Epistemic Problem Research Articles

Improving misrepresentations amid unwavering misrepresenters

In recruitment, promotion, admission, and other forms of wealth and power apportion, an evaluator typically ranks a set of candidates in terms of their competence. If the evaluator is prejudiced, the resulting ranking will misrepresent the candidates’ actual rankings. This constitutes not only a moral and a practical problem, but also an epistemological one, which begs the question of what we should do—epistemologically—to mitigate it. In a recent paper, Jönsson and Sjödahl in [Episteme 14(4):499–517, 2017], argue that the epistemic problem can be fruitfully addressed by way of a novel statistical method that changes the products of biased behaviour, i.e. the rankings themselves, rather than the biased persons. Jönsson and Sjödahl’s pioneering proposal is a both a welcome addition to the literature on implicit bias, due the problems with existing implicit bias interventions [see e.g. Lai et al. in J Exp Psychol Gen 143:1765–1785; J Exp Psychol Gen 145(8):1001–1016, 2014; 2016; Forscher et al. in J Person Soc Psychol 117(3):522–559, 2019] but also to the literature on prejudice more generally, where many proposed prejudice-reduction strategies enjoy less than adequate empirical support [Paluck and Green in Ann Rev Psychol 60(1):339–367, 2009]. Their proposal, however, needs supplementation in two ways: the circumstances that must hold in order for it to work needs to be refined, and their claim that it works as intended in these circumstances needs to be validated. We argue that four of Jönsson and Sjödahl’s method’s presumed presuppositions can be weakened, but needs to be supplemented by two additional assumptions, overlooked by Jönsson and Sjödahl. Moreover, we demonstrate that the method does work as intended by way of a statistical simulation.

Grounding and the Epistemic Regress Problem

Modal metaphysics consumed much of the philosophical discussion at the turn of the century, yielding a number of epistemological insights. Modal analyses were applied within epistemology, yielding sensitivity and safety theories of knowledge as well as counterfactual accounts of the basing relation. The contemporary conversation has now turned to a new metaphysical notion – grounding – opening the way to a fresh wave of insights by bringing grounding into epistemology. In this paper, I attempt one such application, making sense of the epistemic regress problem in terms of grounding. I argue that the relation that generates the epistemic regress is a grounding relation, showing that grounding can make sense of proposals by epistemic foundationalists and charting the course for similar applications to epistemic coherentism and epistemic infinitism. If it is right that grounding is involved in the epistemic regress, this points the way forward both for epistemologists and metaphysicians, revealing the prospects of solutions to the epistemic regress problem while providing grounding advocates with yet another example of grounding with which to theorize.

Belief reliability analysis of multi-state deteriorating systems under epistemic uncertainty

Due to the growing complexity of multi-state deteriorating systems and the lack of data, information and knowledge, epistemic uncertainty cannot be ignored anymore. Although there already exist some reliability metrics to deal with epistemic uncertainty problems in multi-state deteriorating systems, the final results provided by these methods are always probability intervals, which will suffer from the interval extension challenge in the subsequent operation. In this paper, we propose a reliability analysis method for the multi-state deteriorating system based on belief reliability theory, which can provide more conservative estimations and avoid interval extension problems. To describe the state transition process of multi-state deteriorating systems under the effect of epistemic uncertainty, a mathematical model called uncertain state transition chain is proposed. Under the framework of uncertainty theory, a total uncertainty inequality is given to assist the calculation of belief reliability. Using the proposed model and inequality, an algorithm of belief reliability for multi-state deteriorating systems considering the uncertainty of inspection time is provided. As a numerical example, the calculating process, the evaluation result and some discussions of a specific deteriorating system are given at last.

AN EVIDENCE-BASED RISK DECISION SUPPORT APPROACH FOR METRO TUNNEL CONSTRUCTION

The risk-informed decision-making of metro tunnel project is often faced with the problem of inadequate utilization of available information. In order to address the epistemic uncertainty problem caused by insufficient utilization of information in decision-making, this paper proposes a risk decision support approach for metro tunnel construction based on Continuous Time Bayesian Network (CTBN) technique. CTBN can factor the state space of variables in tunnel projects and perform evidence-based reasoning, which enables the diverse information of expert opinions, project-specific parameters, historical data and engineering anomalies to be the evidence to support decision-making. A concise CTBN model development method based on Dynamic Fault Trees is presented to replace the cumbersome model learning process. The proposed approach can utilize multi-source information as evidence to provide multi-form decision support both in the pre-construction stage and construction stage of the tunnel construction project, and the results can support the decisions on judging the acceptability of the risk, developing response strategies for risk factors and diagnosing the causes of the hazardous event. A case study on the water leakage risk of tunnel construction in China is presented to illustrate the feasibility of the approach. The case study shows that the approach can assist in making informed decisions, so as to improve the engineering safety.

