Are knowledgeable voters better voters?

It is widely believed that democracies require knowledgeable citizens to function well. But the most politically knowledgeable individuals tend to be the most partisan and the strength of partisan identity tends to corrupt political thinking. This creates a conundrum. On the one hand, an informed citizenry is allegedly necessary for a democracy to flourish. On the other hand, the most knowledgeable and passionate voters are also the most likely to think in corrupted, biased ways. What to do? This paper examines this tension and draws out several lessons. First, it is not obvious that more knowledgeable voters will make better political decisions. Second, attempts to remedy voter ignorance are problematic because partisans tend to become more polarized when they acquire more information. Third, solutions to citizen incompetence must focus on the intellectual virtue of objectivity. Fourth, some forms of epistocracy are troubling, in part, because they would increase the political power of the most dogmatic and biased individuals. Fifth, a highly restrictive form of epistocracy may escape the problem of political dogmatism, but epistocrats may face a steeper tradeoff between inclusivity and epistemic virtue than they would like.

Dual processes, dual virtues

I argue that virtue reliabilism and virtue responsibilism are complementary. They do not give competing accounts of epistemic virtue. Rather they explain the excellent functioning of different parts of our cognitive apparatus. Reliabilist virtue designates the excellent functioning of fast and context-specific Type 1 cognitive processes, while responsibilist virtue means an excellent functioning of effortful and reflective Type 2 cognitive processes. This account unifies reliabilist and responsibilist virtue theory. But the virtues are not unified by designating some epistemic norm that both aim at. Instead, I unify them through their cognitive foundations. Because Type 1 and Type 2 cognition are complementary, reliabilist and responsibilist virtues are complementary. Thereby, this dual-process theory of epistemic virtue gives a naturalised account of virtues as well as an explanation of how reliabilism and responsibilism relate. This approach offers a solution for both the generality problem and the situationist challenge to virtue epistemology; additionally it preserves the epistemological autonomy of each virtue type.

3D-VISUALIZATION OF MACROMOLECULES IN BIOINFORMATICS:

Биоинформатики часто описывают собственную научную деятельность как практику работы с большими объемами данных с помощью вычислительных устройств. Существенной частью этого самоопределения является создание способов визуального представления результатов такой работы, некоторые из которых направлены на построение удобных репрезентаций данных и демонстрацию закономерностей, присутствующих в них (графики, диаграммы, графы). Другие являются способами визуализации объектов, непосредственно не доступных человеческому восприятию (микрофотография, рентгенограмма). И создание визуализаций, и особенно создание новых компьютерных методов визуализации рассматриваются в биоинформатике как значимые научные достижения. Репрезентации трехмерной структуры белковых молекул занимают особое место в деятельности биоинформатиков. 3D-визуализация макромолекулы, с одной стороны, является, подобно графику, представлением результатов компьютерной обработки массивов данных, полученных материальными методами, – данных о взаимном расположении элементов молекулы. С другой стороны, подобно микрофотографии, такие 3D-структуры должны служить точными отображениями конкретных научных объектов. Это приводит к параллельному существованию двух противоречивых эпистемических режимов: творческий произвол в создании удобных, коммуникативно успешных моделей сочетается с верностью объекту «как он есть на самом деле». Парадокс усиливается тем, что научное исследование репрезентируемых объектов (определение свойств структуры, ее функций, сравнение с другими структурами) посредством компьютеров само по себе вообще не требует визуализации. Ее очевидно высокая ценность для биоинформатики не выглядит оправданной, если иметь в виду значительную искусственность и художественность получаемых изображений. Однако статус этих изображений становится яснее при соотнесении с более ранними представлениями о роли визуального в научном поиске. Высокая оценка визуализации как итогового результата научного исследования была характерна для науки эпохи Возрождения. Художественная репрезентация идеальных существенных свойств вместо строгого соответствия конкретному биологическому объекту – эпистемическая добродетель, типичная для натуралистов XVII–XVIII веков. И то и другое предполагало тесное сотрудничество ученого с художником; и стандарты визуализации макромолекул в биоинформатике вырастают из аналогичного сотрудничества (рисунки Гейса). Стремление же к максимальной точности и детализации наследует регулятиву «механической объективности» (как определяли это Л. Дастон и П. Галисон), для которого важным оказывается и устранение субъекта из процесса производства изображения (в биоинформатике – передача этих функций компьютерным программам). Таким образом, 3D-визуализация белковых структур несет на себе следы исторически разных ценностных ориентиров, но научная практика XX–XXI веков, дополненная компьютерными технологиями, позволяет им сочетаться в конкретных дисциплинарных единствах. Bioinformatics scientists often describe their own scientific activities as the practice of working with large amounts of data using computing devices. An essential part of their self-identification is also the development of ways to visually represent the results of this work. Some of these methods are aimed at building convenient representations of data and demonstrating patterns present in them (graphics, diagrams, graphs). Others are ways of visualizing objects that are not directly accessible to human perception (microphotography, X-ray). Both the construction of visualizations and (especially) the creation of new computer visualization methods are considered in bioinformatics as significant scientific achievements. Representations of the three-dimensional structure of protein molecules play a special role in the inquiries of bioinformatics scientists. 3D-visualization of a macromolecule, on the one hand, is, like a graph, a representation of the results of computer processing of data arrays obtained by material methods – spatiotemporal coordinates of structural elements of the molecule. On the other hand, like microphotography, these 3D structures should serve as accurate representations of specific scientific objects. This leads to the parallel existence of two contradictory epistemic regimes: creative arbitrariness in making convenient, communicatively successful models, is combined with commitment to the object “as it really is”. The paradox is reinforced by the fact that the scientific study of objects in question (determining the properties of the structure, its functions, comparison with other structures) by means of computers does not require visualization at all. Its obviously high value for bioinformatics does not look justified if we take into account the prominent artificiality and artistry of the resulting images. However, the status of these images becomes clearer if we relate them to earlier notions of the role of the visual in scientific discovery. The highest estimation of visualization as the final result of scientific research was characteristic of Renaissance science. The artistic representation of ideal essential properties, instead of a strict correspondence to a particular biological object, is an epistemic virtue typical of the naturalists of the 17th and 18th centuries. Both suggested a close collaboration between the scientist and the artist; and standards for visualizing macromolecules in bioinformatics grow out of a similar collaboration (Geis’ drawings). The desire for maximum accuracy and detail inherits the regulation of “mechanical objectivity” (as Daston and Galison put it into words), for which it is also important to eliminate humans from the image production process (in bioinformatics, to transfer these functions to computer programs). Thus, 3D-visualization of protein structures bears traces of historically different value orientations, but the scientific practice of the 20th and 21st centuries, supplemented by computer technologies, allows them to be intertwined in particular disciplinary units.

The Epistemic Virtues of a Closed Mind: Effective Science Reporting in the Golden Age of the Con

A financial confidence game (or “con”) aims to separate you from your money. An epistemic con aims to influence social policy by recruiting you to spread doubt and falsehood about well-established claims. You can’t be conned if you close your wallet to financial cons and your mind to epistemic cons. Easier said than done. The epistemic con has two elements. First are magic bullet arguments, which purport to identify the crucial fact that proves some well-established hypothesis is false. Second are appeals to epistemic virtue: You should be fair, consider the evidence, think for yourself. The appeal to epistemic virtue opens your mind to the con; countless magic bullet arguments keep it open. As in most cons, you (the mark or victim) don’t understand the game. You think it’s to find the truth. But really, it’s to see how long the con artist can string you along as his unwitting shill (an accomplice who entices victims to the con). Strategic Reliabilism says that reasoning is rational to the extent it’s accurate, easy to use, and practical (it applies to significant problems). It recommends that we give close-minded deference to settled science, and thus avoid a large class of epistemic cons. Settled science consists of the general consensus of scientific experts. These experts are defined not by their personal characteristics but by their roles within the institutions of science. Close-minded deference is not blind faith or certainty. It is belief that does not waver in the face of objections from other (less reliable) sources. When the epistemic con is on, the journalist faces a dilemma. Report on magic bullet arguments and thereby open people’s minds to the con. Or don’t, and feed the con artist’s narrative that evidence is being suppressed. As always, the journalist’s best response is sunshine: Report on the story of the epistemic con. Show people how they work. The story of the epistemic con has, at its heart, a wicked reveal: Your reaction to the story is itself part of the story, and it tells you whether the true villain of the story lurks within you.

