Mark Alfano

A new way to transpose the virtue epistemologist’s ‘knowledge = apt belief’ template to the collective level, as a thesis about group knowledge, is developed. In particular, it is shown how specifically judgmental belief can be realised at the collective level in a way that is structurally analogous, on a telic theory of epistemic normativity (e.g., Sosa 2020), to how it is realised at the individual level—viz., through a (collective) intentional attempt to get it right aptly (whether p) by alethically affirming that p. An advantage of the proposal developed is that it is shown to be compatible with competing views—viz., joint acceptance accounts and social-distributive accounts—of how group members must interact in order to materially realise a group belief. I conclude by showing how the proposed judgment-focused collective (telic) virtue epistemology has important advantages over a rival version of collective virtue epistemology defended in recent work by Jesper Kallestrup (2016).

A new way to transpose the virtue epistemologist’s ‘knowledge = apt belief’ template to the collective level, as a thesis about group knowledge, is developed. In particular, it is shown how specifically judgmental belief can be realised at the collective level in a way that is structurally analogous, on a telic theory of epistemic normativity (e.g., Sosa 2020), to how it is realised at the individual level—viz., through a (collective) intentional attempt to get it right aptly (whether p) by alethically affirming that p. An advantage of the proposal developed is that it is shown to be compatible with competing views—viz., joint acceptance accounts and social-distributive accounts—of how group members must interact in order to materially realise a group belief. I conclude by showing how the proposed judgment-focused collective (telic) virtue epistemology has important advantages over a rival version of collective virtue epistemology defended in recent work by Jesper Kallestrup (2016).

Most experimental philosophy employs small-N studies with randomization. Additional light may be shed on philosophical questions by large-scale observational studies that employ Big Data methodologies. This chapter explains and showcases the promising methodology of testimonial network analysis and visualization for experimental epistemology, arguing that it can be used to gain insights and answer philosophical questions in social epistemology. The use case is the epistemic community that discusses vaccine safety primarily in English on Twitter. In two studies, the authors show, using both statistical analysis and exploratory data visualization, that there is almost no neutral or ambivalent discussion of vaccine safety on Twitter. Roughly half the accounts engaging with this topic are pro-vaccine, while the other half is con-vaccine. The results also indicate that these two camps rarely engage with one another, and that the con-vaccine camp has greater epistemic reach and receptivity than the pro-vaccine camp. In light of these findings, the authors question whether testimonial networks as they are currently constituted on popular forums such as Twitter are living up to their promise of delivering the wisdom of crowds.

This paper is an extended prolepsis in favor of epistemic situationism, the thesis that epistemic virtues are not sufficiently widely distributed for a virtue-theoretic constraint on knowledge to apply without leading to skepticism. It deals with four objections to epistemic situation: 1) that virtuous dispositions are not required for knowledge, 2) that the Big Five or Big Six personality model proves that intellectual virtues are a reasonable ideal, 3) that the cognitive-affective personality system framework proves that intellectual virtues are a reasonable ideal, and 4) that weakening the reliability requirement through epistemic dependence or abilism means that common inferential strategies really are virtues. The paper concludes with reflections on the replication crisis in psychological science.

This chapter argues that the interaction of biased media coverage and widespread employment of the recognition heuristic can produce epistemic injustices. It explains the recognition heuristic as studied by Gigerenzer and colleagues, highlighting how some of its components are largely external to the cognitive agent. Having connected the recognition heuristic with recent work on the hypotheses of embedded, extended, and scaffolded cognition, it argues that the recognition heuristic is best understood as an instance of scaffolded cognition. It considers the double-edged sword of cognitive scaffolding before using Fricker’s (2007) concept of epistemic injustice to characterize the nature and harm of these false inferences, emphasizing the Darfur Inference. Finally, it uses data-mining and an empirical study to show how Gigerenzer’s population estimation task is liable to produce Darfur Inferences. It ends with some speculative remarks on more important Darfur Inferences, and how to avoid them by scaffolding better.