The medical gap: intuition in medicine.

Intuition is frequently used in medicine. Along with the use of existing medical rules, there is a separate channel that physicians rely on when making decisions: their intuition. To cope with the epistemic problem of using intuition, I use some clues from Wittgenstein's philosophy to illuminate the decision-making process in medicine. First, I point to a connection between intuition as functioning in medicine and Wittgenstein's notions of "seeing as" or noticing "aspects". Secondly, I use Wittgenstein notion of empirical regularities hardened into rules to suggest that there are two stages that should be addressed in the analysis of medical practice: the first concerns the accumulation of cases and the second pertains to the setting a rule based on these cases. I argue further that the medical context is exceptional in that the two stages are intertwined and, and explain the consequences of this fact for the physician's work. Finally, inspired by Wittgenstein's rule-following conundrum, I argue that medicine is particularly prone to difficulties in applying a general rule to a specific case represented by an individual patient. Recourse to intuition is reflects the physicians' efforts to bridge this gap.

Metascience Is Not Enough – A Plea for Psychological Humanities in the Wake of the Replication Crisis

The replication crisis led to the rise of metascience as a possible solution. In this article, we examine central metascientific premises and argue that attempts to solve the replication crisis in psychology will benefit from a tighter integration of approaches from the psychological humanities. The first part of our article identifies central epistemic merits that metascientific endeavors can contribute to psychology. However, we argue secondly against the widespread claim that metascience is the only way to deal with the replication crisis in psychology and point to major epistemic problems: the one-sided notion of a singular scientific method, the homogenizing view of psychology, and the exclusion of practices of theorizing. As a possible compensation for such shortcomings, we introduce, third, the reflective and pluralistic approach of psychological humanities. In so doing, we show how psychological humanities can serve as an important complement to the objective of improving psychological research. Psychological humanities contribute to a more precise determination of validity, to ethical considerations, and a better understanding of psychology’s objects in regard to replication. Accordingly, we argue for the integration of psychological humanities into both metascience and psychology to provide a better basis for addressing epistemic and ethical questions.

Formulation and Clients' Agency in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

The experience of loss of agency is one of the reasons for clients to go for psychotherapy. Enhancing clients’ agency has been considered a fundamental factor for successful treatment in psychiatry and psychotherapy, yet few studies have investigated the interactional realization of how therapists do this in authentic psychotherapeutic encounters. Drawing on audio-recorded talk-in-interaction between clients and psychotherapists in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) encounters at a mental health center in China, this paper uses the method of conversation analysis to demonstrate how therapists ascribe agency positions to clients by issuing formulations of what the clients have just said. Two types of formulation were identified: affirmative formulations and challenging formulations. In the first type, the therapists highlight the positive aspect of the clients’ description of their experiences and ascribe an agentic position to the clients. In the second, the therapists challenge the clients’ implausible views and their non-agentic positioning of themselves. This study shows that the therapists’ formulation could be employed to manage the epistemic difficulties associated with claiming knowledge about the clients’ inner states and assessing their feelings. In this sense, the formulation is a robust interactional device in negotiating epistemic problems in addressing the clients’ experiences and promoting their agency in therapy. However, it is noteworthy that in the challenging formulation, therapists claim privileged access to the clients’ knowledge domain and challenge their prior epistemic status, which might run the risk of engendering clients’ resistance.

Augmented Reality, Augmented Epistemology, and the Real-World Web

Augmented reality (AR) technologies function to ‘augment’ normal perception by superimposing virtual objects onto an agent’s visual field. The philosophy of augmented reality is a small but growing subfield within the philosophy of technology. Existing work in this subfield includes research on the phenomenology of augmented experiences, the metaphysics of virtual objects, and different ethical issues associated with AR systems, including (but not limited to) issues of privacy, property rights, ownership, trust, and informed consent. This paper addresses some epistemological issues posed by AR systems. I focus on a near-future version of AR technology called the Real-World Web, which promises to radically transform the nature of our relationship to digital information by mixing the virtual with the physical. I argue that the Real-World Web (RWW) threatens to exacerbate three existing epistemic problems in the digital age: the problem of digital distraction, the problem of digital deception, and the problem of digital divergence. The RWW is poised to present new versions of these problems in the form of what I call the augmented attention economy, augmented skepticism, and the problem of other augmented minds. The paper draws on a range of empirical research on AR and offers a phenomenological analysis of virtual objects as perceptual affordances to help ground and guide the speculative nature of the discussion. It also considers a few policy-based and designed-based proposals to mitigate the epistemic threats posed by AR technology.

