Epistemic Status Research Articles

Cautious belief and iterated admissibility

We define notions of cautiousness and cautious belief to provide epistemic conditions for iterated admissibility in finite games. We show that iterated admissibility characterizes the behavioral implications of “cautious rationality and common cautious belief in cautious rationality” in a terminal lexicographic type structure. For arbitrary type structures, the behavioral implications of these epistemic assumptions are characterized by the solution concept of self-admissible set (Brandenburger et al., 2008). We also show that analogous results hold under alternative epistemic assumptions, in particular if cautiousness is “transparent” to the players.

An Analysis of Dialogic Positioning in Online Commentaries

AbstractThe commentary as a journalistic genre that presents and comments on current events is characterized by intersubjective positioning, whereby the author constructs meaning, seeking alignment or, on the contrary, expressing disalignment with a putative audience. In line with the appraisal theory as developed by Martin and White (2005), which follows the Bakhtian dialogic perspective, according to which utterances and propositions are intersubjectively charged, the paper aims to describe the linguistic means ofengagement, one of the central elements of this theory. Engagement is concerned with how the author expresses authorial voice and how s/he negotiates meaning with the readers, opening up (dialogic expansion) or, on the contrary, closing the dialogic space (dialogic contraction). In this sense, the linguistic means of engagement, such as modality, hedging and boosting devices, evidentiality, are understood to transcend the functions attributed to them within a truth-conditional framework, namely epistemic status and reliability of knowledge, and are seen as means by which the author entertains or rejects alternative voices and opinions. Taking this into consideration, the paper intends to analyse a few selected commentaries on the war situation in Ukraine found on the online platform of The Rand Corporation, a global policy think tank that performs research and conducts evaluations of various topics. It analyses the linguistic means of dialogic positioning, focusing on how the authors negotiate the dialogic space with the audience; while presumably all forms of intersubjective positioning can be found in the texts, it is expected that certain forms of engagement will outnumber others. As all commentaries can be found on the website of the above mentioned corporation, the question also arises as to what extent commentaries show similarity with respect to engagement, thereby expressing, albeit indirectly, a certain standpoint with respect to the Ukrainian warfare.

A Systematic Review of Second-Person Knowledge Acquisition in First-Encounter Interactions

The acquisition of second-person knowledge in first encounters is a relatively unexplored area of investigation. In this study, we aim to shed light on this topic by systematically reviewing published research articles that describe the strategies and patterns observed when people seek to gain knowledge about one another in first encounters. Drawing on the framework of second-person knowledge and epistemics in conversation, we extracted relevant findings from the selected studies and explained the patterns of interactions in different interactional settings. Our findings showed that there are differences in the way second-person knowledge is acquired in both institutional and mundane settings. In institutional settings, the process is often asymmetrical and initiated by the party with institutional power to achieve institutional goals. Participants’ professional roles and expertise are emphasized through the display of their epistemic stance and status. Although the party with a lower authority position mostly provides information within their personal experience domain, there are attempts to gain knowledge about their conversational partner using certain conversational strategies. Whereas in mundane settings, second-person knowledge exchange is reciprocal between conversational partners, and this knowledge serves as both a topic and a facilitator for the continuation of conversations. Sometimes, speakers trespass on their partners’ epistemic territories to show an inclination toward creating a common ground. The findings of this review provide a better understanding of how people gain, disclose, withhold, and display knowledge about one another during the first encounter, which is an important communication event in everyday interaction.

What's in the Box? Preschoolers Consider Ambiguity, Expected Value, and Information for Future Decisions in Explore-Exploit Tasks.

Self-directed exploration in childhood appears driven by a desire to resolve uncertainties in order to learn more about the world. However, in adult decision-making, the choice to explore new information rather than exploit what is already known takes many factors beyond uncertainty (such as expected utilities and costs) into account. The evidence for whether young children are sensitive to complex, contextual factors in making exploration decisions is limited and mixed. Here, we investigate whether modifying uncertain options influences explore-exploit behavior in preschool-aged children (48-68 months). Over the course of three experiments, we manipulate uncertain options' ambiguity, expected value, and potential to improve epistemic state for future exploration in a novel forced-choice design. We find evidence that young children are influenced by each of these factors, suggesting that early, self-directed exploration involves sophisticated, context-sensitive decision-making under uncertainty.

