scholarly journals Drawing lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic: science and epistemic humility should go together

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fulvio Mazzocchi
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Humility

scholarly journals Wise reasoning, intergroup positivity, and attitude polarization across contexts

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin P. Brienza ◽  
Franki Y. H. Kung ◽  
Melody M. Chao
Keyword(s):  
Intergroup Relations ◽  
Intergroup Bias ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Reasoning Process ◽  
Attitude Polarization ◽  
Experimental Induction ◽  
Epistemic Humility ◽  
Polarization Studies

AbstractWe hypothesized that a wisdom-based reasoning process comprised of epistemic humility, accounting for context, and integrating different perspectives and interests, would be helpful in overcoming intergroup bias and attitude polarization in societal conflicts. Here we test the hypothesis using both the Situated Wise Reasoning Scale and experimental induction. In each study, we recruited participants who self-identified as members of a group implicated in an ongoing intergroup situation. In five correlational studies (Studies 1-5) we examined the relations between measured wise reasoning and intergroup positivity and attitude polarization. In two experiments, we tested the effects of a brief online wise-reasoning thought exercise on intergroup positivity and polarization (Studies 6-7), and charitable behaviors to an outgroup (Study 6). We found that wise reasoning relates to more positivity toward outgroups and less attitude polarization across different groups and conflicts. The results have implications for theory and may also have implications for future research on interventions to improve intergroup relations.

Bonhoeffer's Lutheran assertions: Cataphasis as teaching responsibility to the ‘other’

2017 ◽  
Vol 70 (4) ◽  
pp. 390-408
Author(s):  
Michelle C. Sanchez
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Responsibility ◽  
Traditional Use ◽  
Epistemic Humility ◽  
Contemporary Christian

AbstractStructural similarities have been noted between Dietrich Bonhoeffer's account of ethical responsibility and more recent accounts advocated by philosophers who emphasise responsibility to alterity. Yet, there remains one stubborn difference between Bonhoeffer and these philosophers: his unequivocal embrace of strongly cataphatic speech. This raises the following question: it is possible for contemporary Christian ethicists and theologians to enlist Bonhoeffer in the aim of reconceiving an ethic of responsibility to the ‘other’ when Bonhoeffer himself relies on such concrete, exclusive language? This article will argue that attention to Martin Luther's defence of theological assertions provides a lens through which the performative force of Bonhoeffer's cataphatic language can be better understood as a particular and traditional use of language that teaches an ethical posture of epistemic humility.

Listening and Waiting, Excavating Later

2019 ◽  
pp. 177-201
Author(s):  
Peter R. Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Knowledge ◽  
Significant Part ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Community Archaeology ◽  
Ritual Performance ◽  
Epistemic Humility ◽  
Iron Technology ◽  
The Way

Careful listening to oral traditions, a significant part of Tanzanian Haya heritage, for nearly a year led to an ancient shrine where Haya elders encouraged excavations. This was early participatory community archaeology, where indigenous knowledge and the initiative of elders paved the way to significant archaeological finds about iron technology and the enduring qualities of knowledge preserved by ritual performance. Patient apprenticeship to knowledge-keepers during ethnoarchaeological observations of iron technology also led to significant insights into inventive techniques in iron technology that otherwise would have gone unnoticed. Listening with epistemic humility, opening ourselves to other ways of constructing history and heritage, unveils heritage under treat. A forgotten massacre by German colonials, the knowledge of which has been erased by disease and globalization, was revealed and is now preserved only by listening closely to Haya elders five decades ago.

Archaeologies of Listening Beginning Thoughts

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Peter R. Schmidt ◽  
Alice B. Kehoe
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Knowledge ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
The Past ◽  
Epistemic Humility ◽  
New Archaeology

This chapter introduces the foundational principles of Archaeologies of Listening. It takes the reader back to the genesis of anthropological method as well as the debates that have influenced attitudes toward indigenous knowledge and oral traditions over the last century. It critically examines the failure of “New Archaeology” to employ anthropological methods and proposes a complementary practice that does not eschew science but advocates a broader practice incorporating empirical evidence from those with deep experience with material cultures and landscapes. This chapter brings into focus how a richer interpretative posture occurs when we open our practice to the knowledge of others by employing the principles of apprenticeship and patience when working with communities. By putting into action the principle of epistemic humility, alternative views of the past open as do alternative ontologies that structure how the archaeological record is formed and heritage is performed.

