UNC PHIL 140 Worsnip Final

Free Market

A market that is relatively free from regulation or intervention, and involves robust competition between producers

Skepticism

A philosophy which suggests that nothing can ever be known for certain. You can't know much or anything about something.

Mill's "On Liberty"

A utilitarian defense of various kinds of liberty. - freedom of conscience, and freedom of speech

Irrelevant influences

Cases where our beliefs are influenced by factors that don't seem to be relevant to their truth

Descriptive propositions

Claims about how things are

Normative propositions

Claims about how things ought to be

Non-neutrality conception of bias

For a media source to be biased is for it to fail to be "neutral" or "even-handed" to all political sides. An unbiased source is one that, when it comes to contested matters, simply reports the different views, without trying to arbitrate between them

Knowledge

For you to know a proposition, it must be true, and you must believe the proposition - neither is enough on its own. Truth plus belief does not always equal knowledge because there are luckily true beliefs.

- Can epistemic peers who have shared their evidence have reasonable disagreements? - Can epistemic peers who have shared their evidence reasonably maintain their own beliefs yet also think that the other party to the disagreement is also reasonable?

Feldman claims no for both.

The Market for Ideas Thesis

Product = Ideas Producers = Speakers Consumers = Hearers - "consume" ideas by believing them - A free market for ideas is one that is free from interference or regulation, and that involves robust competition between ideas - Will maximize aggregate truth-possession

Mark Rowlands' opinion on moral rights to believe:

There is no broad moral right to believe - so no moral right not to be criticized - Because any moral right of A's not to be criticized would entail a moral duty for B not to criticize A. That's an unacceptable restriction on B's rights to free expression

Epistemic Justification/rationality

A belief is justified/rational if based on good reasons. An epistemic reason for belief is one that bears likelihood that the belief is true, and/or that it counts as knowledge Epistemic reasons to believe "p" = evidence for "p"

Market

Exchange between consumers and producers for a good - maximize aggregate utility

Huemer's argument against critical thinking

- Either there's expert consensus or not - When there's expert consensus, you should go for credulity - If there's no expert consensus, you should go for skepticism - Either way, you shouldn't use critical thinking - Only suggests critical thinking when there's clear evidence that the expert consensus is biased (and you aren't) and the issue is easy to figure out through critical thinking

What is an expert?

- Status conception of expertise - Reliability conception of expertise - Huemer: "individuals who are intelligent and well informed about the issue and have spent considerable time studying it"

Argument from collective reliability

- There might be ways in which a general culture of deference hinders us as a society/community from reaching accurate beliefs - Robust deliberation and debate helps us to (collectively) figure out what is true more effectively - At least for issues on which we're >50% reliable, independence between voters will increase collective reliability - the chance that the majority of the group will get things right, majority vote

Argument from democratic legitimacy

- When it's reasonable for people to accept the outcome of a democratic process - City-state of Testimonia: everyone defers to a single omniscient benefactor, then collective decisions are made by a majority vote - Because everyone defers to the benefactor, votes always produce an outcome in line with the benefactor's views - Hazlett: Testimonia isn't democratically legitimate; votes are "a kind of sham" - Democratic legitimacy requires something about the process leading up to the vote. Process must involve some deliberation, debate and reasoning - the "ideal of public reason."

What is bullshit

- You are completely indifferent to whether what you're saying is true or false; you just say it because it's convenient, because it makes you look good, because it's what people say. - Frankfurt claims that the speaker msut be engaged in an activity to which the distinction between what is true and what is false is crucial, but take no interest in the distinction

Sound argument

- the argument is valid and ALL its premises are true - sound arguments always have true conclusions

Valid argument

- the conclusion logically follows from the premises - premises guarantee the truth of the conclusion; if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true; there's no logically possible situation in which the premises are true but the conclusion is false - not about whether the premises, or conclusion, actually are true

Two goals that influence reasoning (Kunda)

1.) Accuracy goals: wanting to reach the true answer to a question 2.) Directional goals: wanting to reach a particular answer to that question

3 explanations of inaccurate factual beliefs

1.) Due to exposure to misleading evidence 2.) Due to misevaluation of the evidence 3.) Due to one's desires influencing one's beliefs

Cases in which regulation seems to improve ratio of truth-possession

1.) Education 2.) Scientific, professional and academic journals 3.) Libel laws 4.) FDA regulations on advertising and labelling 5.) Speech in a courtroom

3 things that are not fake news

1.) False reports due to mistaken, but genuinely held, beliefs 2.) True, but selectively biased, coverage 3.) News coverage based on normative values that you disagree with

3 potential views on partisanship

1.) Generally speaking, it's reasonable for everyone (on all political sides) to be epistemically partisan in how they react to testimony (Rini's view) 2.) It's reasonable for those on the correct side of political disputes to be epistemically partisan in how they react to testimony - not for the incorrect side 3.) It isn't reasonable for anyone (on either side) to be epistemically partisan in how they react to testimony

Mills view

1.) Liberty of discussion leads to robust disagreement and debate 2.) Robust disagreement and debate leads to collective epistemic benefits 3.) Collective epistemic benefits lead to greater social utility