Blame for me and Not for Thee: Status Sensitivity and Moral Responsibility

In our day-to-day lives, we form responsibility judgements about one another – but we are imperfect beings, and our judgments can be mistaken. This paper suggests that we get things wrong not merely by chance, but predictably and systematically. In particular, these miscues are common when we are dealing with large gaps in social status and power. That is, when we form judgements about those who are much more or less socially powerful than ourselves, it is increasingly likely that “epistemic distorters” will reliably disrupt our reasoning. In response to this situation, I argue for the introduction of a new norm concerning blame and social status: “Powerful Restraint.” This norm suggests that the socially powerful ought to blame the socially dispossessed less frequently, and that social pressure be applied to achieve that compliance. I argue that such a norm is justified given the pernicious down-stream moral effects of the up-stream epistemic distortion I describe. I defend it against objections that it suggests a normative solution to an epistemic problem, that it is paternalistic, and that it involves a kind of disrespect to the less socially powerful.

Addressing Suffering in Infants and Young Children Using the Concept of Suffering Pluralism.

Despite the central place of suffering in medical care, suffering in infants and nonverbal children remains poorly defined. There are epistemic problems in the detection and treatment of suffering in infants and normative problems in determining what is in their best interests. A lack of agreement on definitions of infant suffering leads to misunderstanding, mistrust, and even conflict amongst clinicians and parents. It also allows biases around intensive care and disability to (mostly unconsciously) affect medical decision-making on behalf of infants. In this paper, I propose the concept of suffering pluralism, which is a novel multidimensional view of infant suffering based on subjective and objective components. The concept of suffering pluralism is more inclusive of the multiple ways in which infant suffering can occur. It acknowledges and defines a subjective component to infant suffering, while also focusing moral attention on objective well-being by describing it using the language of suffering. This concept allows us to better weigh up subjective and objective components of well-being. It also encourages clarity and consistency in claiming suffering, which is likely to improve communication and reduce conflict in medical decision-making for unwell infants and children. I will end by exploring possible critiques and limitations of this concept.

Perspectival Instruments

AbstractDespite its potential implications for the objectivity of scientific knowledge, the claim that “scientific instruments are perspectival” has received little critical attention. I show that this claim is best understood as highlighting the dependence of instruments on different perspectives. When closely analyzed, instead of constituting a novel epistemic challenge, this dependence can be exploited to mount novel strategies for resolving two old epistemic problems: conceptual relativism and theory-ladeness. The novel content of this article consists in articulating and developing these strategies by introducing two fine-grained notions of perspectives as the key units of analysis: “broad perspectives” and “narrow perspectives.”

Identity-Defining Beliefs on Social Media

When membership of a community depends on commitment to shared beliefs, the community is a belief-based coalition, and the beliefs are identity-defining beliefs. Belief-based coalitions are pervasive features of human social life and routinely drive motivated cognition and epistemically dysfunctional group dynamics. Despite this, they remain surprisingly undertheorized in social epistemology. This article (i) clarifies the properties of belief-based coalitions and identity-defining beliefs, (ii) explains why they often incentivize and coordinate epistemically dysfunctional forms of communication and cognitive labor, and (iii) argues that they provide a better explanation of many epistemic problems on social media than the concepts of epistemic bubbles, echo chambers, and gamification.

Epistemic neighbors: trespassing and the range of expert authority.

The world is abuzz with experts who can help us in domains where we understand too little to help ourselves. But sometimes experts in one domain carry their privileged status into domains outside their specialization, where they give advice or otherwise presume to speak authoritatively. Ballantyne (in: Knowing our limits. Oxford University Press, New York, 2019) calls these boundary crossings “epistemic trespassing” and argues that they often violate epistemic norms. In the few cases where traveling in other domains is permissible, Ballantyne suggests there should be regulative checks (“easements”) for the experts who are crossing domain boundaries. I argue that boundary crossing is warranted more often than Ballantyne allows. And while Ballantyne argues that boundary crossing is prima facie epistemically problematic, I contend that many cases of boundary crossing are not properly instances of “trespassing,” and, therefore, raise no prima facie epistemic concerns. I further argue that identifying cases of what I call “epistemic neighborliness” bolsters Ballantyne’s project, making it easier for novices and other experts to identify epistemic trespassing along with its epistemic problems.