From Altered States to Metaphysics: The Epistemic Status of Psychedelic-induced Metaphysical Beliefs

AbstractPsychedelic substances elicit powerful, uncanny conscious experiences that are thought to possess therapeutic value. In those who undergo them, these altered states of consciousness often induce shifts in metaphysical beliefs about the fundamental structure of reality. The contents of those beliefs range from contentious to bizarre, especially when considered from the point of view of naturalism. Can chemically induced, radically altered states of consciousness provide reasons for or play some positive epistemic role with respect to metaphysical beliefs? In this paper, I discuss a view that has been underexplored in recent literature. I argue that psychedelic states can be rationally integrated into one’s epistemic life. Consequently, updating one’s metaphysical beliefs based on altered states of consciousness does not have to constitute an instance of epistemic irrationality.

The ‘where’ of EU social science collaborations: How epistemic inequalities and geopolitical power asymmetries persist in research about Europe

A growing body of work has problematised how global epistemic inequality is reproduced in contemporary university settings and epistemic cultures – thinking through the lens of Eurocentrism and utilising the language of a Global North and South. However, the extent to which a relationship between geopolitical and epistemic inequality is woven into knowledge production within Europe has received less attention. Rising EU funding opportunities have facilitated a corresponding climb in transnational European social science collaborations, in concert with an expansion of empirical locations with which these projects engage. Still, increases in member state participation do not necessarily contribute to a more balanced epistemic landscape for knowledge production. Not all countries are treated equally as cases and often, these patterns of inequality reflect what Maria do Mar Pereira calls the epistemic status of nations: the idea that certain countries and continents are considered more or less likely to produce valuable or exportable scholarly knowledge. In this article, Pereira’s theory of epistemic status is extended in its implications to study choices for the selection of countries as cases. We use both quantitative data from the EU CORDIS register and ethnographic data exploring academic and collaborative practices in transnational EU-funded projects. The article addresses the ‘where’ of collaborative research by focusing on epistemic attributes rather than participatory optics. In doing so, we reflect not only on the structures and strategies of science funding in Europe but also further unsettle discussions around global epistemic inequality within academic theory and practices.

Lexicographic agreeing to disagree and perfect equilibrium

Aumann’s seminal agreement theorem deals with the impossibility for agents to acknowledge their distinct posterior beliefs. We consider agreeing to disagree in an extended framework with lexicographic probability systems. A weak agreement theorem in the sense of identical posteriors only at the first lexicographic level obtains. Somewhat surprisingly, a possibility result does emerge for the deeper levels. Agents can agree to disagree on their posteriors beyond the first lexicographic level. By means of mutual absolute continuity as an additional assumption, a strong agreement theorem with equal posteriors at every lexicographic level ensues. Subsequently, we turn to games and provide epistemic conditions for the classical solution concept of perfect equilibrium. Our lexicographic agreement theorems turn out to be pivotal in this endeavour. The hypotheses of mutual primary belief in caution, mutual primary belief in rationality, and common knowledge of conjectures characterize perfect equilibrium epistemically in our lexicographic framework.

Typing speed and fluency as cues to uncertainty in the real-time production of written messages.

In spoken communicative contexts, speakers often convey uncertainty via intonation and through paralinguistic behaviours such as speech rate and gesture-and addressees can use these behaviours to generate inferences about the speaker's epistemic state. In text-based contexts, however, cues of this sort are more restricted. In this study, we examine the expression and reception of epistemic information in the context of real-time written message production. We hypothesised that real-time typing dynamics (like those available in text-based collaborative contexts, such as Google Docs) can function as a rich paralinguistic cue about a partner's epistemic state. In Experiment 1, we collected production data showing that manipulations of typist certainty, instantiated through both the ease of message formulation and repeated experience with the task, are reflected in measures of typing fluency and speed. Then, in Experiment 2, we presented select screen recordings of the typing behaviours from Experiment 1 to a group of independent observers who made epistemic judgements about the typist. Our results show that observable differences in typing speed and fluency contribute to perceptions of typist knowledge and confidence, which has implications for interfaces that enable real-time text-based collaboration.