2 skeptical arguments

1.) The argument from possibility 2.) The argument from ignorance

2 different ways a media outlet might be biased

1.) They realize some story is important/newsworthy, but deliberately decide not to cover it to filter their audiences's evidence to further a political agenda 2.) They engage in motivated reasoning (motivated by the political agenda) to genuinely convince themselves that the story is not important/newsworthy

The Uniqueness Thesis in reasonable disagreements

According to Feldman, a body of evidence justifies at most one proposition out of a competing set of propositions and it justifies at most one attitude toward any particular proposition. - If true, it follows that there can't be reasonable disagreements between epistemic peers

The argument from modesty in reasonable disagreements

According to Feldman, we can't know which side is correct, so we shouldn't believe either

The argument from incoherence in reasonable disagreements

According to Feldman,, it's incoherent or doesn't make sense, to believe both propositions. You can't be reasonable both in sticking to your own view and in believing that your disputant is also being reasonable

Agent-centered epistemic norm

According to Huemer, an epistemic norm is 'agent-centered' when it treats the reasoning of the agent to whom it applies differently to the reasoning of others. For example, if an epistemic norm says that the fact that you have reached the conclusion that p on the basis of critical thinking is a decisive reason to believe p, but that the fact that someone else (who is just as reliable as you) has reached the conclusion that p on the basis of critical thinking is not a decisive reason to believe p, that epistemic norm is agent-centered. According to Huemer, it holds that, if a person applies critical thinking in arriving at a conclusion, then she has good reason to accept that conclusion, but others who know that she arrived at the conclusion by those techniques do not thereby have good reason to accept it. - Critical thinking strategy is "agent-centered"

Laudan argument against "beyond reasonable doubt" (BARD) standard

According to Laudan: - The BARD standard is vague and subjective - judges won't clarify it for juries and different juries and jurrors interpret it differently - The standard does not take proper account of the relative costs of false convictions vs false acquittals

Fake News

According to Rini, a fake news story is one that purports to describe events in the real world, typically by mimicking the conventions of traditional media reportage, yet is known by its creators to be significantly false, and is transmitted with the 2 goals of being widely re-transmitted and of deceiving at least some of its audience

Hazlett's opinion on critical thinking

Argues that it is socially valuable to think for oneself rather than to defer to others - at least when it comes to "voting-relevant propositions"

Base Rates

Background statistical information about probabilities. Provide mathematically relevant evidence often stronger than people acknowledge - Ignoring base rates is taken to be a classic failure of epistemic rationality

Morality of bullshit

Frankfurt notes that bullshitting is easier than lying. Lying requires knowing what the truth is and figuring out how to effectively deceive people about it. Bullshitting doesn't limit one to inserting a certain falsehood at a specific point, thus not contraining one to by the truths surrounding that point. Suggests that bullshit may be worse than lies. Because bullshit involves disregard for what's true in a way that lies don't

Epistemic Partisanship

Giving greater weight to testimonies of those who share your normative (political, moral, etc) outlook - at least when it comes to political matters

Cultural Cognition (Kahan & Braman)

Letting your normative moral and political beliefs determine your beliefs about descriptive, empirical questions

Truth

Some claims are true while others are false. A true claim is one that matches how things really are. Truths and facts are synonyms. A truth does not need a believer, there might be truths that no one believes.

Epistemological project

Subjecting beliefs to critical scrutiny. Three questions: - Do these beliefs amount to knowledge? - Are these beliefs epistemically justified/rational? - If not what should we believe?

Belief

The things you hold to be true. Some are true, others are false. A belief is a mental state and requires a believer. Belief and opinion are synonymous.

Skeptical arguments

Try to argue from the (apparent) possibility of such scenarios, or the (apparent) fact that you can't rule them out , to the conclusion that you know nothing, or almost nothing about the external world.

Moral right to believe.

You have a moral right to believe "p" if (and only if) it's morally wrong for others to interfere with your belief. - Some kinds of interference with belief are uncontroversially wrong. Call the right not to have one's beliefs interefered with in these ways the 'narrow' moral right to believe (freedom of conscience) - Bolder claim is that any kind of interference with belief, including reasoned criticism, is wrong. Call the claim that there is a right not to have one's beliefs interfered with in any way the 'broad' moral right to believe

Epistemic right to believe.

You have an epistemic right to believe "p" if (and only if) you have sufficient justification for believing "p". - to say everyone has a right to their own opinions is to say that all possible beliefs are justified. - if so, seems like criticizing beliefs/opinions as unjustified would be a mistake - It's a big (and implausible) assumption that all possible beliefs are justified

Credulity

figure out what the experts think, and believe what they believe

Skepticism (Huemer)

suspend judgment

Climate change denial

the view that anthropogenic climate change is not occurring

Climate change skepticism

the view that we do not know that anthropogenic climate change is occurring

Selectivity conception of bias

to be selective in what it chooses to cover

Inaccuracy conception of bias

to deviate from an unequivocal statement of the truth

Critical thinking

try to think through the arguments and evidence for yourself, and form a belief on that basis

Consequentialism

what we ought to do depends solely upon the goodness or badness of likely consequences of our actions - referring to effects on well-being

Motivated reasoning

when directional goals overcome accuracy goals