Epistemic Dependence Research Articles

CULTIVATING ONLINE AND OFFLINE PATHWAYS TO ENLIGHTENMENT

In light of expanding epistemic resources online, the mediatization of religion poses questions about the possible changes, decline and reconstruction of clergy authority. Distinct from virtual Buddhism or cybersangha research which relies primarily on online observational data, this paper examines Buddhist clergy communication within the context of established religious organizations with an integrationist perspective on interpersonal communication and new and old media connections. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Buddhist leaders in Singapore, this paper illustrates ways in which priests are expanding their communicative competency, which we label ‘strategic arbitration’ to maintain their authority by restructuring multimodal representations and communicative influence. This study expands upon previous research by Cheong et al. (in press, Journal of Communication) and finds that constituting Buddhist religious epistemic authority in wired organizational contexts rests on coordinating online–offline communicative acts. Such concatenative coordination involves normalizing the aforementioned modality of authority through interpersonal acts that positively influences epistemic dependence. Communicative acts that privilege face-to-face mentoring and corporeal rituals are optimized in the presence of monks within perceived sacred spaces in temple grounds, thereby enabling clergy to perform ultimate arbitration. However, Buddhist leaders also increase bargaining power when heightened web presence and branding practices are enacted. The paper concludes with limitations and recommendations for future research in religious authority.

The Division of Epistemic Labor

In this paper I formulate the thesis of the Division of Epistemic Labor as a thesis of epistemic dependence, illustrate several ways in which individual subjects are epistemically dependent on one or more of the members of their community in the process of knowledge acquisition, and draw conclusions about the cognitively distributed nature of some knowledge acquisition.

Poznávat spolu s experty: kontextuální vědění ve vědě a kolem ní

The original concept of epistemic dependence suggests uncritical deference to expert opinions for non-experts. In the light of recent work in science studies, however, the actual situation of epistemic dependence is seen to involve the necessary and ubiquitous need for lay evaluations of scientific experts. As expert knowledge means restricted cognitive access to some epistemic domain, lay evaluations of expert knowledge are rational and informed only when the criteria used by non-experts when judging experts are different from the criteria used by experts when making their claims. The distinction between ‘substantial knowledge’ and ‘contextual knowledge’ allows for the laypeople to know with experts without having to know precisely what experts know. Such meta-expert evaluations are not specific to the public sphere outside science, nor are they limited internally to science, but they are present in a wide range of contexts in and around science. The paper legitimizes the concept of contextual knowledge by relating it to the relevant literature, and expounds the idea by identifying some elements of such a knowledge.

Life and Temporality: The Place of Biosemiotics within Peirce’s General Semiotics

Abstract I would like to present some new perspectives on the reciprocal foundational links which are discemable between Peirce's general semiotics on the one hand and anthroposemiotic and biosemiotic inquiry on the other. To this end I offer an examination of the peculiar place occupied by temporal relations within the relational framework of Peirce's semiotics. I support these considerations by drawing on previous work about a relational world-view presently emerging as a unifying perspective within diverse fields of inquiry (biology, quantum physics, philosophy of inquiry, and mathematics), which I have previously characterized as a "relational tum". A common, positive feature of these developments is the recognition of the relational nature of physical reality. This portends an implicit repudiation of the traditional nominalistic bias of the physical sciences and removes an important obstacle to the acceptance of semiotic ideas. However these new approaches have, up to now, failed to consider any relations other than dyadic relations or their dyadic combinations. I argue for the need to supplement the Peircean elucidation of semiosis in terms of triadic relations with other equally unique relational features, which I characterize as " radical temporality" and selfreference. A brief sketch of the different roles played by relations of temporality in organisms in general ( biosemiotics) as opposed to organisms immersed in a historically constituted culture of symbols and artifacts (anthroposemiotics) serves to disclose the relations of mutual epistemic dependence that underlie these disciplines.

