Responsible Trusting Without Prejudice First Workshop

Overview

One lesson of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty is that responsible inquiry requires that we take certain things on trust rather than seeking evidence in their favour, and yet, accepting things without evidence can be a manifestation of prejudice. How can we distinguish cases in which accepting something without evidence is demanded of us as responsible epistemic agents from those in which it must be avoided? What steps might we take as an epistemic community to promote responsible inquiry, given the risks of falling into prejudicial thinking?

These questions have particular urgency in the present social context, in which real social harm is caused both by unjustified doubts—such as climate change denial, distrust of experts etc. —and unjustified acceptances—as seen in the phenomenon of online echo chambers, the proliferation of conspiracy theories etc.  This project will clarify what it takes to be a responsible inquirer in a world that is so uncooperative, and where the consequences of lapsing into prejudicial thinking are so harmful.

Some issues to be explored draw on and evaluate hints and insights from On Certainty and views advanced in the extensive literature of what has come to be known as hinge epistemology. What should be included in the range of presuppositions that inquiring rational agents cannot but ‘take for granted’ as background to the responsible formation of belief—for example, propositions about the effectiveness of their own cognitive capacities and the suitability of the circumstances in which they are deployed for the effective function of those capacities. Some of these propositions will admit of independent investigation, but that of course will rest upon a further set of propositions.

More specific questions to be addressed at the workshop include:


  *   What are the nature and limits of rationally unavoidable epistemic trust?
  *   What is the nature of epistemic responsibility?
  *   What are the conditions for the effective transmission of reliable information?
  *   What is the significance of ‘inherited’ backgrounds and echo chambers.
  *   Why are people susceptible to disinformation?