Social and Cognitive Aspects of the Vulnerability to Political Misinformation

In the last few years, especially after the Brexit referendum and the 2016 U.S. elections, there has been a surge in academic interest for misinformation and disinformation. Social, cognitive, and political scientists' work on these phenomena has focused on two main aspects:

• Individuals' (and by extension societies') vulnerability to misinformation;
• Factors and interventions that can increase individuals' (and societies') resistance to misinformation.

In this article, we offer a critical review of the psychological research pertaining to these two aspects. Drawing on this review, we highlight an emerging tension in the relevant literature. Indeed, the current state of the art of the political misinformation literature reflects the combined operation of two opposing psychological constructs: excess gullibility on the one hand and excess vigilance on the other. We argue that this conceptualization is important in both advancing theories of individuals' and societies' vulnerability to misinformation and in designing prospective research programs. We conclude with proposing what, in our view, are the most promising avenues for future research in the field.     

“PURE” VERSUS “PRACTICAL” EPISTEMIC JUSTIFICATION

Abstract: In this article I distinguish a type of justification that is “epistemic” in pertaining to the grounds of one's belief, and “practical” in its connection to what act(s) one may undertake, based on that belief. Such justification, on the proposed account, depends mainly on the proportioning of “inner epistemic virtue” to the “outer risks” implied by one's act. The resulting conception strikes a balance between the unduly moralistic conception of William Clifford and contemporary naturalist virtue theories.     

Finite Reasons Without Foundations

This article develops a theory of reasons that has strong similarities to Peter Klein's infinitism. The view it develops, Framework Reasons, upholds Klein's principles of avoiding arbitrariness (PAA) and avoiding circularity (PAC) without requiring an infinite regress of reasons. A view of reasons that holds that the “reason for” relation is constrained by PAA and that PAC can avoid an infinite regress if the “reason for” relation is contextual. Moreover, such a view of reasons can maintain that skepticism is false by the maintaining that there is more to epistemic justification than can be expressed in any reasoning session. One crucial argument for Framework Reasons is that justification depends on a background of plausibility considerations. The final section of the article applies this view of reasons to Michael Bergmann's argument that any nonskeptical epistemology must embrace epistemic circularity.     

Introduction

This introduction presents selected proceedings of a two‐day meeting on the regress problem, sponsored by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) and hosted by Vanderbilt University in October 2013, along with other submitted essays. Three forms of research on the regress problem are distinguished: metatheoretical, developmental, and critical work.     

The Epistemic Criterion: A Response to Michael Hand

This article is a response to Michael Hand’s critique in this issue of my response to his use of the epistemic criterion as the sole means for identifying whether or not an issue should be identified as controversial. I argue that he has misunderstood my intention in suggesting that I was seeking to replace the epistemic criterion. Rather my purpose was to challenge his over-confidence in the decisiveness of reason and to temper his use of the epistemic criterion by suggesting it needed to embrace ethical concerns.     

Measuring Epistemic Curiosity in Young Children

Epistemic curiosity (EC) is the desire to obtain new knowledge capable of either producing positive experiences of intellectual interest (I‐type) or of reducing undesirable conditions of informational deprivation (D‐type). Although researchers acknowledge that there are individual differences in young children's epistemic curiosity, there are no existing measures to assess the I‐ and D‐type constructs of EC in early childhood. The aim of this study was to develop and validate parent‐report scales that reliably assessed early expressions of I‐ and D‐ type EC in young children. To develop the I/D‐Young Children (I/D‐YC) scales, 16 potential items were administered to 316 parents of children aged 3 to 8. These items were adaptations of an existing adult self‐report measure of EC as well as newly developed items. Confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that a 10‐item 2‐factor (5 I‐type, 5 D‐type) model had the best fit. Construct validity analyses and psychometric data indicated that our newly developed I/D‐YC scales are valid and reliable measures of individual differences in early expressions of I‐ and D‐type EC. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Logical Transmission Principle for Conclusive Reasons

Dretske's conclusive reasons account of knowledge is designed to explain how epistemic closure can fail when the evidence for a belief does not transmit to some of that belief's logical consequences. Critics of Dretske dispute the argument against closure while joining Dretske in writing off transmission. This paper shows that, in the most widely accepted system for counterfactual logic (David Lewis's system VC), conclusive reasons are governed by an informative, non-trivial, logical transmission principle. If r is a conclusive reason for believing p in Dretske's sense, and if p logically implies q, and if p and q satisfy one additional condition, it follows that r is a conclusive reason for believing q. After introducing this additional condition, I explain its intuitive import and use the condition to shed new light on Dretske's response to scepticism, as well as on his distinction between the so-called ‘lightweight’ and ‘heavyweight’ implications of a piece of perceptual knowledge.     

Disagreement and Intellectual Scepticism

Several philosophers have recently argued that disagreement with others undermines or precludes epistemic justification for our opinions about controversial issues (e.g. political, religious, and philosophical issues). This amounts to a fascinating and disturbing kind of intellectual scepticism. A crucial piece of the sceptical argument, however, is that our opponents on such topics are epistemic peers. In this paper, I examine the reasons for why we might think that our opponents really are such peers, and I argue that those reasons are either (a) too weak or (b) too strong, implying absurd conclusions. Thus, there is not a compelling case for disagreement-based intellectual scepticism.     

Assertion,Complexity, and Sincerity

The target of this paper is the ‘simple’ knowledge account of assertion, according to which assertion is constituted by a single epistemic rule of the form ‘One must: assert p only if one knows p’ (where p is a proposition). My aim is to argue that those who are attracted to a knowledge account of assertion should prefer what I call the ‘complex’ knowledge account, according to which assertion is constituted by a system of rules all of which are, taken together, constitutive of assertion. One of those rules—which, following John Searle, I call the ‘preparatory condition’—is of the form ‘One must: assert p only if one knows p.’ All else being equal, simple accounts are preferable to complex accounts. I argue in this paper that all else isn't equal. While the simple knowledge account provides an elegant explanation of certain data, it is hard to see how to integrate the simple knowledge account into a more general theory of illocutionary acts. Because the complex knowledge account avoids this objection while explaining the same data as the simple knowledge account does, I conclude that the complex knowledge account is superior to the simple knowledge account.