Calls to amplify marginalized voices are common. In this paper, we examine these calls by paying close attention to how the structure of online environments shape practices of amplification, and what this means for political communication and digital activism. We develop a conceptual and normative framework for understanding amplification as a technologically mediated practice of digital activism by answering three questions. Firstly, what is amplification, in the sense that features in calls to amplify marginalized voices? Second, what is at stake in amplifying well or badly? Third, how should those to whom calls to amplify are addressed respond? In answering the first question, we develop an account of amplification by exploiting an analogy with the amplification of sound in acoustics. In answering the second question, we identify several benefits of amplifying well and costs of amplifying badly. In answering the third question, we identify several heuristics that can be employed to increase the chances of achieving the benefits of successful amplification and reduce the chances of unsuccessful amplification.

Virtue is among the most venerable concepts in philosophy, and has recently seen a major revival. However, new challenges to conceptions of virtue have also arisen. In _Current Controversies in Virtue Theory_, five pairs of cutting-edge philosophers square off over central topics in virtue theory: the nature of virtue, the connection between virtue and flourishing, the connection between moral and epistemic virtues, the way in which virtues are acquired, and the possibility of attaining virtue. Mark Alfano guides his readers through these essays (all published here for the first time), with a synthetic introduction, succinct abstracts of each debate, suggested further readings and study questions for each controversy, and a list of further controversies to be explored.

ABSTRACT Social epistemologists should be well-equipped to explain and evaluate the growing vulnerabilities associated with filter bubbles, echo chambers, and group polarization in social media. However, almost all social epistemology has been built for social contexts that involve merely a speaker-hearer dyad. Filter bubbles, echo chambers, and group polarization all presuppose much larger and more complex network structures. In this paper, we lay the groundwork for a properly social epistemology that gives the role and structure of networks their due. In particular, we formally define epistemic constructs that quantify the structural epistemic position of each node within an interconnected network. We argue for the epistemic value of a structure that we call the (m,k)-observer. We then present empirical evidence that (m,k)-observers are rare in social media discussions of controversial topics, which suggests that people suffer from serious problems of epistemic vulnerability. We conclude by arguing that social epistemologists and computer scientists should work together to develop minimal interventions that improve the structure of epistemic networks.

ABSTRACT Nietzsche's most insightful contribution to the naturalistic project in philosophical psychology is not methodological but substantive: he discovered an important truth about the dynamics of psychological states, which I here dub the tenacity of the intentional. According to the tenacity thesis, when an intentional state loses its object, a new object replaces the original; the state does not disappear entirely. This interpretation is supported by and helps to tie together the three essays of the Genealogy. The article concludes by contextualizing the tenacity thesis within Nietzsche's doctrine of the will to power.

We develop an account of bullshit questions that draws on the literature on bullshit assertions. We distinguish bullshit questions from other sorts of anomalous questions. According to our account, bullshit questions are characterized chiefly by the indifference of the speaker to the truth of any answer she might receive. Instead, the bullshit questioner is up to something else, typically a non-interrogative illocutionary act such as introducing a presupposition, insinuating a derogatory sentiment, implying a proposition, making an accusation, or flirting. If this is right, it naturally raises the normative question of whether and how bullshit questions are wrong and whether and how bullshit questioners are blameworthy and vicious. In the final section, we address these questions, arguing that bullshit questions are pro tanto wrong because they tend to thwart inquiry, manifest the vice of epistemic insouciance (which is a disregard for truth or inquiry), express disrespect for the epistemic agency of the interlocutor, introduce epistemic malaise, and lead to the opening of dangerous inquiries by gullible audiences. We then consider some cases in which the pro tanto wrongness of bullshit questioning is arguably overridden by competing reasons.

In this chapter, we explore the prospects of epistemic minimax and related principles. Minimax is a well-known approach to choosing a strategy under conditions of risk and uncertainty. In individual cases, the minimax strategy selects the action that can lead to the least bad outcome for the agent, even if taking that action ensures that expected utility is not maximized and that best-case outcomes are impossible. In social cases, the minimax strategy selects the policy that maximizes the wellbeing of the least-well-off members of the group, even if doing so ensures that the aggregate utility of the group is not maximized and that best-case social outcomes are impossible. While there are many criticisms of minimax at both the individual and the social level, it is a prominent and popular approach at the social level because it prioritizes those at the bottom of the ladder. This chapter focuses on the social case for epistemic minimax and related principles. We develop the notions of epistemic position and epistemic power, both of which are prima facie epistemic goods, and demonstrate that a minimax principle can come apart from principles that would promote aggregate or maximum epistemic position or power. We also point to empirical and computational work that shows that testimonial networks online tend to be characterized by extreme inequalities of epistemic power. Then we extend traditional arguments in favor of social minimax to show that they hold in the epistemic case as well. In light of these arguments, we contend that the epistemic minimax principle should be treated as a heuristic for network interventions in democratic communities, and that it may be attractive for other types of communities as well. We conclude by examining the idea that some communities—especially the scientific community—should probably adopt different principles. Communities vary along different dimensions, and these dimensions may favor or disfavor different epistemic policies and principles, showing the sensitivity of our arguments to particular circumstances.