Imposing Values and Enforcing Gender through Knowledge: Epistemic Oppression with the Morning-after Pill's Drug Label

AbstractAmong feminist philosophers, there are two lines of argument that sexist values are illegitimate in science, focusing on epistemic or ethical problems. This article supports a third framework, elucidating how value-laden science can enable epistemic oppression. My analysis demonstrates how purported knowledge laden with sexist values can compromise epistemic autonomy and contribute to paternalism and misogyny. I exemplify these epistemic wrongs with a case study of the morning-after pill (emergency contraception) during its 2006 switch to over-the-counter availability and its new drug label from the US Food and Drug Administration that it “may prevent implantation.” Antiabortion science advisers created this label to protect zygotes based on debated value judgments that were later concealed. This zygote-centric knowledge enabled them to shape potential users by instructing “good mothers” that they ought to protect zygotes and punishing “bad mothers” by refusing their requests for the drug. Therefore, I argue that the sexist values and gender norms of antiabortionists that prioritize zygotic health are illegitimate in this context because they cause epistemic injustices and perpetuate epistemic oppression. Furthermore, I advocate against blanket protections for the “right to conscience” and “religious freedom” of healthcare providers because they reinforce the epistemic oppression of women, especially those on the margins.Content Warning: This article discusses sexual assault and refusals to provide contraception to patients, including survivors.

Loose Canons: The Epistemic Problems of Scriptural Testimony

In Abrahamic theism scripture is essential to belief-forming, yet scripture as an epistemic evidence source is plagued with difficulties. In the following article, I argue for a specific reductionist model of scriptural proposition justification utilising an account of scripture as testimony. I contend that for an individual to be justified in a belief sourced from a scriptural proposition, she must appeal to external evidence to “prop up her epistemic bar.” Accordingly, I consider some potential “epistemic bar-proppers.”

Moving beyond debunking conspiracy theories from a narrow epistemic lens: ethical and political implications for education

ABSTRACT How should educators deal with conspiracy theories in the classroom, if at all? Do the epistemic deficiencies of some conspiracy theories make them easy prey for debunking? Can the moral and political dangers that certain conspiracy theories pose to democratic societies justify educators avoiding addressing conspiracy theories in the classroom? These questions are at the heart of this essay. Its purpose is to assess both the promises and perils of whether and under which conditions it might be pedagogically productive to address conspiracy theories in the classroom. In particular, it is argued that debunking conspiracy theories in the classroom from a narrow epistemic lens (fact-checking) is not only impossible, but also unproductive. It is suggested that a fruitful trajectory to deal with conspiracy theories is to go beyond treating them merely as a narrow epistemic problem and consider the ethical and political motivations and implications of conspiracy theories.

The Epistemic Value of Affective Disruptability

In order to explore how emotions contribute positively or negatively to understanding the meaning of complex socio-culturally specific phenomena, I argue that we must take into account the habitual dimension of emotions – i.e., the emotion repertoire that a feeling person acquires in the course of their affective biography. This brings to light a certain form of alignment in relation to affective intentionality that is key to comprehending why humans understand situations in the way they do and why it so often is especially hard to understand things differently. A crucial epistemic problem is that subjects often do not even enter a process of understanding, i.e., they do not even start to consider a specific object, theory, circumstance, other being, etc. in different ways than the familiar one. The epistemic problem at issue thus lies in an unquestioned faith in things being right the way they are taken to be. By acknowledging the habitual dimension of affective intentionality, I analyze reasons for this inability and suggest that being affectively disruptable and cultivating a pluralistic emotion repertoire are crucial abilities to overcome this epistemic problem.

An Epistemic Problem for Epistocracy

ABSTRACT Epistocracy, roughly amounts to distributing political power in accordance with each citizen’s competence for political decision-making. The problem, epistocrats hold, is that most voters in democracies are incompetent to vote. A central element of this diagnosis is that bad outcomes are largely attributable to lay citizens’ incapacity to choose the right means to foster their preferences. I call this the Preferences/Means Discrepancy. Based on this diagnosis, most epistocrats argue that the best way to improve outcomes is by implementing some form of restricted electorate constituted by those deemed competent to vote. In this paper I elucidate epistocrats’ understanding of competence to challenge the epistocratic idea of improving outcomes by restricting the electorate. I argue that the restricted electorate would fail to be competent under epistocrats’ own terms, because it is faced with an epistemic problem: The Information Gap Problem. Epistocrats most likely definition of competence seems to be to possess relevant information. However, a restricted electorate would be formed by a homogeneous elite, which would therefore have limited access to a key form of information, namely, lay citizens’ preferences. This gap of information questions the competence of the restricted electorate and makes epistocracy unsuited to address the Preferences/Means Discrepancy.

Queer in Translation: Sexual Politics under Neoliberal IslamLGBTI Rights in Turkey: Sexuality and the State in the Middle East

Queer in Translation: Sexual Politics under Neoliberal IslamLGBTI Rights in Turkey: Sexuality and the State in the Middle East

The Problem with Naked Statistical Evidence

The Problem of Naked Statistical Evidence by Christian Dahlman and Amit Pundik, joins the most recent debates on naked statistical evidence, in particular the objections to naked statistics based upon sensitivity, normalcy, incentives for lawful conduct, and free will. Dahlman and Pundik argue that the problem of naked statistical evidence is not an epistemic problem, as some assume, but is actually a moral problem.