What’s the Evidence Say? The Relation Between Evidential-Trust and Theory of Mind

ABSTRACT Previous research has shown that linguistic cues such as mental and modal verbs can influence young children’s judgments about the reliability of informants. Further, certain languages include grammatical morphemes (i.e. evidential markers), which clarify the source of information coming from testimony (e.g., Bulgarian, Japanese, Turkish). Accordingly, the first aim of the current study is to examine whether Turkish-speaking children’s reliability judgments change based on evidential markers (i.e. the past-tense direct evidential marker, –DI, and the past-tense indirect evidential marker, –mIş). The literature has also investigated whether selective trust abilities are related to understanding the epistemic states of others (i.e., Theory of Mind). Therefore, the second aim is to examine the relation between selective trust based on evidential markers and ToM abilities by including a comprehensive ToM battery. Eighty-six Turkish-speaking preschool and elementary school children between the ages of 4 and 7, residing in a metropolitan city in Turkey, participated in a selective trust task based on evidential markers, a general language task, and a ToM battery. The results of the current study showed that after the age of 6, Turkish-speaking children start to selectively trust the informant using the past-tense direct evidential marker, –DI, over the past-tense indirect evidential marker, –mIş. Selective trust performance was related to receptive vocabulary but not to ToM abilities after controlling for participant gender and age. Overall, the results contribute to current discussions about children’s selective trust ability based on linguistic cues and its relation with ToM.

Decolonization Projects

Decolonization Projects

Natural Historical Attitude: Objectivity Before Truth Book Review: Turner D. Making Prehistory: Historical Science and the Scientific Realism Debate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Derek Turner believes that a proper interpretation of Arthur Fine’s natural ontological attitude can help to reveal the nature of the difference between «historical» (geology, archeology, forensics) and «empirical» (physics, chemistry) sciences. From his point of view, the apparent asymmetry between these sciences is a consequence of different understanding of the possibilities to «manipulate» the objects of study and the role played by background theories. In our opinion, Turner’s concept is a good example of how profound and inviting the instrumentalistic concept of science could be. First, it is «reflexive» in the sense that it constrained other instrumentalist theories (B. Fraassen’s constructive empiricism deeply flawed). And secondly, it is «constructive» – the emphasis that «the strength of arguments for or against scientific realism can vary depending on the scientific context» quite unexpectedly leads to the fact that «ideographic / nomothetic division is not very helpful», and to the fact that «epistemic disadvantage, but the same epistemic status». Reflections on the book: Turner D. Making Prehistory: Historical Science and the Scientific Realism Debate. Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Celebrity gossip headlines and reliability in a Common Ground-based framework

The paper is concerned with gossip communicated by headlines in a German celebrity magazine. It takes its starting point in a philosophical controversy on the question whether gossip is essentially epistemically (un-)reliable. As a theoretical framework, Farkas & Bruce's Common Ground-based Table model is adopted which distinguishes between different ways of introducing propositions into the Common Ground. Relating the model to the reliability status of propositions, it is argued that depending on the way in which a proposition is added to the Common Ground, it will be assigned varying epistemic status. Based on the quantitative and qualitative analysis of a corpus of 87 sentential gossip headlines from the German celebrity magazine BUNTE, it is shown that gossip is communicated both via assertion, presupposition, and conversational implicature, and that each of these ways of communication entails a different certainty status of the proposition added to the Common Ground. This means that gossip is neither essentially unreliable nor essentially reliable. Rather, the resulting ‘gossip Common Ground’ is best described as a set of epistemically heterogeneous propositions.

AI Systems and Liability: An Assessment of the Applicability of Strict Liability & A Case for Limited Legal Personhood for AI

