Information Segregation: Mechanisms and Consequences

Physical segregation of human beings has an epistemic aspect: when individuals are required to occupy separate spaces, information is consequently segregated, creating barriers to the generation and transmission of knowledge.  If there is a norm that says folks who live uptown ought to stay uptown and folks who live downtown ought to stay downtown, an obvious consequence will be ignorance, both uptown and downtown, of what things are like on the other side of town.  This kind of ignorance is a familiar feature of racial segregation, and more broadly of norms that proscribe freedom of movement.  This conference is devoted to discussion of the mechanisms that sustain information segregation and its epistemological, ethical, and political consequences, along with related issues in ethics, political philosophy, and social epistemology.  

Speakers:

• Joanna Burch-Brown (University of Bristol) 
• Allan Hazlett (Washington University in St. Louis)
• Ryan Nefdt (University of Cape Town)
• Brianna Toole (Claremont McKenna College)