Epistemic Humility Research Articles

Learned ignorance: Opposing the scientificising hegemony through Santos, Pope and Hamilton

Abstract A major strand of opposition to the West's/Global North's scientificising hegemony has recently been retrieved through Santos’ reinterpretation of Cusanus’ 15th-century doctrine of learned ignorance. Though Cusanus has been marginalised, his doctrine imbues a profound epistemic humility conducive to our present need to reconfigure education. Contributing to this retrieval, I define learned ignorance as an epistemic principle of humility, adherence to which conduces towards reconditioning learning and teaching as non-finalised, processual activities within a genuinely intercultural pluriverse of knowledges. Agreeing with Santos’ marginalisation thesis and his advocacy of recovering similarly silenced voices from within Western discourse, I argue that learned ignorance in some works of English literature and philosophy has also been marginalised. One of the most famous lines from Pope—‘A little Learningis a dang'rous Thing’—has been widely misunderstood through failing to recognise the poem's learned ignorance elements. My reinterpretation of Pope suggests a possibly more extensive literary form of opposition to the scientificisation of knowledge. I also examine another marginalised, educationally significant retrieval of learned ignorance by Hamilton. His learned ignorance standpoint fundamentally opposes the scientificisation and instrumentalisation of knowledge and learning. The discussion identifies the counterhegemonic status of this epistemic principle of humility and intimates its paradigm-shifting opportunities through some brief closing suggestions concerning how learned ignorance enriches Freire's emphases on the importance of ‘love, humility and faith’ as essential to the ‘horizontal relationship’ between teacher and student of an educational dialogue founded on trust.

Wise reasoning, intergroup positivity, and attitude polarization across contexts

We hypothesized that a wisdom-based reasoning process comprised of epistemic humility, accounting for context, and integrating different perspectives and interests, would be helpful in overcoming intergroup bias and attitude polarization in societal conflicts. Here we test the hypothesis using both the Situated Wise Reasoning Scale and experimental induction. In each study, we recruited participants who self-identified as members of a group implicated in an ongoing intergroup situation. In five correlational studies (Studies 1-5) we examined the relations between measured wise reasoning and intergroup positivity and attitude polarization. In two experiments, we tested the effects of a brief online wise-reasoning thought exercise on intergroup positivity and polarization (Studies 6-7), and charitable behaviors to an outgroup (Study 6). We found that wise reasoning relates to more positivity toward outgroups and less attitude polarization across different groups and conflicts. The results have implications for theory and may also have implications for future research on interventions to improve intergroup relations.

Beware of equating increased access to mental health services with health equity: The need for clinical and epistemic humility in psychology.

As the coronavirus public health crisis continues affect countries around the world, it has become increasingly evident that the burdens that are imposed by the pandemic are not shared equally Those with fewer resources, immigrants, and members of marginalized and racialized groups are at a disproportionate risk of physical harm and emotional distress from coronavirus 2019 However, when responses discrimination, social disadvantage, and racism are captured as depression, this may result in overmedicalization and overtreatment Instead of focusing predominantly on increased access mental health services, humanistic psychology has long recognized the need address the structural and systemic obstacles that undermine well-being Indeed, responses wide-scale human suffering that focus exclusively on intraindividual interventions often keep the status quo intact and do not animate our political imagination If mental health issues are embedded in inequality, which is a social and structural category, not a psychological category, then it is ignorance producing suggest that one can solve mental health issues on an individual, psychological level Finally, an important lesson can be learned from humanistic psychology's emphasis on empathic dwelling when bearing witness human suffering Empathic dwelling is not a cognitive or intellectual exercise that simply facilitates mental health treatment Rather, it is a purposeful stance or comportment from which we try to feel one's way into the other's experience [ein-fu hlen] [what] Husserl described as 'trading places' It is only in and through this type of comport ment, this deeply felt attunement, that we will be able bring clinical and epistemic humility fruition (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)

Did You Listen? Zapatismo and Epistemic Decolonization

This essay looks at the Zapatista struggle in Southeast Mexico from the perspective of epistemic decolonization. I follow Walter Mignolo’s analysis of Zapatismo as a decolonial “theoretical revolution” and moreover build on it by articulating it in relation to other concepts in the decolonial theoretical toolkit, such as epistemic humility, pluriversality, and knowing how to listen. I conclude with an interpretation of recent events in the Zapatista communities that reinforce what Mariana Mora has called the Zapatista’s “politics of listening,” which also allude to the transformations that continue to make Zapatismo a global beacon of decolonial thinking and doing.

