Polpost meetings

CARIPARO “Polarization of irrational collective beliefs in post-truth societies”

Autumn 2020 Meetings

place: https://unipd.zoom.us/j/7400749838

25 November 2020, 18-20

Marco Fasoli (IUSS Pavia)

Title (in Italian): Il ruolo delle tecnologie digitali nelle dinamiche di informazione e disinformazione.

Abstract (in Italian): In molti contesti, sia accademici che pubblici, si ripete spesso che le tecnologie digitali sono “strumenti neutri” a cui non è imputabile alcuna responsabilità rispetto a fenomeni soggettivi come il sovra-utilizzo di tecnologie, l’odio online, la disinformazione e la misinformazione. Da un punto di vista filosofico, tale affermazione può essere ricondotta al così detto “strumentalismo tecnologico”, secondo cui la tecnologia non ha valore morale e non ha alcuna responsabilità rispetto al comportamento degli utenti. In questo seminario porterò degli argomenti contro questa tesi, cercando di mostrare in che senso essa è falsa e quali forme di manipolazione possono essere realizzate attraverso il web e le tecnologie digitali. 

2 december 2020, 18-20

Anna Elisabetta Galeotti (Università del Piemonte Orientale)

Title: Political Disinformation in the Era of Fake News

Abstract: The paper discusses the political effects of disinformation induced by fake news. It will be claimed that the belief-distortion specifically induced by fake news affects democratic politics only marginally, while the influence of partisan affiliation on political disinformation has a deeper impact. Such influence is certainly sustained and amplified by the new media that are feeding and disseminating fake news, but it is an independent phenomenon, ingrained in motivated reasoning. This argument, however, does not imply that the spread of fake news is irrelevant for democracy. Yet, its main threat does not regard the distortion of people’s voting behavior, by twisting their political beliefs, but rather: a) the capacity to affect the agenda setting in the public discourse; b) the opacity caused by unknown agents making use of what has been called the “stealth media”.  Moreover, the generalized reference to fake news in public discourse has engendered and deepened a wide distrust of political information relative to politicians’ discourses and traditional or new media, as well as a mistrust of politics and of experts in general. In light of these considerations, the treatment of fake news should not be focused on forms of control of the contents spread by social media, but on issues of source’s transparency and on education.

9 December 2020, 18-20

Francesca Marin (Università di Padova) 

Title: Promoting the trust-medicine-uncertainty interdependency in ordinary times and in extraordinary circumstances

Abstract: In this talk I will promote the idea of mutual dependence between trust, medicine and uncertainty, and I will critically analyze those approaches that either partially recognize such interdependence or propose a misrepresented view of medicine in terms of its relationship with uncertainty, negatively affecting trust in medicine. Indeed, on the one hand, nowadays the trust-medicine dyad is sometimes recognized without the acknowledgment of the medicine-uncertainty dyad, or vice versa. In other words, the role of trust in medical practice and the presence of uncertainty in medicine could be approached as issues which are unrelated to each other. In this way, the process of planning to promote trust in medicine and strategies for responding to medical uncertainty might be separately addressed. On the other hand, intolerance or even a refusal of medical uncertainty could affect trust in medicine because, by considering medicine itself as a science and a practice characterized by full certainty, claims of infallibility on the one side, and suspicions as well as incredulity on the other, might be fostered. In order to avoid all these reductive views and to promote a well-placed trust in medicine, I will argue for the need for a change from a dual scheme, i.e. trust-medicine or medicine-uncertainty, to a triple pattern, that is, the trust-medicine-uncertainty interdependency. It will be shown why this pattern should be promoted in ordinary times and ever more in extraordinary circumstances, such as the Covid-19 pandemic.

16 December 2020

Tommaso Piazza (Università di Pavia)

Title: Can we be criticized if we consume fake news?

Abstract: In this talk I attempt to do two things. Firstly, I propose an account of epistemic blameworthiness––of what it takes to deserve intellectual blame for what one believes––based on a distinction drawn by W. Alston between a proper and a derivative sense of blameworthiness. According to this account, roughly, we can be blamed (in the derivative sense) for believing P iff we should have exercised due control on the belief-influencing factor(s) resulting in our believing P, and we can be blamed (in the proper sense) for having failed to do so. Secondly, I resort to this account in addressing the question whether ordinary consumers of fake news––namely, social media users who believe the fake news they are fed with within their favorite social media––are blameworthy for their beliefs. Here I apply the results of a different paper (Croce & Piazza ms.) where we argue that by simply acquiring the habit of consuming mainstream media, one would considerably reduce one's tendency to believe in fake news. Within the normative framework delineated in the first part of the paper, this result motivates the conclusion that ordinary consumers of fake news are mostly criticizable for their beliefs, for they are criticizable for their failure to enlarge their information diet in feasible ways. 