Conspiracy beliefs have been linked to perceptions of collective victimhood. We adopt an individual perspective on victimhood by investigating the relationship between conspiracy beliefs and the individual disposition to perceive and react to injustice as a victim, i.e., victim justice sensitivity (VJS). Data from two German samples (Ns = 370, 373) indicated a positive association between VJS and conspiracy mentality beyond conceptually related covariates (e.g., mistrust). In a multinational sample from 15 countries (N = 14,978), VJS was positively associated with both general and specific conspiracy beliefs (about vaccines and climate change) within countries, though these associations varied across countries. However, economic, sociopolitical and cultural country-level factors that might explain the cross-country variability (e.g., GDP, Human Freedom Index, individualism–collectivism), including indices of collective exposure to direct violence, did not moderate the studied associations. Future research should investigate the relationship between victimhood and conspiracy beliefs, considering both intraindividual and intergroup perspectives.

This paper presents two studies on the development and validation of a ten-item scale of epistemic vice and the relationship between epistemic vice and misinformation and fake news. Epistemic vices have been defined as character traits that interfere with acquiring, maintaining, and transmitting knowledge. Examples of epistemic vice are gullibility and indifference to knowledge. It has been hypothesized that epistemically vicious people are especially susceptible to misinformation and conspiracy theories. We conducted one exploratory and one confirmatory observational survey study on Amazon Mechanical Turk among people living in the United States (total N = 1737). We show that two psychological traits underlie the range of epistemic vices that we investigated: indifference to truth and rigidity. Indifference manifests itself in a lack of motivation to find the truth. Rigidity manifests itself in being insensitive to evidence. We develop a scale to measure epistemic vice with the subscales indifference and rigidity. The Epistemic Vice Scale is internally consistent; has good convergent, divergent, and discriminant validity; and is strongly associated with the endorsement of misinformation and conspiracy theories. Epistemic vice explains additional variance in the endorsement of misinformation and conspiracy theories over and above demographic and related psychological concepts and shows medium to large effect sizes across outcome measures. We demonstrate that epistemic vice differs from existing psychological constructs, and show that the scale can explain individual differences in dealing with misinformation and conspiracy theories. We conclude that epistemic vice might contribute to “postfactive” ways of thinking.

This chapter introduces lexical dispersion analysis, time series analysis, and semantic network analysis. The case study in this chapter uses State of the Union addresses delivered yearly by American Presidents from George Washington to Donald Trump. Lexical dispersion refers to the embedding of words, stems, and n-grams across corpora. Time series analysis is useful when you have a corpus that was produced over the course of hours, days, years, or decades. It enables us to track the prevalence of various words, stems, and n-grams—along with the concepts they express—over time. Time series analysis reveals trends in these speeches across more than two centuries. Semantic network analysis is useful when you have a sufficiently large and diverse corpus to ask which words, stems, and n-grams—along with the concepts they express—tend to co-occur in the same sentence, paragraph, or other piece of text. This can help to shed light on the meaning of terms. These analytical approaches can also be combined to examine how patterns of association change over time.

This graduate textbook provides a basic introduction to experimental philosophy (x-phi). In nine chapters, different methods and tools used in X-Phi are explained, spanning quantitative vignette studies, interactive experiments, corpus analysis, psycholinguistic experiments as well as qualitative interview studies. Each chapter introduces a specific experimental method by means of a case study in an easily accessible way and covers the whole research process from the development of a research question to the interpretation of the data.