Moral Reasoning in “the World”

While moral theology fundamentally relies on human reason, scholarship on social sin now raises complex questions about the connection between understanding and moral responsibility. Considering these within the frame of reflection on “the world,” this essay proposes reading our culturally mediated defects of reason as a kind of worldliness that is both imposed from without and yet also reflects humanity’s sinful rebelliousness. In this theological register, following the recommendation of liberation and contextual theologians to learn from the “other” appears necessary as a practice of epistemic humility appropriate to humanity’s finite and fallen condition, and is thus useful for tempering moral theology’s longstanding confidence in reason. It also offers a way to make ourselves vulnerable to grace.

Psychedelics and Consciousness: Distinctions, Demarcations, and Opportunities.

Psychedelic substances produce unusual and compelling changes in conscious experience that have prompted some to propose that psychedelics may provide unique insights explaining the nature of consciousness. At present, psychedelics, like other current scientific tools and methods, seem unlikely to provide information relevant to the so-called “hard problem of consciousness,” which involves explaining how first-person experience can emerge. However, psychedelics bear on multiple “easy problems of consciousness,” which involve relations between subjectivity, brain function, and behavior. In this review, we discuss common meanings of the term “consciousness” when used with regard to psychedelics and consider some models of the effects of psychedelics on the brain that have also been associated with explanatory claims about consciousness. We conclude by calling for epistemic humility regarding the potential for psychedelic research to aid in explaining the hard problem of consciousness while pointing to ways in which psychedelics may advance the study of many specific aspects of consciousness.

Virtue epistemology and epistemic humility: national and international implications for social work

This paper adopts an original approach to social work by using virtue epistemology to analyse critically contemporary social work knowledge and practice. There is an epistemic danger that social workers are using knowledge in an overconfident and uncritical way. It is argued that this epistemic confidence is linked to the narrow and at times authoritarian practices of contemporary social work. The paper reviews the concept of virtue ethics and connects it to epistemology and the virtues needed to apply knowledge ethically. Epistemic humility is seen as a key epistemological virtue in social work and its implications for social work nationally and internationally are considered. The key message of this paper is that virtue epistemology provides a way to explore how we can be before we decide what to do

Autisme als meerduidig en politiek fenomeen: een disability studies perspectief

In clinical practice and research, we often explain what autism is by using several definite and seemingly neutral sentences. However, can we know what autism is in a truly objective sense? Is it moreover justified to put forward persistently the medical-clinical perspective as an explanation? To answer these questions, we first look at the interdisciplinary field of Disability Studies, paying special attention to the concept of neurodiversity. Drawing on that field and its insights, we do not only unravel the multiple meanings of autism, but we also make an argument for an urgent understanding of autism as an ambiguous and political phenomenon. This understanding implies thinking autism in contextual and relational concepts and recognizing the mutability of the phenomenon. Furthermore, by drawing on concrete examples, we demonstrate why an ambiguous and political understanding of autism is urgent, both in individual trajectories as in thinking about early autism detection and intervention. Finally, we conclude our article by arguing for an attitude of epistemic humility. We also offer some suggestions on how to implement ambiguity and political understanding of autism in a clinical and research context.

How Physicians Manage Medical Uncertainty: A Qualitative Study and Conceptual Taxonomy.

