pa... more Philosophers have recently argued, against a prevailing orthodoxy, that standards of knowledge partly depend on a subject's interests; the more is at stake for the subject, the less she is in a position to know. This view, which is dubbed "Pragmatic Encroachment" has historical and conceptual connections to arguments in philosophy of science against the received model of science as value free. I bring the two debates together. I argue that Pragmatic Encroachment and the model of value-laden science reinforce each other. Drawing on Douglas' argument about the indispensability of value judgments in science, and psychological evidence about people's inability to objectively reason about what they care about, I introduce a novel argument for Pragmatic Encroachment.
Synthese, 2012
Scientific consensus is widely deferred to in public debates as a social indicator of the existen... more Scientific consensus is widely deferred to in public debates as a social indicator of the existence of knowledge. However, it is far from clear that such deference to consensus is always justified. The existence of agreement in a community of researchers is a contingent fact, and researchers may reach a consensus for all kinds of reasons, such as fighting a common foe or sharing a common bias. Scientific consensus, by itself, does not necessarily indicate the existence of shared knowledge among the members of the consensus community. I address the question of under what conditions it is likely that a consensus is in fact knowledge based. I argue that a consensus is likely to be knowledge based when knowledge is the best explanation of the consensus, and I identify three conditions-social calibration, apparent consilience of evidence, and social diversity, for knowledge being the best explanation of a consensus.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 2014
It is commonly argued that values "fill the logical gap" of underdetermination of theory by evide... more It is commonly argued that values "fill the logical gap" of underdetermination of theory by evidence, namely, values affect our choice between two or more theories that fit the same evidence. The underdetermination model, however, does not exhaust the roles values play in evidential reasoning. I introduce WAVE-a novel account of the logical relations between values and evidence. WAVE states that values influence evidential reasoning by adjusting evidential weights. I argue that the weightadjusting role of values is distinct from their underdetermination gap-filling role. Values adjust weights in three ways. First, values affect our trust in the testimony of others. Second, values influence the evidential thresholds required for justified epistemic judgments. Third, values influence the relative weight of a certain type of evidence within a body of multimodal discordant evidence. WAVE explains, from an epistemic perspective, rather than psychological, how smokers, for example, can find the same evidence about the dangers of smoking less persuasive than non-smokers. WAVE allows for a wider effect of values on our accepted scientific theories and beliefs than the effect for which the underdetermination model allows alone; therefore, science studies scholars must consider WAVE in their research and analysis of evidential case studies.
Social Epistemology, 2012
According to Popper's rationality principle, agents act in the most adequate way according to the... more According to Popper's rationality principle, agents act in the most adequate way according to the objective situation. I propose a new interpretation of the rationality principle as consisting of an idealization and two abstractions. Based on this new interpretation, I critically discuss the privileged status that Popper ascribes to it as an integral part of all social scientific models. I argue that as an idealization, the rationality principle may play an important role in the social sciences, but it also has inherent limitations that inhibit it from having the privileged status that Popper ascribes to it in all cases.
Episteme, 2013
People increasingly form beliefs based on information gained from automatically filtered internet... more People increasingly form beliefs based on information gained from automatically filtered internet sources such as search engines. However, the workings of such sources are often opaque, preventing subjects from knowing whether the information provided is biased or incomplete. Users' reliance on internet technologies whose modes of operation are concealed from them raises serious concerns about the justificatory status of the beliefs they end up forming. Yet it is unclear how to address these concerns within standard theories of knowledge and justification. To shed light on the problem, we introduce a novel conceptual framework that clarifies the relations between justified belief, epistemic responsibility, action and the technological resources available to a subject. We argue that justified belief is subject to certain epistemic responsibilities that accompany the subject's particular decision-taking circumstances, and that one typical responsibility is to ascertain, so far...
