Some Specific Problems to be Examined

(1) Clarifying the nature and limits of rationally unavoidable epistemic trust

What is the nature of this trust, and its scope? Does trusting in the reliability of our own cognitive capacities have the same basis as trusting in the reliability of instruments or trusting the vast body of information that we have assimilated throughout our lives? In what sense can we be said to trust so-called heavyweight propositions, such as that there is an external world or that what others think and feel can be manifested by their behaviour, or that familiar objects will remain where they are unless moved? These propositions might never come to mind and yet we have a reliance on their truth that is manifested at least by the ways in which we behave in our interactions with the world.

(2) Clarifying the nature of epistemic responsibility

We are not responsible for our beliefs in the same way as for our freely chosen actions. Yet we hold people responsible for how they acquire beliefs and for how they inquire. However people have acquired beliefs they are held to be answerable for retaining them if they face challenges from arguments advanced by others or from real or apparent counterevidence.  To what extent are we genuine epistemic agents, who can justifiably be held responsible for what we believe. What are the limits to that agency?

As Wittgenstein noted in On Certainty, §94, our inquiries, and our thinking more generally, take place against a background that is not the upshot of our own investigations. Wittgenstein acknowledged that some of what figures in a person’s background ‘might be part of a kind of mythology’ (On Certainty, §95). The societal problems that motivate this project arise because the backgrounds that some people ‘inherit’ incorporate conspiracy theories and disinformation that condition their thought and action, as do propositions that provide the scaffolding for reputable scientific research.

(3) Clarifying the conditions for the effective transmission of reliable information and the standing of the beliefs and presuppositions that result from such transmission

A vast amount of what people take for granted is uncritically imbibed or soaked up in early stages of their development. Even at more advanced stages, at which capacities for critical reflection have been acquired, they cannot but rely on information sources that include, books, journals, and web sites, as well as teachers, journalists, and researchers. Such sources are treated as authoritative even though they have not been checked out in any thorough way. There is scope for developing the notion of an Epistemic Commonwealth—the body of a society’s epistemic resources, determined as a function of  (i) the common knowledge of its citizens, (ii) the expertise, and goodwill of its authorities, (iii) the value placed by the citizens upon the authorities’ opinions, and  (iv) the extent to which its leaders are concerned to enable its citizens to be informed and educated. What does it take for such a commonwealth to be in good order? (Might there be affinities with Elizabeth Anderson’s notion of an Epistemic Democracy?)

Philosophical input on this theme would have to include a review of issues in the epistemology of testimony, broadly construed: to what extent, about what topics, and under what conditions, is it reasonable to take testimony, or external information-sources generally, as reliable without specific evidence to that effect? What are the presuppositions of so doing? There are special difficulties with expert testimony here, since the reliability of experts is, for most of us, something on which our only ultimate evidence will be itself the testimony of experts. Arguably, no one model will account for every type of transmission of information from a source to an information consumer. On the face of it, knowledge transmission from primary (elementary) schoolteachers to their students, is likely to require a different theoretical treatment from that appropriate for a paradigm case of gaining knowledge from the say-so of a trusted family member, friend, or colleague.

(4) Clarifying the significance of ‘inherited’ backgrounds and echo chambers

The ideas that Wittgenstein advances in On Certainty might be thought to support the thought that people inhabit diverse and overlapping communities of opinion, belief, and sometimes prejudice, their thinking tightly and inescapably constrained by presuppositions the truth of which they have simply taken for granted. One might imagine apologists for a conspiracy theory exploiting that thought and, when challenged, responding with a tu quoque response, as if they are entitled to their presuppositions as much as others. Nothing in On Certainty supports such a line of thought, but addressing it might help to make sense of deep disagreement, and of the prospects for its resolution. Wittgenstein did not conceive of backgrounds as being unalterably fixed silos, but there is a question as to the extent to which the ingredients of backgrounds admit of rational evaluation and reasoned change. There might be affinities here with issues in the philosophy of science concerning scientific paradigms and theory-change.

(5) Clarifying issues relevant to understanding susceptibility to disinformation

This is a topic for empirical investigation but there are philosophical issues the resolution of which might guide such investigation. One has to do with interactions between beliefs and behaviour. Our beliefs and observations orientate us towards the world in a variety of ways. It seems plausible that the effects of these orientations could contribute to sustaining beliefs in non-rational ways. If that is so then to explain resistance to evidence and rational argument we should look to what beliefs can do for people.

To be orientated in some way is to have, as a result of what one (sensorily) perceives or (rightly or wrongly) believes, a cluster of potentialities for thought and activity directed at dealing with what life throws up. How one is orientated, and which potentialities are activated, depends on what one is up to, the kind of person one is, and one’s personal capacities. Action that flows from orientation aroused by disinformation can have effects that agents so aroused find satisfying. These effects might include, for instance, discovering people who sympathise with their opinions and emotions and enjoying the companionship of like-minded people. It is conceivable that modes of orientation, the activation of which is a significant factor in producing such effects, could sustain one’s beliefs despite unmet challenges. Such considerations undoubtedly bear on the maintenance of emotionally charged beliefs aroused by disinformation, but might be of wider relevance.