BackgroundMedical uncertainty is a pervasive and important problem, but the strategies physicians use to manage it have not been systematically described.ObjectivesTo explore the uncertainty management strategies employed by physicians practicing in acute-care hospital settings and to organize these strategies within a conceptual taxonomy that can guide further efforts to understand and improve physicians’ tolerance of medical uncertainty.DesignQualitative study using individual in-depth interviews.ParticipantsConvenience sample of 22 physicians and trainees (11 attending physicians, 7 residents [postgraduate years 1–3), 4 fourth-year medical students), working within 3 medical specialties (emergency medicine, internal medicine, internal medicine–pediatrics), at a single large US teaching hospital.MeasurementsSemistructured interviews explored participants’ strategies for managing medical uncertainty and temporal changes in their uncertainty tolerance. Inductive qualitative analysis of audio-recorded interview transcripts was conducted to identify and categorize key themes and to develop a coherent conceptual taxonomy of uncertainty management strategies.ResultsParticipants identified various uncertainty management strategies that differed in their primary focus: 1) ignorance-focused, 2) uncertainty-focused, 3) response-focused, and 4) relationship-focused. Ignorance- and uncertainty-focused strategies were primarily curative (aimed at reducing uncertainty), while response- and relationship-focused strategies were primarily palliative (aimed at ameliorating aversive effects of uncertainty). Several participants described a temporal evolution in their tolerance of uncertainty, which coincided with the development of greater epistemic maturity, humility, flexibility, and openness.ConclusionsPhysicians and physician-trainees employ a variety of uncertainty management strategies focused on different goals, and their tolerance of uncertainty evolves with the development of several key capacities. More work is needed to understand and improve the management of medical uncertainty by physicians, and a conceptual taxonomy can provide a useful organizing framework for this work.

Notes on economics imperialism and norms of scientific inquiry

L’impérialisme économique, entendu comme une certaine relation entre disciplines scientifiques, est défendu par certains et rejeté par d’autres. Ces réactions sont toutefois rarement fondées sur des valeurs et des normes de recherche scientifique explicites. Or, lorsque l’on s’efforce de les rendre explicites, ces normes se révèlent plus complexes et plus floues qu’il n’y paraît. Certains considèrent qu’elles font partie intégrante de la définition du concept d’impérialisme économique ; d’autres, dont je fais partie, considèrent qu’elles sont extérieures à ce concept. Dans les deux cas, l’application des normes est sélective et ambiguë. Elles peuvent être mobilisées, selon la sélection et l’interprétation à laquelle on procède, pour soutenir ou pour critiquer l’impérialisme économique. L’article recense différentes normes méthodologiques et sociales de recherche scientifique – par exemple le souhait d’une portée large, l’unification, l’originalité, l’exactitude empirique, l’universalisme, l’humilité épistémique, la réceptivité à la critique, la diversité, la justice épistémique, la disposition à jouer ( playfulness ) – et il montre comment elles peuvent être invoquées dans les controverses. Ces notes critiquent certaines analyses normatives de l’impérialisme économique. Elles résument et développent également ma propre analyse. Elles ne livrent toutefois pas de conclusion définitive.

Culture and psychedelic psychotherapy: Ethnic and racial themes from three Black women therapists

AbstractPsychedelic medicine is an emerging field of research and practice that examines the psychotherapeutic effects of substances classified as hallucinogens on the human mind, body, and spirit. Current research explores the safety and efficacy of these substances for mental health disorders including anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Although current studies explore psychotherapeutic effects from a biomedical perspective, gaps in awareness around cultural issues in the therapeutic process are prominent. African Americans have been absent from psychedelic research as both participants and researchers, and little attention has been paid to the potential of psychedelics to address traumas caused by racialization. This paper examines cultural themes and clinical applications from the one-time use of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) as part of an US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved clinical trial and training exercise for three African American female therapists. The primary themes that emerged across the varied experiences centered on strength, safety, connection, and managing oppression/racialization. The participants' experiences were found to be personally meaningful and instructive for how Western models of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy could be more effective and accessible to the Black community. Included is a discussion of the importance of facilitator training to make best use of emerging material when it includes cultural, racial, and spiritual themes. A lack of knowledge and epistemic humility can create barriers to treatment for underserved populations. Implications for future research and practice for marginalized cultural groups are also discussed, including consideration of Functional Analytic Psychotherapy (FAP) as an adjunct to the psychedelic-therapy approaches currently advanced. As women of color are among the most stigmatized groups of people, it is essential to incorporate their perspectives into the literature to expand conversations about health equity.

Who Is a Wise Person? Zhuangzi and Epistemological Discussions of Wisdom

This essay articulates the contribution that the Zhuangzi can make to contemporary epistemological discussions of wisdom. It suggests that wisdom in the Zhuangzi involves, in part, correctly distinguishing the "heavenly" (or the naturally given) from human artifice. It is important for humanity to understand naturally given conditions (e.g., seasons, climate, forces, mortality) to grasp what is within, and what beyond, our initiatives. To enable this, we need to be openly engaged with the world, rather than approach it with rigid convictions about outcomes or goals. We characterize such openness and readiness to engage as an attitude, that of "epistemic humility." In building up our position, we assess two themes in analytic philosophical debates on wisdom: the epistemic component of wisdom and the domain of wisdom. This helps establish what we believe is an important contribution of the Zhuangzi to the discussion on wisdom, that is, the wise person's epistemic humility.