The Philosophical Quarterly, 2015
Mainstream analytic epistemology regards knowledge as the property of individuals, rather than gr... more Mainstream analytic epistemology regards knowledge as the property of individuals, rather than groups. Drawing on insights from the reality of knowledge production and dissemination in the sciences, I argue, from within the analytic framework, that this view is wrong. I defend the thesis of 'knowledge-level justification communalism', which states that at least some knowledge, typically knowledge obtained from expert testimony, is the property of a community and possibly none of its individual members, in that only the community or some members of it collectively possesses knowledge-level justification for its individual members' beliefs. I address several objections that individuals, qua individuals, have or are able to acquire knowledge-level justification for all the beliefs they obtain from expert testimony. I argue that the problem I identify with individualism is invariant under any specific account of justification, internalist or externalist.
Asian Journal of Philosophy
We present a novel model of individual people, online posts, and media platforms to explain the o... more We present a novel model of individual people, online posts, and media platforms to explain the online spread of epistemically toxic content such as fake news and suggest possible responses. We argue that a combination of technical features, such as the algorithmically curated feed structure, and social features, such as the absence of stable social-epistemic norms of posting and sharing in social media, is largely responsible for the unchecked spread of epistemically toxic content online. Sharing constitutes a distinctive communicative act, governed by a dedicated norm and motivated to a large extent by social identity maintenance. But confusion about this norm and its lack of inherent epistemic checks lead readers to misunderstand posts, attribute excess or insufficient credibility to posts, and allow posters to evade epistemic accountability—all contributing to the spread of epistemically toxic content online. This spread can be effectively addressed if (1) people and platforms a...
Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal
Social inequality may obstruct the generation of knowledge, as the rich and powerful may bring ab... more Social inequality may obstruct the generation of knowledge, as the rich and powerful may bring about social acceptance of skewed views that suit their interests. Epistemic equality in the context of justification is a means of preventing such obstruction. Drawing on social epistemology and theories of equality and distributive justice, we provide an account of epistemic equality. We regard participation in, and influence over a knowledge-generating discourse in an epistemic community as a limited good that needs to be justly distributed among putative members of the community. We argue that rather than trying to operationally formulate an exact criterion for distributing this good, epistemic equality may be realized by insisting on active participation of members of three groups in addition to credited experts: relevant disempowered groups, relevant uncredited experts, and relevant stakeholders. Meeting these conditions fulfills the political, moral, and epistemic aims of epistemic equality.
David Chalmers thinks his iPhone exemplifies the extended mind thesis by meeting the criteria th... more David Chalmers thinks his iPhone exemplifies the extended mind thesis by meeting the criteria that he and Andy Clark established in their well-known 1998 paper. Andy Clark agrees. We take this proposal seriously, evaluating the case of the GPS-enabled smartphone as a potential mind extender. We argue that the “trust and glue” criteria enumerated by Clark and Chalmers are incompatible with both the epistemic responsibilities that accompany everyday activities and the practices of trust that enable users to discharge them. Prospects for revision of the original criteria are dim. We therefore call for a rejection of the trust criterion and a reevaluation of the extended mind thesis.
There is an existing debate regarding the view that technological instruments, devices, or machin... more There is an existing debate regarding the view that technological instruments, devices, or machines can assert or testify. A standard view in epistemology is that only humans can testify. However, the notion of quasi-testimony acknowledges that technological devices can assert or testify under some conditions, without denying that humans and machines are not the same. Indeed, there are four relevant differences between humans and instruments. First, unlike humans, machine assertion is not imaginative or playful. Second, machine assertion is prescripted and context restricted. As such, computers currently cannot easily switch contexts or make meaningful relevant assertions in contexts for which they were not programmed. Third, while both humans and computers make errors, they do so in different ways. Computers are very sensitive to small errors in input, which may cause them to make big errors in output. Moreover, automatic error control is based on finding irregularities in...
