The Significance of Epistemic Innocence

2020 ◽  
pp. 132-141
Author(s):  
Lisa Bortolotti
Keyword(s):  
Innocence Project ◽  
Epistemic Innocence

In the concluding chapter, the author revisits the significance of the epistemic innocence framework in the light of the applications of epistemic innocence to distorted memory beliefs, confabulated explanations, elaborated delusional beliefs, motivated delusional beliefs, and optimistically biased beliefs in the preceding chapters. The somewhat counterintuitive conclusion is that some of the beliefs regarded as paradigmatic instances of epistemic irrationality can be attributed significant epistemic benefits, in the sense that they either enhance or restore epistemic functionality. The wider implications of the epistemic innocence project for research in philosophy and psychology are reviewed, and the limitations acknowledged.

The Epistemic Innocence Project

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Lisa Bortolotti
Keyword(s):  
Irrational Beliefs ◽  
Epistemic Rationality ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Innocence Project ◽  
New Framework ◽  
Epistemic Innocence ◽  
Conceptual Resources

Human agents do not simply survive but navigate their world quite successfully despite being inclined to adopt and hang onto irrational beliefs. In this introductory chapter, the author justifies the new framework of epistemic innocence as an attempt to make sense of the idea that our undesirable and at times cringeworthy irrationality may be instrumental to succeed as imperfect agents. The challenge is to create the conceptual resources for evaluating the epistemic status of beliefs that violate standards of truth, accuracy, and epistemic rationality but play an important role in supporting epistemic functionality. The notions of epistemic irrationality, epistemic functionality, and epistemic innocence are introduced and the methodological assumptions guiding the discussion in the subsequent chapters are explained.

scholarly journals The epistemic innocence of clinical memory distortions

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Bortolotti ◽  
Ema Sullivan-Bissett
Keyword(s):  
Memory Distortions ◽  
Epistemic Innocence

Epistemic Innocence and the Ethics of Stereotypes

2021 ◽  
pp. 58-92
Author(s):  
Katherine Puddifoot
Keyword(s):  
Social Reality ◽  
Social Attitudes ◽  
Epistemic Injustice ◽  
Epistemic Perspective ◽  
Moral Encroachment ◽  
Epistemic Innocence

Chapter 4 develops a challenge to two ideas that will be tempting to some: (i) harbouring and applying social attitudes that reflect social realities can only be good from an epistemic perspective, and (ii) harbouring and applying social attitudes that fail to reflect social realities can only be bad from an epistemic perspective. It is shown first that there can be epistemic costs associated with stereotyping, even where a stereotype reflects an aspect of social reality. Then it is argued that there can be epistemic benefits associated with having social attitudes that fail to reflect these realities where the alternative would be to suffer the epistemic costs of stereotyping. It is argued that social attitudes that are egalitarian but fail to reflect social realities can be epistemically innocent and the lesser of two epistemic evils. Finally, the chapter outlines some implications of these points for existing theories of the ethics of stereotyping, accounts of epistemic injustice and moral encroachment views.

Confabulated Explanations

2020 ◽  
pp. 42-69
Author(s):  
Lisa Bortolotti
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Peer Feedback ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Priming Effects ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Implicit Biases ◽  
Share Information ◽  
Epistemic Innocence

In this chapter, the author argues that the ill-grounded explanations agents sincerely offer for their choices have the potential for epistemic innocence. Such explanations are not based on evidence about the causes of the agents’ behaviour and typically turn out to be inaccurate. That is because agents tend to underestimate the role of priming effects, implicit biases, and basic emotional reactions in their decision making. However, offering explanations for their choices, even when the explanations are ill-grounded, enables them to share information about their choices with peers, facilitating peer feedback and self-reflection. Moreover, by providing plausible explanations for their behaviour—rather than acknowledging the influence of factors that cannot be easily controlled—agents preserve a sense of themselves as competent and largely coherent decision makers, which can improve their decision making.

scholarly journals The Innocence Project at Twenty: An Interview with Barry Scheck

PLoS Genetics ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. e1003692 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Gitschier
Keyword(s):  
Innocence Project

scholarly journals “But I Wasn’t There!”

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 240-276
Author(s):  
Wendy Heath ◽  
Joshua Stein ◽  
Sabreen Afiouni
Keyword(s):  
Family Members ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Physical Evidence ◽  
Innocence Project

Using the exoneree summaries in the Innocence Project and the documentation in the Innocence Record, we analyze the content of the alibis of those who have been wrongly convicted and exonerated with the use of DNA. Sixty-five percent of the 377 DNA exonerees had an alibi. Fifty-one percent reported that their alibi corroborators were friends and/or family members, while only about 10% presented physical evidence to support their alibi. Those with an alibi were significantly less likely to falsely confess than those without an alibi. Eyewitnesses were significantly more likely to be a contributing cause of conviction for those with an alibi than for those without an alibi, and 27% of the exonerees with an alibi had only eyewitness evidence to implicate them. Those that had an alibi were also more likely to claim that they had an inadequate defense than those that did not have an alibi. We conclude this paper with recommendations for reforms and future research.

Optimistically Biased Beliefs

2020 ◽  
pp. 109-131
Author(s):  
Lisa Bortolotti
Keyword(s):  
Romantic Relationships ◽  
Goal Pursuit ◽  
Successful Performance ◽  
Self Worth ◽  
The Face ◽  
Epistemic Innocence

In this chapter, the author argues that optimistically biased beliefs that agents tend to have about themselves and their future have the potential for epistemic innocence. Such beliefs—inflated beliefs about the agent’s self-worth and rosy predictions about the agent’s health prospects or romantic relationships—are not sufficiently sensitive to the evidence available to the agent and count both as ill-grounded and impervious to counterevidence. However, optimistic beliefs also play a role in supporting agency. When agents believe that they are skilled and that things are going to go well for them, they are more motivated to continue to pursue their goals in the face of inevitable obstacles and setbacks. Persistence in goal pursuit sometimes translates in successful performance. Moreover, optimistic agents are more motivated to change their behaviour to achieve the goals they believe to be attainable, and thus cope better with crises in their health or relationships.

Elaborated Delusional Beliefs

2020 ◽  
pp. 70-92
Author(s):  
Lisa Bortolotti
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Performance ◽  
Self Efficacy ◽  
Prediction Error ◽  
Error Theory ◽  
Automated Learning ◽  
New Information ◽  
Previous State ◽  
Epistemic Innocence

In this chapter, the author argues that delusional beliefs that are elaborated—often emerging in people who attract a diagnosis of schizophrenia—have the potential for epistemic innocence. Delusional beliefs are strenuously resistant to counterevidence. However, when they are adopted to explain a puzzling experience that might compromise the agents’ capacity to interact with their environment, delusional beliefs contribute to restoring some aspects of cognitive performance by temporarily reducing anxiety. On the prediction-error theory of delusion formation, it is further believed that the adoption of a delusional explanation helps resume the processes of automated learning compromised by inaccurate prediction-error signalling. Depending on their content, some delusional beliefs may also support an attitude of curiosity and self-efficacy that is more conducive to the acquisition of new information than the previous state of uncertainty and self-doubt.

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