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have prompted discussion about whether conventional liability laws can be applicable to AI systems which manifest a high degree of autonomy. Users and developers of such AI systems may meet neither the epistemic (sufficient degree of awareness of what is happening) nor control (control over the actions performed) conditions of personal responsibility for the actions of the system at hand, and therefore, conventional liability schemes may seem to be inapplicable[1].
 The recently adopted AI Liability Directive [2022] has sought to adapt EU law to the challenges to conventional liability schemes posed by AI systems by imposing a system of strict, rather than fault-based liability, for AI systems. The goal of this is to be able to more easily hold developers, producers, and users of AI technologies accountable, requiring them to explain how AI systems were built and trained. The Directive aims to make it easier for people and companies harmed by AI systems to sue those responsible for the AI systems for damages. However, the Directive seems to ignore the potential injustice that could result from producers and developers being held accountable for actions caused by AI systems which they are neither aware of nor have sufficient control over.
 In this essay, I will critically assess the Directive’s system of fault-based liability for AI systems and argue that, whilst such a system may confer some instrumental advantages on behalf of those suing for damages caused by AI systems, it risks causing injustice on the part of developers and producers by making them liable for events they could neither control nor predict. This is likely to risk both producing unjust outcomes and hindering progress in AI development. Instead, following Visa Kurki’s analysis of legal personhood as a cluster concept divided into passive and active incidents, I will argue that some AI systems ought to be granted a limited form of legal personhood, because they meet some of the relevant criteria for active legal personhood, such as the capacity to perform acts-in-the-law. The legal personhood I propose for AI systems is a kind of dependent legal personhood analogous to that granted to corporations. Such a form of legal personhood would not absolve developers and producers from liability for damages (where such liability is applicable), but at the same time, it would not risk unjustly holding producers and developers liable for actions of an AI system.
 [1] Mark Coeckelbergh, "Artificial Intelligence, Responsibility Attribution, and a Relational Justification of Explainability." Science and Engineering Ethics, (2020): 2054

The "Hard Problem of Consciousness" Arises from Human Psychology.

Consciousness presents a "hard problem" to scholars. At stake is how the physical body gives rise to subjective experience. Why consciousness is "hard", however, is uncertain. One possibility is that the challenge arises from ontology-because consciousness is a special property/substance that is irreducible to the physical. Here, I show how the "hard problem" emerges from two intuitive biases that lie deep within human psychology: Essentialism and Dualism. To determine whether a subjective experience is transformative, people judge whether the experience pertains to one's essence, and per Essentialism, one's essence lies within one's body. Psychological states that seem embodied (e.g., "color vision" ∼ eyes) can thus give rise to transformative experience. Per intuitive Dualism, however, the mind is distinct from the body, and epistemic states (knowledge and beliefs) seem particularly ethereal. It follows that conscious perception (e.g., "seeing color") ought to seem more transformative than conscious knowledge (e.g., knowledge of how color vision works). Critically, the transformation arises precisely because the conscious perceptual experience seems readily embodied (rather than distinct from the physical body, as the ontological account suggests). In line with this proposal, five experiments show that, in laypeople's view (a) experience is transformative only when it seems anchored in the human body; (b) gaining a transformative experience effects a bodily change; and (c) the magnitude of the transformation correlates with both (i) the perceived embodiment of that experience, and (ii) with Dualist intuitions, generally. These results cannot solve the ontological question of whether consciousness is distinct from the physical. But they do suggest that the roots of the "hard problem" are partly psychological.

Trends in the Expression of Epistemic Stance in NIH Research Funding Applications: 1985–2020

AbstractWe report on changes in the expression of epistemic stance in competitive funding applications—that is, applicants’ confidence and certainty towards knowledge and beliefs. We analysed abstracts describing all projects funded by the US National Institutes of Health during the period 1985–2020 for 140 stance features. Trends that we identify indicate that applicants adopt a stance less cautious and less tentative, and increasingly confident, optimistic, and promissory. This is evidenced, for example, by a consistent decline in weak possibility/probability, as expressed by modal verbs (e.g. may, might, should), by epistemic status verbs (indicate, seem) and adverbs (e.g. possible, probable, perhaps); and an increase among features that convey certainty, importance, and empiricism—for example, status verbs (e.g. demonstrate, establish, reveal), and adverbs that emphasize frequency/degree (usually, widely, almost). We argue that (i) these shifts are best understood in relation to increasing salesmanship and structural and cultural shifts within the research ecosystem, and (ii) trends in this dataset are better analysed at the level of individual features, rather than at the level of metadiscoursal categories.

The threshold of the monstrous, between dehumanization and necro-capitalism


 
 
 The subject of the following contribution is a discussion of the theses in R.L.Smith's volume 'Making Monster,' on the relationship between processes of dehumanization and the production of monstrosity. Reading the multiple facets of this link, the contribution tries to highlight some lines of analysis. The first of analysis concerns on the epistemic status of the concept of dehumanization. The second, on the other hand, concerns the actual dimensions of the processes of monstrosity production within the multiple social, temporal and political layers of the concept of crisis.
 
