A conversation question in regard to American society can be asked about the state of the UK today.
from the article:
There are two ideas that can help us think about polarization on matters of fact. The first, “epistemic pluralism,” helps describe [UK] society today, and how we got here. The second, “epistemic dependence,” can help us reflect on where our knowledge comes from in the first place.
For example, psychologist and law professor Dan Kahan and his collaborators have described two phenomena that affect the ways in which people form different beliefs from the same information.
The first is called “identity-protective cognition.” This describes how individuals are motivated to adopt the empirical beliefs of groups they identify with in order to signal that they belong.
The second is “cultural cognition”: people tend to say that a behavior has a greater risk of harm if they disapprove of the behavior for other reasons – handgun regulation and nuclear waste disposal, for example.
Beyond these psychological factors, there is another major source of epistemic pluralism. In a society characterized by freedom of conscience and freedom of expression, individuals bear “burdens of judgment,” as the American philosopher John Rawls wrote. Without the government or an official church telling people what to think, we all have to decide for ourselves – and that inevitably leads to a diversity of moral viewpoints...
However, this raises a tricky problem: Who has sufficient epistemic authority to qualify as an expert on a particular topic? Much of the erosion of our shared reality in recent years seems to be driven by disagreement about whom to believe.
Whom should a nonexpert believe about whether a COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective?
from the article:
There are two ideas that can help us think about polarization on matters of fact. The first, “epistemic pluralism,” helps describe [UK] society today, and how we got here. The second, “epistemic dependence,” can help us reflect on where our knowledge comes from in the first place.
For example, psychologist and law professor Dan Kahan and his collaborators have described two phenomena that affect the ways in which people form different beliefs from the same information.
The first is called “identity-protective cognition.” This describes how individuals are motivated to adopt the empirical beliefs of groups they identify with in order to signal that they belong.
The second is “cultural cognition”: people tend to say that a behavior has a greater risk of harm if they disapprove of the behavior for other reasons – handgun regulation and nuclear waste disposal, for example.
Beyond these psychological factors, there is another major source of epistemic pluralism. In a society characterized by freedom of conscience and freedom of expression, individuals bear “burdens of judgment,” as the American philosopher John Rawls wrote. Without the government or an official church telling people what to think, we all have to decide for ourselves – and that inevitably leads to a diversity of moral viewpoints...
However, this raises a tricky problem: Who has sufficient epistemic authority to qualify as an expert on a particular topic? Much of the erosion of our shared reality in recent years seems to be driven by disagreement about whom to believe.
Whom should a nonexpert believe about whether a COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective?