The Oxford Handbook of Assertion, 2019
There is an existing debate regarding the view that technological instruments, devices, or machin... more There is an existing debate regarding the view that technological instruments, devices, or machines can assert or testify. A standard view in epistemology is that only humans can testify. However, the notion of quasi-testimony acknowledges that technological devices can assert or testify under some conditions, without denying that humans and machines are not the same. Indeed, there are four relevant differences between humans and instruments. First, unlike humans, machine assertion is not imaginative or playful. Second, machine assertion is prescripted and context restricted. As such, computers currently cannot easily switch contexts or make meaningful relevant assertions in contexts for which they were not programmed. Third, while both humans and computers make errors, they do so in different ways. Computers are very sensitive to small errors in input, which may cause them to make big errors in output. Moreover, automatic error control is based on finding irregularities in data wit...
• My aim is identifying the role of non-epistemic values, especially social values, in the justif... more • My aim is identifying the role of non-epistemic values, especially social values, in the justification of beliefs/theories. I will propose a new theory of the relation between social values and evidence.
Philosophy of Science, 2021
Normatively inappropriate scientific dissent prevents warranted closure of scientific controversi... more Normatively inappropriate scientific dissent prevents warranted closure of scientific controversies and confuses the public about the state of policy-relevant science, such as anthropogenic climate change. Against recent criticism by de Melo-Martín and Intemann of the viability of any conception of normatively inappropriate dissent, I identify three conditions for normatively inappropriate dissent: its generation process is politically illegitimate, it imposes an unjust distribution of inductive risks, and it adopts evidential thresholds outside an accepted range. I supplement these conditions with an inference-to-the-best-explanation account of knowledge-based consensus and dissent to allow policy makers to reliably identify unreliable scientific dissent.
Boa z Miller The debate about global warming and the science supporting it is one of the most hea... more Boa z Miller The debate about global warming and the science supporting it is one of the most heated discussions in international public life. The debate has been heavily politicized. In the United States, for example, Al Gore, who served as vice-president during the Clinton administration, continues to be a major spokesperson for the reliability of climate science, whereas conservative leaders strongly argue that the theory of human-caused global warming is not sufficiently supported by evidence. In this debate, public intellectuals play a special role, as they are perceived by the public as having special cognitive authority and trustworthiness. In this chapter, I critically examine the views of two leading Canadian public intellectuals, David Suzuki and Margaret Atwood, on the science of global warming. I argue that the social epistemic models of science to which they are implicitly committed face difficulties in sustaining the positions they advocate.
New Media & Society, 2020
Journalism and media studies lack robust theoretical concepts for studying journalistic knowledge... more Journalism and media studies lack robust theoretical concepts for studying journalistic knowledge generation. More specifically, conceptual challenges attend the emergence of big data and algorithmic sources of journalistic knowledge. A family of frameworks apt to this challenge is provided by “social epistemology”: a young philosophical field which regards society’s participation in knowledge generation as inevitable. Social epistemology offers the best of both worlds for journalists and media scholars: a thorough familiarity with biases and failures of obtaining knowledge, and a strong orientation toward best practices in the realm of knowledge-acquisition and truth-seeking. This article articulates the lessons of social epistemology for two central nodes of knowledge-acquisition in contemporary journalism: human-mediated knowledge and technology-mediated knowledge.
Science, Technology, & Human Values, 2020
According to the Value-Neutrality Thesis (VNT), technology is morally and politically neutral, ne... more According to the Value-Neutrality Thesis (VNT), technology is morally and politically neutral, neither good nor bad. A knife may be put to bad use to murder an innocent person or to good use to peel an apple for a starving person, but the knife itself is a mere instrument, not a proper subject for moral or political evaluation. While contemporary philosophers of technology widely reject the VNT, it remains unclear whether claims about values in technology are just a figure of speech or nontrivial empirical claims with genuine factual content and real-world implications. This paper provides the missing argument. I argue that by virtue of their material properties, technological artifacts are part of the normative order rather than external to it. I illustrate how values can be empirically identified in technology. The reason why value-talk is not trivial or metaphorical is that due to the endurance and longevity of technological artifacts, values embedded in them have long-term impli...
Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018
David Chalmers thinks his iPhone exemplifies the extended-mind thesis by meeting the criteria tha... more David Chalmers thinks his iPhone exemplifies the extended-mind thesis by meeting the criteria that he and Andy Clark established in their well-known paper (1998). Andy Clark agrees. This chapter takes this proposal seriously, evaluating the case of the GPS-enabled smartphone as a potential mind extender. It is argued here that the “trust and glue” criteria enumerated by Clark and Chalmers are incompatible with both the epistemic responsibilities that accompany everyday activities and the practices of trust that enable users to discharge them. Prospects for revision of the original criteria are dim. The chapter therefore calls for a rejection of the trust criterion and a reevaluation of the extended-mind thesis. It also addresses the extended mind, extended knowledge, digital technology and devices, varying stakes and GESs.
New Media & Society, 2016
Information providing and gathering increasingly involve technologies like search engines, which ... more Information providing and gathering increasingly involve technologies like search engines, which actively shape their epistemic surroundings. Yet, a satisfying account of the epistemic responsibilities associated with them does not exist. We analyze automatically generated search suggestions from the perspective of social epistemology to illustrate how epistemic responsibilities associated with a technology can be derived and assigned. Drawing on our previously developed theoretical framework that connects responsible epistemic behavior to practicability, we address two questions: first, given the different technological possibilities available to searchers, the search technology, and search providers, who should bear which responsibilities? Second, given the technology’s epistemically relevant features and potential harms, how should search terms be autocompleted? Our analysis reveals that epistemic responsibility lies mostly with search providers, which should eliminate three cate...
Foundations of Science, 2014
A consensus in a scientific community is often used as a resource for making informed public-poli... more A consensus in a scientific community is often used as a resource for making informed public-policy decisions and deciding between rival expert testimonies in legal trials. This paper contains a social-epistemic analysis of the high-profile Bendectin drug controversy, which was decided in the courtroom inter alia by deference to a scientific consensus about the safety of Bendectin. Drawing on my previously developed account of knowledge-based consensus, I argue that the consensus in this case was not knowledge based, hence courts' deference to it was not epistemically justified. I draw sceptical lessons from this analysis regarding the value of scientific consensus as a desirable and reliable means of resolving scientific controversies in public life.
Synthese, 2015
According to Ian Hacking's Entity Realism, unobservable entities that scientists carefully manipu... more According to Ian Hacking's Entity Realism, unobservable entities that scientists carefully manipulate to study other phenomena are real. Although Hacking presents his case in an intuitive, attractive, and persuasive way, his argument remains elusive. I present five possible readings of Hacking's argument: a no-miracle argument, an indispensability argument, a transcendental argument, a Vichian argument, and a non-argument. I elucidate Hacking's argument according to each reading, and review their strengths, their weaknesses, and their compatibility with each other.
European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 2014
Philosophers have recently argued, against a prevailing orthodoxy, that standards of knowledge pa... more Philosophers have recently argued, against a prevailing orthodoxy, that standards of knowledge partly depend on a subject's interests; the more is at stake for the subject, the less she is in a position to know. This view, which is dubbed "Pragmatic Encroachment" has historical and conceptual connections to arguments in philosophy of science against the received model of science as value free. I bring the two debates together. I argue that Pragmatic Encroachment and the model of value-laden science reinforce each other. Drawing on Douglas' argument about the indispensability of value judgments in science, and psychological evidence about people's inability to objectively reason about what they care about, I introduce a novel argument for Pragmatic Encroachment.