 

“Tú sabes lo que le pasa a él?”: the Role of (Relational) Epistemics in Indirect Complaint Sequences in Spanish and English Family Talk

Abstract Drawing on interactional pragmatics and membership categorisation analysis, this paper explores indirect (third-party-oriented and situation-oriented) complaints in Spanish and English interactions between family members where expectations of affiliation are contingent on (relational) epistemic (im)balances. We analyse how (1) disaffiliation is constructed through the recipient’s more knowledgeable position in relation to the matter at hand, (2) complainability is legitimised when the recipient lacks epistemic access to the issue and (3) complaints are partially disattended by the recipient due to their inferior epistemic status regarding the situation. Throughout, we argue that (relational) epistemics is a necessary feature to incorporate in analysis, when it concerns the recipient’s responses and, therefore, interpersonal achievement of social actions. We show how complainants treat the prior turns as relevant to the rights, obligations and expectations related to their relational categories and how extended sequences of complaints are co-constructed and negotiated in interaction.

Teacher self-correction of conceptual error: Fictionalisation and shifting epistemological stance in early childhood education teaching

Teachers making errors in explanation that require subsequent self-correction is presumably common in education. However, it may be difficult to capture in research. In this study, teacher self-correction in the context of early childhood science education within a fictive frame was captured on video when documenting science activities over a prolonged time. How the teachers address the error they discover in their teaching and work in correcting it in subsequent activities are analyzed. The error identified and addressed concerns the distinction between a tornado and a dust devil (dust vortex). The empirical data consist of video recordings of teachers-children interaction in Swedish preschool. The participating children are 4 to 5 years old. The findings clarify how the teachers in addressing and correcting the conceptual error uses different semiotic means, with a particular emphasis on the coordination of gesturing and verbal explication when contrasting and explaining the different phenomena. The analysis also clarifies how the fictive character employed leads to a shift in epistemic status of the teachers to becoming co-learners with the children. How addressing and amending errors in explanation may function in deepening meaning making rather than working detrimental to it is discussed.

Who knows? On the epistemic status of experience in sugar-dating research

Sugar dating has gained extensive media coverage over the last couple of years, often being depicted as a veiled form of prostitution / sex work. While similar dating arrangements encompassing some sort of economic compensation are well researched in an African and Asian context, sugar dating has only garnered attention from researchers in the Global North during the last decade, in the wake of a proliferation of websites facilitating the practice. In light of the contested nature of the phenomenon, in this article we critically assess how knowledge about sugar dating is constructed in the emerging literature on the topic in the Global North, with a particular focus on the role attributed to sugar daters’ own experiential accounts. Alongside furthering the discourse on sugar dating by unravelling the epistemological underpinnings of existing research, we utilise the case of sugar-dating research to elaborate on the continued relevance of feminist debates on the epistemological status of experience. We call for a more comprehensive theoretical examination of experience in sugar-dating research and posit that some versions of feminist standpoint theory, as well as strands in feminist phenomenology, provide valuable theoretical tools for navigating between understanding experience as an ideological construct and/or as a privileged foundation of knowledge.

"Conducted Properly, Published Incorrectly": The Evolving Status of Gel Electrophoresis Images Along Instrumental Transformations in Times of Reproducibility Crisis.

For the last ten years, within molecular life sciences, the reproducibility crisis discourse has been embodied as a crisis of trust in scientific images. Beyond the contentious perception of "questionable research practices" associated with a digital turn in the production of images, this paper highlights the transformations of gel electrophoresis as a family of experimental techniques. Our aim is to analyze the evolving epistemic status of generated images and its connection with a crisis of trust in images within that field. From the 1980s to the 2000s, we identify two key innovations (precast gels and gel docs) leading to a "two-tiered" gel electrophoresis with different standardization procedures, different epistemic statuses of the produced images and different ways of generating (dis)trust in images. The first tier, exemplified by differential gel electrophoresis (DIGE), is characterized by specialized devices processing images as quantitative data. The second tier, exemplified by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE), is described as a routine technique making use of image as qualitative "virtual witnessing." The difference between these two tiers is particularly apparent in the ways images are processed, even though both tiers involve image digitization. Our account thus highlights different views on reproducibility within the two tiers. Comparability of images is insisted upon in the first tier while traceability is expected in the second tier. It is striking that these differences occur not only within the same scientific field, but even within the same family of experimental techniques. In the second tier, digitization entails distrust, whereas it implies a collective sentiment of trust in the first tier.