Echo Chambers and Why the Escape Plan is Less ‘Epistemic’ Than We Expect

Qiantong Wu (Institute of Philosophy, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg)

I would like to draw your attention to the following online philosophy seminar series, hosting by the Center for International Philosophy at Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai this semester.

On May 8th, 4pm China Standard Time, Qiantong Wu (Chinese Academy of Sciences) will be presenting a talk titled "Echo Chambers and Why the Escape Plan is Less ‘Epistemic’ Than We Expect."

Attendance is free.

Please register for the event by sending an email to [email protected] for the Zoom link and password.

Abstract: In this paper, I will analyze the concept of the echo chamber and the ways to escape from it. I will first introduce the concept of the echo chamber. Then, I will analyze the escape plan (i.e., the social epistemic reboot) proposed by Nguyen. The major argument in this paper is that a successful escape from the echo chamber relies more on social incentives than epistemic virtue.    To support this argument, I will analyze a real-life example of escape to demonstrate the power of social influence and adopt a model of an idealized epistemic community to demonstrate the limitation of epistemic virtue.

Bio: Qiantong Wu is a researcher in philosophy with a passion for interdisciplinary investigation of subjective experiences. She gained her Ph.D. degree in Philosophy from the National University of Singapore (SG) and holds two Master’s degrees from the University of Edinburgh (UK), one in Philosophical Research and Mind, Language, and the other in Embodied Cognition.

She is interested in using enactivism and predictive processing as theoretical frameworks to explain the human mind. Her current research focuses on the differentiation and relation between conceptual and non-conceptual content of subjective experiences. The mental phenomena she is studying includes, but are not limited to dreams, internet information processing, and aphantasia.