Testimony and Kant’s Idea of Public Reason

It is common to interpret Kant’s idea of public reason and the Enlightenment motto to ‘think for oneself’ as incompatible with the view that testimony and judgement of credibility is essential to rational public deliberation. Such interpretations have led to criticism of contemporary Kantian approaches to deliberative democracy for being intellectualistic, and for not considering our epistemic dependence on other people adequately. In this article, I argue that such criticism is insufficiently substantiated, and that Kant’s idea of public reason is neither at odds with deference to a certain kind of authority, nor with making judgements of character in rational deliberation. This view is corroborated by recent work on Kant’s epistemology of testimony.

Trust in Experts: Contextual Patterns of Warranted Epistemic Dependence

Trust in Experts: Contextual Patterns of Warranted Epistemic Dependence

Intellection and Indiscipline

A discipline will usually become the object of study and its relationship to other disciplines a moment of concern when its borders are precarious and its definition in dispute. Law, ‘the oldest social science’, is arguably both prior to discipline — it emerges initially and most forcefully as a practice — and without discipline, its object being potentially all human behaviour. If law is necessarily between and among disciplines, both prone to moonlighting and everywhere homeless, it will also always be in some mode of scholarly crisis. Certain conclusions follow. Law is paradoxically dependent upon other disciplines for its access to the domains that it regulates. The greater its epistemic dependency, however, the slighter its political acknowledgment of that subordination. Which allows a positive thesis: the epistemic drift of law can carry the discipline to a frank acknowledgment of the value of indiscipline both to novelty and intellection.

When teaching style matches students’ epistemic (in)dependence: The moderating effect of perceived epistemic gap

In a 2×2×2 factorial design, 3rd year Romanian psychology students (N=94) were assigned into 2 groups according to the extent to which they acknowledged an epistemic dependence (lowvs. high) toward their professor. They then compared the competence of 3rd year students to that of 1st year or 5th year students. Finally, they were exposed to a persuasive counter-attitudinal message from an epistemic authority, framed in an authoritarian vs. democratic style. The main dependent variable was the influence of the counter-attitudinal message. Results show an interaction between the three variables. No effects were found among students in the upward social comparison condition in which they felt particularly incompetent. The expected interaction between style and dependence was significant in the down ward comparison condition where participants felt more competent than 1st year students. Students high in perceived epistemic dependence were more influenced by the authoritarian style than those low in epistemic dependence. The reverse tended to be true for participants exposed to the democratic style.

Epistemic constraint and teaching style

An experimental study investigated the influence of informational dependence on information appropriation as a function of epistemic authority’s styles. In a 2×2 design, university students were informed that acknowledging epistemic dependence was related either to academic success or to academic failure, and were exposed to controversial information from an epistemic authority that used either an authoritarian or a democratic style. The main dependent variable was the extent to which participants appropriated the controversial information. Firstly the results showed that students were more inclined to admit that their own academic competence depended on the information delivered by the teachers when epistemic dependence was related to success rather than to failure. Secondly, the admittance of dependence had a different impact on information appropriation according to the authority’s style. Admittance increased appropriation under a democratic style whereas it decreased appropriation under an authoritarian style.

Epistemic merit, autonomy, and testimony

In this paper, it is argued that both the informer and the hearer in a testimonial situation deserve epistemic merit insofar as they contribute to the collaborative achievement of sharing knowledge. The paper introduces a distinction between the ideals of self-sufficiency and epistemic autonomy. The autonomous exercise of our epistemic agency is very often carried out under strong conditions of epistemic dependence. Testimony exhibits a kind of social dependence that does not threaten the autonomy of the subjects that need to consider their own epistemic capacities. When involved in a testimonial situation, both speaker and hearer declare, at least implicitly, the standings they occupy in an epistemic space and are obliged to recognise certain epistemic requirements.