CARIPARO “Polarization of irrational collective beliefs in post-truth societies”

Spring and Summer 2020 Meetings

https://unipd.zoom.us/j/95306351682

10 June 2020: 5 pm - 7 pm

Alessandra Tanesini (Cardiff University) 

Title: Arrogance, Polarisation and Arguing to Win

 Abstract: A number of philosophers have defended the view that seemingly intellectually arrogant behaviours are epistemically beneficial. In this chapter I take issue with most of their conclusions. I argue, for example, that we should not expect steadfastness in one's belief in the face of contrary evidence nor overconfidence in one’s own abilities to promote better evaluation of the available evidence resulting in good-quality group-judgement. These features of individual thinkers are, on the contrary, likely to lead groups to end up in stalemates and to polarise over issues. It is true that groups benefit from including members that, prior to discussion, hold diverse views. But disagreement benefits group judgement only when it is transient, rather than entrenched. That is, groups reach better quality conclusions when a number of diverse opinions are disseminated and evaluated fairly before reaching a consensus. If this is right, it would seem that individual qualities, such as open-mindedness and even-handedness about the epistemic value of opinions other than one's own, rather than steadfastness or overconfidence are conducive to better quality group judgement

17 June 2020: 5 pm -7 pm

Carlo Martini (San Raffaele, Milan, Helsinki University)

Title: Fake news, communicative gaps, and their impact on the doctor-patient relationship

Abstract: Science progresses through debate and disagreement, and scientific controversies play a crucial role in the growth of scientific knowledge (Kuhn 1962). But not all controversy and disagreement is progressive in science. Sometimes controversies can be “manufactured” (Oreskes and Conway 2010) and what looks like genuine scientific disagreement can be a distortion of science set up by non-scientific actors (e.g. interest groups). Manufactured controversies are detrimental to science because they can hinder scientific progress and eventually bias evidence-based decisions (Oreskes 2004). The first goal of this paper is to elucidate the distinction between ‘pseudo’ and ‘genuine’ scientific controversies. In principle, we could consider a controversy to be genuine if all sides of the debate base their conclusions on adequate data and proper scientific method. But there are at least two issue with this strategy. First, the methodological standards are not fixed once and for all, and it may be hard to discern genuine research in an ongoing debate (Collins and Evans 2002). Secondly, only but a few specialized experts in any given field can recognize whether the data is adequate and the methods have been applied properly, and pseudo-scientific actors are usually well-equipped to present their findings in a way that appears scientific. For those reasons, the status of a controversy is usually decided a-posteriori, once the dust has settled, as it were; but that is of little help for ongoing controversies on which important medical decisions and policies hang. The second goal of this paper is to provide some epistemic criteria for distinguishing pseudo from genuine scientific debates in medicine. Controversies are quite common in medicine: often new data demonstrate that a commonly-accepted medical practice is not beneficial or even harmful to patients (Prasad et al. 2013). But, unfortunately, medicine is also a scientific field where non-epistemic values (e.g. vested interests) have a huge influence. Indeed, many medical controversies turn out to be “manufactured” and therefore detrimental both for the epistemic landscape and public health (on vaccines see Casiday 2006; Bleecker 2018). Drawing on the research from social epistemology and the literature on expertise (Shanteau 2002, Collins and Evans 2008, Martini 2014, 2015), we will discuss a series of criteria which have been proposed to identify genuine from pseudo expertise. We will apply such principles to discern between legitimate and pseudo-scientific controversies (see Martini 2018), testing them in a case study. The case study is based on current research on statins, which are drugs widely prescribed to decrease the level of cholesterol in order to reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). However many are skeptical about their actual efficacy, and claim that Mediterranean diet is a much more effective intervention to prevent CVD (DuBroff and de Lorgeril 2015). According to the critics, the so-called ‘cholesterol hypothesis’ has been perpetuated by some authors – possibly funded by industry – who have systematically ignored negative evidence (Demasi 2018, Ravnskov et al 2018). We will investigate whether the case of statins can be regarded as a genuine scientific controversy or not.