Medical Cosmopolitanism

2019 ◽  
pp. 181-208
Author(s):  
Alex Broadbent
Keyword(s):  
First Principles ◽  
Epistemic Relativism ◽  
Epistemic Humility ◽  
Standards Of Evidence ◽  
Realist View

This chapter seeks an attitude to medicine that does not commit the error of EBM in committing to an unjustifiably rigid notion of evidence, nor the reaction of Medical Nihilism of adopting EBM’s standards of evidence and then raising the bar even higher. Cosmopolitanism is a position developed by Appiah in the context of ethical disagreement, designed to facilitate conversation without falling into epistemic relativism. The chapter unpacks Cosmopolitanism into four stances: metaphysical, epistemic, moral, and practical. It applies these stances to medicine to yield Medical Cosmopolitanism. On this realist view, medical facts (e.g., whether an intervention works, whether someone is sick) are not dependent on the perceiver. Nonetheless Cosmopolitanism promotes epistemic humility: the attitude that one has limited confidence in one’s medical beliefs (both of efficacy and of the inefficacy of someone else’s favored intervention). And it promotes Primacy of Practice: settle cases first, principles later.

scholarly journals Social Kinds, Reference, and Meta-Ontological Revisionism

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-156
Author(s):  
Michel-Antoine Xhignesse
Keyword(s):  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Social World ◽  
Natural Kind Terms ◽  
Kind Terms ◽  
First Order ◽  
Epistemic Humility ◽  
Substantial Error ◽  
Social Kinds ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Default Position

AbstractJulian Dodd has characterized the default position in metaphysics as meta-ontologically realist: the answers to first-order ontological questions are thought to be entirely independent of the things we say and think about the entities at issue. Consequently, folk ontologies are liable to substantial error. But while this epistemic humility is commendable where the ontology of natural kinds is concerned, it seems misplaced with respect to social kinds since their ontology is dependent upon the human social world. Using art and art-kinds as paradigmatic examples of social kinds, I argue that meta-ontological realism sets conditions that are too strict to apply to social kinds. Nevertheless, I argue that we should not be too quick to embrace the conclusion that our folk theories of social kinds cannot err substantially. By modelling the reference of social kind-terms on that of natural kind-terms, it becomes clear that in both cases, our sole epistemic privilege lies in our ability to pinpoint the subject of our inquiries.

Challenges to the Omohundro–Bostrom framework for AI motivations

foresight ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olle Häggström
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Moral Realism ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Reasonable Amount ◽  
Epistemic Humility ◽  
The Future

PurposeThis paper aims to contribute to the futurology of a possible artificial intelligence (AI) breakthrough, by reexamining the Omohundro–Bostrom theory for instrumental vs final AI goals. Does that theory, along with its predictions for what a superintelligent AI would be motivated to do, hold water?Design/methodology/approachThe standard tools of systematic reasoning and analytic philosophy are used to probe possible weaknesses of Omohundro–Bostrom theory from four different directions: self-referential contradictions, Tegmark’s physics challenge, moral realism and the messy case of human motivations.FindingsThe two cornerstones of Omohundro–Bostrom theory – the orthogonality thesis and the instrumental convergence thesis – are both open to various criticisms that question their validity and scope. These criticisms are however far from conclusive: while they do suggest that a reasonable amount of caution and epistemic humility is attached to predictions derived from the theory, further work will be needed to clarify its scope and to put it on more rigorous foundations.Originality/valueThe practical value of being able to predict AI goals and motivations under various circumstances cannot be overstated: the future of humanity may depend on it. Currently, the only framework available for making such predictions is Omohundro–Bostrom theory, and the value of the present paper is to demonstrate its tentative nature and the need for further scrutiny.

Reply to Lorne Falkenstein

2001 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 64-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rae Langton
Keyword(s):  
Intrinsic Properties ◽  
Epistemic Humility

In Kantian Humility I argue that, for Kant, ignorance of things in themselves is ignorance of the intrinsic properties of substances, and that this is epistemic humility, rather than idealism: some aspects of reality, the intrinsic aspects, are beyond our epistemic grasp.The interpretation draws upon what Falkenstein takes to be ‘a novel and not implausible understanding of Kant's distinction between things in themselves and appearances’ which views it as a distinction between the intrinsic and the relational. He concedes that Kant frequently puts his distinction in just these terms, that I make ‘a strong textual case for it’, that it is ‘plausible and intriguing’ and that it may even be ‘correct, at least for a certain strand of Kant's thought’. He presumably also allows that this distinction between ‘things as they are in relation to other things and things as they are on their own’ is at base a metaphysical distinction, which makes no mention of how things look to us, appear to us or depend on our minds. I am pleased to find sympathy for this understanding of Kant's distinction in a review whose overall tenor is so critical.

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