Experts, Evidence, and Epistemic Independence

Throughout his work on the rationality of epistemic dependence, John Hardwig makes the striking observation that he believes many things for which he possesses no evidence (1985, 335; 1991, 693; 1994, 83). While he could imagine collecting for himself the relevant evidence for some of his beliefs, the vastness of the world and constraints of time and individual intellect thwart his ability to gather for himself the evidence for all his beliefs. So for many things he believes what others tell him, as we all do. Epistemic dependence is the responsible choice, he argues, because he can be reasonably sure that those on whom he depends know more about the subject than he does. Epistemic dependence on experts is a smarter bet than epistemic autonomy: after all, Hardwig reasons, “if I were to pursue epistemic autonomy across the board, I would succeed in holding relatively uninformed, unreliable, crude, untested, and therefore irrational beliefs” (1985, 340) [...] In this paper I argue against what I call Hardwig’s no-evidence thesis: that knowledge and belief based on testimony are knowledge and belief for which the knower possesses no evidence. Against the no-evidence thesis, I propose we recognize that layperson B’s good reason to believe that expert A has good reason to believe proposition p constitutes evidence for B for p. I argue that the reasons Hardwig gives for the no-evidence thesis are inconclusive at best; at worst the no-evidence thesis coupled with his recognition of expert interdependence exposes him to recent criticisms by Stella Gaon and Stephen Norris. By rejecting the no-evidence thesis, we can recognize with Hardwig the importance of expert epistemic interdependence while avoiding the paradoxical implications of his position.

The Right connections: Acknowledging epistemic progression in talk

It is proposed that the response token Right, in one important use, is a marker of epistemic dependency between two units of talk by a prior speaker, and that this talk has progressed the understanding by the Right producer of a complex activity involving much information transfer. Two other Rights as response tokens are considered: as an epistemic confirmation token similar to That's right, and as a change-of-activity token similar to Alright/Okay. In addition, Right is shown to be different from other response tokens, including the news receipt Oh, newsmarkers such as Really?, and continuers and acknowledgment tokens such as Mm hm and Yeah. The primary data consist of a fully transcribed dietetic consultation in an Australian hospital between a dietician and a client.This article has been evolving for nearly ten years, and I wish to thank numerous members of a range of audiences for their stimulating questions. I also wish to thank four anonymous reviewers whose penetrating questions led to two fairly radical rethinks of the arguments and organization. I would particularly like to thank Keith Abbott, who was in the audience for what I hope was the last oral presentation of this paper. He provided extensive written feedback and really put me on the track of epistemic progression marking as being the best characterization of this response token.

The social transmission of knowledge at the University: Teaching style and epistemic dependence

It is argued that an epistemic authority would induce greater influence in transmitting knowledge to students when there is a correspondence between the (authoritarian vs. democratic) style of the authority and students’ perceptions of their relation to the authority (high vs. low epistemic dependence). In two studies it was predicted, and found, that students who perceived themselves in a state of low epistemic dependence towards their teachers were more influenced by a democratic than by an authoritarian teaching style. This difference in appropriation was not found for students who perceived themselves in a state of epistemic dependence towards the epistemic authority.

Caribbean Dependency Thought Revisited

ABSTRACT This paper assesses the contribution, limitations, and contemporary relevance of Caribbean dependency thought (CDT). CDT emerged in the early post-colonial period in the English-speaking Caribbean with a mission to extend political decolonization to the intellectual, economic, social, and cultural spheres. While part of broader international currents of radical thought, it had its own special characteristics, associated with the theory of plantation economy and society. After outlining the historical context, the paper identfies four main expressions of CDT for review: “New World” thinking on epistemic dependency; the plantation school and multinational corporations as the institutional foundations of economic dependency; other structuralist formulations of dependency; and dependency as peripheral capitalism. Also discussed are the social and political theories of dependency and their policy prescriptions. CDT had a strong influence in Caribbean intellectual and political circles in the 1970s, but it generated vigorous critiques from both Marxist and mainstream social science. The paper suggests that its eventual decline was due to several unresolved theoretical methodological and political issues as well as to wider intellectual and political developments. The paper concludes by pointing to the significant historical contribution of CDT to Caribbean and Third World critical thought, and argues that its stance and method have relevance to critiques of contemporary globalization.