24 Giugno 2020, 5 pm - 7 pm

Aldo Frigerio (Catholic University of Milan) & Ciro De Florio (Catholic University of Milan)

Title: The two faces of fake news

Abstract: It is hard overestimate the importance of fake news in the present understanding of social, political, and economical reality. The aim of this article is to provide a clarification of the concept of fake news. We argue that fake news has a twofold nature and that the difficulty in their characterization lies exactly in this dual character. Fake news are, indeed, produced in a certain way and, then, they are transmitted. Our thesis is that the modality of communication of fake news affects their nature: we will argue that fake news in as much as produced are particular forms of false assertions – kind of lies. Fake news in as much as received and re-transmitted are, on the other hand, pseudo-assertions which have no cognitive value but they are the expressions of certain attitudes and feelings. This twofold characterization is able to provide an explanation of two phenomena: the former concerns the often observed conceptual tension in studies about fake news: from one hand, fake news are considered, in fact, fake and therefore they misconceive reality. From the other hand, however, there is the tendency to distinguish fake news from lies or simply false news. According to us, this because, in one case, fake news are construed as fabricated, while, in the other case, fake news are considered as widespread. Once fixed this point, the conceptual tension disappears. The second phenomenon our account is aiming to explain is fake news peculiar resistance to debunking: the second nature of fake news, that is pseudo-assertions which express attitudes and feelings, grounds their resistance to debunking. We argue that fake news in this sense are lacking of proper cognitive content and therefore they cannot enter within usual processes of belief revision.

1 Luglio 2020 5pm - 7pm

Filippo Ferrari (Padua University) & Sebastiano Moruzzi (Bologna University)

Title: Enquiry and Normative Deviance. The Role of Fake News in Science Denialism

Abstract: Science denialism is a widespread and worrying phenomenon. Rejection of standard scientific theories targets several areas of enquiry. For instance: flat-earth theorists deny basic assumptions of modern physics and astronomy; anti-vaccine supporters oppose compulsory vaccination by casting doubts on the efficacy of vaccines and, sometimes, by linking vaccines to severe pathologies like autism; HIV deniers put into question the very existence of HIV; climate-change deniers downplay the significance of the phenomenon and dispute its anthropogenic causes.  The main thesis that we shall develop and defend in this talk is that science denialism brings about an aberrant form of enquiry—that we shall call post-enquiry—in which the epistemic norms governing scientific enquiry are deviated in significant ways. Science denialism doesn’t involve just a rejection of a scientific theory; it also deeply challenges the practice, common within scientific enquiry, of continuously and, to a certain extent, impartially testing research methods, theories, and evidential sources with the aim of improving the accuracy of our theories. In this sense, science denialism brings about a radical deviation of the norms governing the practice of scientific enquiry—a deviation which gives rise to what we shall call a normative aberration. We will offer an in-depth analysis of the epistemic mechanisms underpinning the normative aberration brought about by science denialism. More specifically, we will develop a fine-grained framework to model a variety of normative deviances that can take place in enquiry. By analysing two case studies, we will argue that fake news contributes significantly to shape the epistemic norms operating within science denialism. They in fact play two pivotal roles: first, they are used to cast discredit on a variety of (institutional) sources of evidence in relation to a certain set of phenomena (e.g. whether vaccines are safe for the health); second, they also play a part in building the alternative explanation of the targeted phenomena.

8 Luglio 2020, 5 pm - 7 pm

Mario De Caro (Roma3 University & Tufts University)

Title: Social irrationality and the risk of paternalism

Abstract: It is a commonly held view nowadays that the government should interfere as little as possible with individual choices. This view presupposes the thesis (most energetically advocated by libertarians but, to a lesser degree, also by most other political philosophers) that individual autonomy is a fundamental value and, consequently, paternalistic policies are morally unacceptable. Growing evidence coming from cognitive sciences, however, suggests that many, perhaps even most, individual choices -- besides being not fully rational if not irrational altogether -- are made for motives of which the agents who make them are substantially unaware. The question arises, then, of how much political value should be attributed to such "choices" and whether the whole issue of paternalism should be reconceptualized.