Ecosocial Philosophy of Education: Ecologizing the Opinionated Self

While human beings generally act prosocially towards one another — contra a Hobbesian “war of all against all” — this basic social courtesy tends not to be extended to our relations with the more-than-human world. Educational philosophy is largely grounded in a worldview that privileges human-centered conceptions of the self, valuing its own opinions with little regard for the ecological realities undergirding it. This hyper-separation from the ‘society of all beings’ is a foundational cause of our current ecological crises. In this paper, we develop an ecosocial philosophy of education (ESPE) based on the idea of an ecological self. We aspire to consolidate voices from deep ecology and ecofeminism for conceptualizing education in terms of being responsible to and for, a complex web of interdependent relations among human and more-than-human beings. By analyzing the notion of opinions in light of Gilles Deleuze’s critique of the ‘dogmatic image of thought,’ we formulate three aspects of ESPE capable of supporting an ecological as opposed to an egoistic conception of the self: (i) rather than dealing with fixed concepts, ESPE supports adaptable and flexible boundaries between the self and the world; (ii) rather than fixating on correct answers, ESPE focuses on real-life problems shifting our concern from the self to the world; and (iii) rather than supporting arrogance, EPSE cultivates an epistemic humility grounded in our ecological embeddedness in the world. These approaches seek to enable an education that cultivates a sense of self that is less caught up with arbitrary, egoistic opinions of the self and more attuned to the ecological realities constituting our collective life-worlds.

Encountering the Other: Postmodern and Barthian Pastoral Theologies in Dialogue

Abstract The proliferation of contextual theologies points to the perspectival character of all theological systems, underscoring the need for epistemic humility, self-reflexivity, and openness to alterity. Yet, constructive dialogue often proves difficult due to divergent sources of authority and conflicting normative values. I consider proposals by Elaine Graham and Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger, pointing out not only how their postmodern and Barthian pastoral theological models differ, but also where they may be congruent and mutually edifying. Karl Barth attracts skepticism from both “conservatives” and “liberals,” yet each may find in him an ally, resource, and bridge for engaging the other.

Learning to think together: Creativity, interdisciplinary collaboration and epistemic control

The world’s current struggles with the health, economic and social impacts of the horrific Covid-19 pandemic and Australia’s recent experience of climate crises, fire and flood, remind us that developing proficiency in addressing complex problems and working in interdisciplinary collaborative contexts are extraordinarily urgent. This worldwide pandemic poses potential social, political, economic and cultural catastrophes in addition to the immediate tragic outcomes for individuals and public health. Now more than ever we need to focus on developing our skills of creative and collaborative thinking. In this paper, I synthesise the research around creative collaboration, from a range of disciplines, and outline a framework to scaffold collaborative thinking in educational contexts to help students generate creative responses to complex problems. The framework develops students metacognitive understanding and epistemic awareness to enable meaningful epistemic shifting, perspective taking and cross disciplinary communication. Moving from epistemic awareness, through epistemic humility and epistemic empathy, students develop epistemic control. The article ends by calling for further research into the benefits of interdisciplinary metacognition across a range of learning contexts and a consideration of the need to go beyond often fixed adversarial critical thinking approaches and to develop an epistemic position based on inclusive collaboration and emergent creativity.

Researching COVID-19: A research agenda for public policy and administration scholars

Coronavirus (COVID-19) is one of the defining policy challenges of an era. In this article, we sketch some possible ways in which the public policy and administration community can make an enduring contribution about how to cope with this terrible crisis. We do so by offering some elements that delineate a tentative research agenda for public policy and administration scholars, to be pursued with epistemic humility. We outline the contours of seven analytical themes that are central to the challenges presented by COVID-19: policy design and instruments, policy learning, public service and its publics, organisational capacity, public governance, administrative traditions and public sector reforms in multi-level governance (MLG). The list is neither exhaustive nor exclusive to COVID-19. The knowledge we can generate must speak not only to the daunting challenge of COVID-19 itself but also to policymakers, and indeed humankind, trying to cope with future unexpected but high impact threats, by leveraging better public policies and building administrative capacities to enable more resilient, equitable and effective public services.