Synthese, 2012
Scientific consensus is widely deferred to in public debates as a social indicator of the existen... more Scientific consensus is widely deferred to in public debates as a social indicator of the existence of knowledge. However, it is far from clear that such deference to consensus is always justified. The existence of agreement in a community of researchers is a contingent fact, and researchers may reach a consensus for all kinds of reasons, such as fighting a common foe or sharing a common bias. Scientific consensus, by itself, does not necessarily indicate the existence of shared knowledge among the members of the consensus community. I address the question of under what conditions it is likely that a consensus is in fact knowledge based. I argue that a consensus is likely to be knowledge based when knowledge is the best explanation of the consensus, and I identify three conditions-social calibration, apparent consilience of evidence, and social diversity, for knowledge being the best explanation of a consensus.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 2014
It is commonly argued that values "fill the logical gap" of underdetermination of theory by evide... more It is commonly argued that values "fill the logical gap" of underdetermination of theory by evidence, namely, values affect our choice between two or more theories that fit the same evidence. The underdetermination model, however, does not exhaust the roles values play in evidential reasoning. I introduce WAVE-a novel account of the logical relations between values and evidence. WAVE states that values influence evidential reasoning by adjusting evidential weights. I argue that the weightadjusting role of values is distinct from their underdetermination gap-filling role. Values adjust weights in three ways. First, values affect our trust in the testimony of others. Second, values influence the evidential thresholds required for justified epistemic judgments. Third, values influence the relative weight of a certain type of evidence within a body of multimodal discordant evidence. WAVE explains, from an epistemic perspective, rather than psychological, how smokers, for example, can find the same evidence about the dangers of smoking less persuasive than non-smokers. WAVE allows for a wider effect of values on our accepted scientific theories and beliefs than the effect for which the underdetermination model allows alone; therefore, science studies scholars must consider WAVE in their research and analysis of evidential case studies.
Social Epistemology, 2012
According to Popper's rationality principle, agents act in the most adequate way according to the... more According to Popper's rationality principle, agents act in the most adequate way according to the objective situation. I propose a new interpretation of the rationality principle as consisting of an idealization and two abstractions. Based on this new interpretation, I critically discuss the privileged status that Popper ascribes to it as an integral part of all social scientific models. I argue that as an idealization, the rationality principle may play an important role in the social sciences, but it also has inherent limitations that inhibit it from having the privileged status that Popper ascribes to it in all cases.
Episteme, 2013
People increasingly form beliefs based on information gained from automatically filtered internet... more People increasingly form beliefs based on information gained from automatically filtered internet sources such as search engines. However, the workings of such sources are often opaque, preventing subjects from knowing whether the information provided is biased or incomplete. Users' reliance on internet technologies whose modes of operation are concealed from them raises serious concerns about the justificatory status of the beliefs they end up forming. Yet it is unclear how to address these concerns within standard theories of knowledge and justification. To shed light on the problem, we introduce a novel conceptual framework that clarifies the relations between justified belief, epistemic responsibility, action and the technological resources available to a subject. We argue that justified belief is subject to certain epistemic responsibilities that accompany the subject's particular decision-taking circumstances, and that one typical responsibility is to ascertain, so far...
The Philosophical Quarterly, 2015
Mainstream analytic epistemology regards knowledge as the property of individuals, rather than gr... more Mainstream analytic epistemology regards knowledge as the property of individuals, rather than groups. Drawing on insights from the reality of knowledge production and dissemination in the sciences, I argue, from within the analytic framework, that this view is wrong. I defend the thesis of 'knowledge-level justification communalism', which states that at least some knowledge, typically knowledge obtained from expert testimony, is the property of a community and possibly none of its individual members, in that only the community or some members of it collectively possesses knowledge-level justification for its individual members' beliefs. I address several objections that individuals, qua individuals, have or are able to acquire knowledge-level justification for all the beliefs they obtain from expert testimony. I argue that the problem I identify with individualism is invariant under any specific account of justification, internalist or externalist.
jps.library.utoronto.ca
Spontaneous Generations is an online, peer-reviewed academic journal established to provide a pla... more Spontaneous Generations is an online, peer-reviewed academic journal established to provide a platform for interdisciplinary discussion and debate about issues that concern the community of scholars in the history and philosophy of science and related fields. A unique feature of ...