Sacrifice in Service to Truth

Victorian men of science struggled to address a central question of nineteenth-century British thought: how do fallible human beings recognize truth? Their solution, embodied within the principles establishing the British Association for the Advancement of Science, focused on a stable set of selfless epistemic virtues—patience, humility, diligence, disinterest, self-control—that provided moral stability amid the relentless advance of new and revised theories of physical reality. But if well-founded ideas flow from virtuous practices, did it not follow that dangerously unsound ideas stem from vice? For this reason, a widely shared commitment to virtuous conduct meant that intellectual disagreements often degenerated into accusations of immoral behavior. This essay explores the complicated role of epistemic virtue in Victorian science by examining three towering products of the University of Cambridge: John Herschel, Adam Sedgwick, and William Whewell.

Why Hope Cannot Be an Intellectual Virtue: Rationality of Hope Considered from an Analytic Perspective

There are two aims of the paper. The first is to critically analyse the claim that hope can be regarded as an intellectual virtue, as proposed by Nancy E. Snow (2013) in her recent account of hope set within the project of regulative epistemology. The second aim is to explore the problem of rationality of hope. Section one of the paper explains two different interpretations of the key notion of hope and discusses certain features to be found in hope-that and hope-in. Section two addresses the question of whether hope could be interpreted as an intellectual virtue. To develop an argument against that view, a brief account of the notion of epistemic virtue is provided. Section three analyses the problem of rationality of hope and the parallels between rational belief and rational hope; the section focuses on what exactly makes a particular hope-that a rational and justified hope. Belief that p is possible/probable is part of the meaning of hope that p; therefore, it is assumed that rationality of hope cannot be considered in isolation from rationality of belief. It is argued that the “standard account” of the reasonableness of hope, which is found in the analytic literature, does not meet the standards of epistemic responsibility and needs rectifying.

Good Learning and Epistemic Transformation

This study explores a liberatory epistemic virtue that is suitable for good learning as a form of liberating socially situated epistemic agents toward ideal virtuousness. First, I demonstrate that the weak neutralization of epistemically bad stereotypes is an end of good learning. Second, I argue that weak neutralization represents a liberatory epistemic virtue, the value of which derives from liberating us as socially situated learners from epistemic blindness to epistemic freedom. Third, I explicate two distinct forms of epistemic transformation: constitutive and causal epistemic transformation. I argue that compared with the ideal conception of epistemic virtue, constitutive epistemic transformation that involves good learning has a transcendent value in light of agents constantly renewing their default epistemic status toward ideal virtuousness.

An Epistemology for Target Centred Virtue Ethics

This chapter provides an epistemology for virtue ethics—target-centred virtue epistemology, arguing that we all need the epistemic virtues rather than relying on the wisdom of a virtuous agent. It thus contrasts target-centred virtue epistemology with qualified agent virtue epistemology. Epistemic virtues are understood in terms of their epistemic targets rather than primarily in terms of virtuous epistemic motives. The chapter argues that virtue epistemology is a branch of virtue ethics, and that epistemic virtues should be understood as not isolated from ethical virtue but are instead ‘virtues proper’. It discusses too the evidential status of “moral intuitions” in relation to target-centred virtue epistemology, and deleterious social factors in the transmission of beliefs such as the network and contagion social epistemic models, in relation to personal epistemic virtue.

Gift-giving as an Epistemic Virtue

The article presents a study of gift-giving practices in the context of the development of modern biomedicine and shows their relationship to the realization of epistemic virtues. In biomedicine, the gain and production of knowledge (the gift of knowledge) is often grounded in bodily gift (sacrifice) and donor practices. The latter are associated with a number of mishaps in the history of biomedicine, reflecting the violation of moral norms in the process of obtaining scientific data and demonstrating the need for a clear differentiation of intellectual and moral virtues. An important factor in the formation of the epistemic norms of modern biomedicine has been the transformation of the values of scientific knowledge from practices of coercion to giving. As a result, the involuntary sacrifice of biomaterials to science was replaced by voluntary practices of somatic giving and informational exchange that determine the process of mutual recognition in science. It is shown that gift-giving in science is closely associated with intellectual virtues, with intellectual generosity characterizing the idea of openness in science and scientists’ intention for production and constant growth of knowledge, and can also be related to the idea of altruistic service to science, involving the exchange of received scientific data and access to free information in the network space. A number of examples of the modern digital gift ethos and the implementation of the principles of openness of knowledge and knowledge exchange in the context of the creation of biomedical expert digital platforms, the formation of social scientific networks – platforms with open access to scientific information, the development of the phenomenon of “garage” science and other “zones of exchange” experience are considered.