RORTY ON REALISM AND CONSTRUCTIVISM

Abstract: This article argues that we can and should recognize the mind dependence, epistemic dependence, and social dependence of theories of mind-independent reality, as opposed to Rorty, who thinks not even a constructivist theory of mind-independent reality can be had. It accuses Rorty of creating an equivocation or “dualism of scheme and content” between causation and justification based on various “Davidsonian” irrelevancies, not to be confused with the actual Davidson. These include the Principle of Charity, the attack against conceptual schemes, the linguistification of social practice, intersubjectivism, and causal naturalism. It follows that realists and constructivists need neither follow Rorty's mischaracterizations nor succumb to his internal paradoxes.

Comparison of global sensitivity analysis techniques and importance measures in PSA

This paper discusses application and results of global sensitivity analysis techniques to probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) models, and their comparison to importance measures. This comparison allows one to understand whether PSA elements that are important to the risk, as revealed by importance measures, are also important contributors to the model uncertainty, as revealed by global sensitivity analysis. We show that, due to epistemic dependence, uncertainty and global sensitivity analysis of PSA models must be performed at the parameter level. A difficulty arises, since standard codes produce the calculations at the basic event level. We discuss both the indirect comparison through importance measures computed for basic events, and the direct comparison performed using the differential importance measure and the Fussell ‐ Vesely importance at the parameter level. Results are discussed for the large LLOCA sequence of the advanced test reactor PSA. q 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Entrenchment versus Dependence: Coherence and Foundations in Belief Change

We describe the relation between coherence and foundations approaches to belief change in terms of a correspondence between epistemic entrenchment relations (Gardenfors and Makinson, 1988; Rott, 1992) and dependence consequence relations from Bochman (1999, 2000a). The general conclusion of the study is that dependence consequence relations are sufficiently expressive to subsume the notion of an epistemic entrenchment and its generalizations.

The Undecidable Grounds of Scientific Expertise: Science Education and the Limits of Intellectual Independence

Motivated by the work of Hardwig (1985, 1991) on epistemic dependence and trust in expertise, we enquire into the nature and extent of the critical assessment that non-scientists can make—and that they should be taught to make—with regard to science. Our thesis is that critical assessment of science is possible for non-experts because at the basis of science is a set of norms, beliefs and values that are contestable by non-scientists. These norms, beliefs and values are of critical importance to science education and valuable to explore from a pedagogical perspective.

The Structure of Justification.

Overview Part I. The Foundationalism-Coherentism Controversy: 1. Psychological foundationalism 2. Axiological foundationalism 3. Foundationalism, epistemic dependence, and defeasibility 4. The foundationalism-coherentism controversy: hardened stereotypes and overlapping theories Part II. Knowledge and Justification: 5. the limits of self-knowledge 6. defeated knowledge, reliability, and justification 7. The causal structure of indirect justification 8. Belief, reason, and inference 9. Structural justification Part III. Epistemic Principles and Skepticism: 10. Justification, truth and reliability 11. Causalist internalism 12. The old skepticism, the new foundationalism, and naturalized epistemology Part IV. Rationality: 13. An epistemic conception of rationality 14. Rationalization and rationality 15. The architecture of reason.

Learning to live with scientific expertise: Toward a theory of intellectual communalism for guiding science teaching

AbstractA long–standing goal of science education is teaching students to be intellectually independent of scientific experts. This article proposes that this goal be abandoned as impossible to attain, and be replaced by a goal of intellectual communalism between scientists and nonscientists. The argument draws upon work demonstrating that epistemic dependence of nonexperts upon experts and of experts upon each other is an unavoidable characteristic of knowledge acquisition. This dependence implies both the need for trust in expertise and for expertise to be used responsibly. Faced with epistemic dependence, the alternative of intellectual communalism for science is recunimended in which nonscientists defer to scientists on matters of evidence for scientific knowledge claims, but use the combined judgment of scientists critically to assess alleged scientific expertise. It is claimed that scientists have no special experrise in the use of scientific knowledge, and that nonscientists must play an evaluative role in this regard. The sort of instruction proposed to achieve the goal of intellectual communalism consists of standard instruction in scientific knowledge, metascientific discussion about the nature of scientific knowledge and expertise, and instruction and practice in judging expertise. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.