What is the importance of trust for human social life? What role does trust play in morality, in political arrangements, and in our attempts to gain knowledge and understand the world? When should we trust others, and when is withholding trust or mistrusting others warranted? While philosophers have recently turned their attention to such questions, they have generally overlooked what important thinkers throughout the history of philosophy have said on the topic of trust. Edited by David Collins, Iris Vidmar Jovanović, and Mark Alfano, Perspectives on Trust in the History of Philosophy brings together examinations of the views on trust that can be found in several major philosophers, from the ancient world up to the twentieth century and from across the globe. With a focus on the moral and social dimensions of trust, this collection includes perspectives from Chinese, Indian, and African philosophies, and the contributors examine how thinkers such as Confucius, Aristotle, Hobbes, Hume, Smith, Kant, Nietzsche, Løgstrup, and Murdoch have thought about trust and trustworthiness. This book demonstrates that good philosophical work on trust must be historically informed.

At least since Francis Bacon, the slogan “knowledge is power” has been used to capture the relationship between decision-making at a group level and information. We know that being able to shape the informational environment for a group is a way to shape their decisions; it is essentially a way to make decisions for them. This paper focuses on strategies that are intentionally, by design, impactful on the decision-making capacities of groups, effectively shaping their ability to take advantage of information in their environment. Among these, the best known are political rhetoric, propaganda, and misinformation. The phenomenon this paper brings out from these is a relatively new strategy, which we call slopaganda. According to The Guardian, News Corp Australia is currently churning out 3000 “local” generative AI (GAI) stories each week. In the coming years, such “generative AI slop” will present multiple knowledge-related (epistemic) challenges. We draw on contemporary research in cognitive science and artificial intelligence to diagnose the problem of slopaganda, describe some recent troubling cases, then suggest several interventions that may help to counter slopaganda.

Interpreters have noticed that Nietzsche, in addition to sometimes being uproariously funny, reflects more on laughter and having a sense of humor than almost any other philosopher. Several scholars have further noticed that Nietzschean laughter sometimes seems to have an epistemic function. In this chapter, I assume that Nietzsche is a pluralist about the functions of humor and laughter, and seek to establish the uses he finds for them. I offer an interpretation according to which he tactically uses humor and laughter for epistemic purposes. His epistemic aims include enabling inquiry (when faith and reverence might have forbidden it), achieving knowledge (for himself or for his reader), and abandoning error (again for himself or for his reader). Humor supports these goals by inducing contempt and the laughter that expresses (and sometimes also conjures) it.

This paper examines the potential educational uses of chat-based large language models (LLMs), moving past initial hype and skepticism. Although LLM outputs often evoke fascination and resemble human writing, they are unpredictable and must be used with discernment. Several metaphors—like calculators, cars, and drunk tutors—highlight distinct models for student interactions with LLMs, which we explore in the paper. We suggest that LLMs hold a potential in students’ learning by fostering proleptic reasoning through scaffolding, i.e., presenting a technological accompaniment in anticipating and responding to potential objections to arguments. Here, the technical limitations of LLMs can be reframed as beneficial when fostering anticipatory reasoning. Whether their outputs are accurate or not, evaluating them stimulates learning. LLMs require students to critically engage, emphasizing analytical thinking over mere memorization. This interaction helps solidify knowledge. Additionally, we explore how engaging with LLMs can prepare students for constructive collective discussions and provide first steps in addressing epistemic injustices by highlighting potential research blind spots. Thus, while acknowledging the sociopolitical and ethical complexities of using LLMs in education, we suggest that when used in an informed way, they can promote critical thinking through anticipatory reasoning.

We take up the challenge of developing an international network with capacity to survey the world’s scientists on an ongoing basis, providing rich datasets regarding the opinions of scientists and scientific sub-communities, both at a time and also over time. The novel methodology employed sees local coordinators, at each institution in the network, sending survey invitation emails internally to scientists at their home institution. The emails link to a ‘10 second survey’, where the participant is presented with a single statement to consider, and a standard five-point Likert scale. In June 2023, a group of 30 philosophers and social scientists invited 20,085 scientists across 30 institutions in 12 countries to participate, gathering 6,807 responses to the statement Science has put it beyond reasonable doubt that COVID-19 is caused by a virus. The study demonstrates that it is possible to establish a global network to quickly ascertain scientific opinion on a large international scale, with high response rate, low opt-out rate, and in a way that allows for significant (perhaps indefinite) repeatability. Measuring scientific opinion in this new way would be a valuable complement to currently available approaches, potentially informing policy decisions and public understanding across diverse fields.