Constitutionalizing nature’s law: dignity and the regulation of biotechnology in Switzerland

Abstract The Swiss Constitution was amended by referendum in 1992 to include two unique provisions: Article 119, which imposes strict limits on genetic and reproductive technologies in humans in order to protect ‘human dignity’, and Article 120, which commits the Swiss federal government to limiting genetic technologies in non-human species on the basis of the ‘dignity of the creature’. This article analyzes the role of ‘dignity’ as a limit on biotechnologies in the Swiss constitutional order. It concludes that the understanding of dignity the constitution embraces codifies a contestable metaphysical theory of value at the constitutional level. Specifically, the Swiss constitutional concept of dignity embraces the normative theory that the natural order is a source of moral value. Because this theory speaks directly to contested questions of the good life, Switzerland’s adoption of it as a constitutional principle is analogous to the adoption of a religious theory in a constitution. The concept of dignity as understood in the Swiss constitutional order is contrary to the commitment to epistemic humility characteristic of liberal constitutions.

Suffering, Guilt—and Divine Injustice? The Nature and Forms of Evil in Their Bearing on the Problem of Theodicy

The so-called problem of evil rests upon the apparent incompatibility of three fundamental hypotheses: God exists; God is inclusively omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good; and evil exists. Most apologetic responses to the problem (resulting either in a full-fledged theodicy or a mere defence of God) focus upon the second premise in relation to the third, and the same essentially goes for attempts at proving the insolubility of the problem or at least the actual failure of theodicies and/or defences so far. By contrast, the present article concentrates on the third premise alone and thus aims, first and foremost, at a comprehensive account of (a) the nature and (b) the fundamental types of evil—here with a special emphasis on what ( pace Leibniz) is tentatively dubbed “eschatological evil.” In conclusion, the article expands on the previous analysis by (c) highlighting some of its major—and in fact devastating—implications regarding the possibility of a philosophical theodicy and/or defence. As a corollary, a brief case will be made for a theological—or, more precisely, Christian—view of the problem. I will argue, in particular, that Christians have good reasons to adopt a genuinely agnostic stance toward all purported solutions to the problem of evil, a stance culminating in what has aptly been called “epistemic humility.”

Social Science and the Problem of Interpretation: A Pragmatic Dual(ist) Approach

ABSTRACT In Power Without Knowledge, Jeffrey Friedman contends that ideational complexity can stymie social-scientific understanding and prevent the reliable predictive knowledge required of a well-functioning technocracy. However, even this somewhat pessimistic outlook may understate the problem. Ideational complexity has both cognitive and phenomenal dimensions, each of which poses unique dilemmas. Further, due to its methodological individualism, Friedman’s vision may neglect emergent layers of knowledge produced through social interaction, creating yet another source of unknowns. Given these two factors, social science should embrace a pluralism regarding levels of analysis. This would recognize the multifaceted limitations on social-science knowledge production, furthering epistemic humility about the potential role of social science in technocratic policymaking.

Epistemic governance and the colonial epistemic structure: towards epistemic humility and transformed South-North relations

ABSTRACT Current epistemic governance analyses in higher education ignore systemic power relations between Northern and Southern researchers. This paper does focus on previous approaches to understanding epistemic governance, but rather moves beyond these towards a Southern evaluative and prospective comprehension. The paper is primarily theoretical. We draw on Fricker’s theorizing of epistemic justice, but note the importance of the institutional. Amartya Sen’s capability approach enables envisioning possibilities for change at individual and systemic levels, placing agency and epistemic freedoms at the centre of epistemic governance to foster solidarity and reflexive actions for change. To make the case, the paper explores testimonial and hermeneutical (including hermeneutic obstruction) injustices in research, presenting unfair practices and the unjust consequences for scholars in the South arising from ‘the colonial epistemic structure’. The paper proposes that this structure, and its West-centric episteme, shapes epistemic governance which, among other effects, invisibilizes race and racism and is unable to account for the experiences of Southern subjects. The paper concludes by suggesting that it is a moral responsibility in higher education to exercise reasoned agency to promote equal epistemic opportunities, especially for those situated on the wrong side of the epistemic line. This requires epistemic humility and ethical responsibility.