Belief polarization, misinformation, and distrust in scientific expertise are on the rise in democracies across the globe. These worrying trends have been accompanied by some new, or at least newly appropriated, phrases to describe them. The spread of misinformation is… Read More ›
echo chambers
Algorithm-Based Illusions of Understanding, Jeroen de Ridder
Understanding is a demanding epistemic state. It involves not just knowledge that things are thus and so, but grasping the reasons why and seeing how things hang together. Gaining understanding, then, requires some amount of inquiry. Much of our inquiries… Read More ›
Groupstrapping, Bootstrapping, and Oops-strapping: A Reply to Boyd, Bert Baumgaertner
Kenneth Boyd’s paper “Epistemically Pernicious Groups and the Groupstrapping Problem” (2019) is an excellent example of how philosophers can contribute to social sciences through conceptual engineering. Boyd introduces what he calls groupstrapping. The idea begins with the claim that groups… Read More ›