This paper presents the epistemic practices account, a theory about the nature of epistemic normativity. The account aims to explain how the pursuit of epistemic values such as truth and knowledge can give rise to epistemic norms. On this account, epistemic norms are the internal rules of epistemic social practices. The account explains four crucial features of epistemic normativity while dissolving some apparent tensions between them. The account also provides a unified theory of epistemic and zetetic normativity.

It is valuable for inquiry to have researchers who are committed advocates of their own theories. However, in light of pervasive disagreement, such a commitment is not well explained by the idea that researchers believe their theories. Instead, this commitment, the rational attitude to take toward one’s favored theory during the course of inquiry, is what I call endorsement. Endorsement is a doxastic attitude, but one which is governed by a different type of epistemic rationality. This inclusive epistemic rationality is (...) sensitive to reasons beyond those to think the particular proposition in question is true. Instead, it includes extrinsic epistemic reasons, which concern the health of inquiry more generally. Such extrinsic reasons include the distribution of cognitive labor that a researcher will contribute to by endorsing a particular theory. Recognizing endorsement and inclusive epistemic rationality thus allows us to smooth a tension between individual rationality and collective rationality. It does so by showing how it can be epistemically rational to endorse a theory on the basis of the way this endorsement will benefit collective inquiry. I provide a decision theoretic treatment for inclusive epistemic rationality and endorsement which illustrates how this can be accomplished. (shrink)

Many AI systems that make important decisions are black boxes: how they function is opaque even to their developers. This is due to their high complexity and to the fact that they are trained rather than programmed. Efforts to alleviate the opacity of black box systems are typically discussed in terms of transparency, interpretability, and explainability. However, there is little agreement about what these key concepts mean, which makes it difficult to adjudicate the success or promise of opacity alleviation methods. (...) I argue for a unified account of these key concepts that treats the concept of understanding as fundamental. This allows resources from the philosophy of science and the epistemology of understanding to help guide opacity alleviation efforts. A first significant benefit of this understanding account is that it defuses one of the primary, in-principle objections to post hoc explainable AI (XAI) methods. This “rationalization objection” argues that XAI methods provide mere rationalizations rather than genuine explanations. This is because XAI methods involve using a separate “explanation” system to approximate the original black box system. These explanation systems function in a completely different way than the original system, yet XAI methods make inferences about the original system based on the behavior of the explanation system. I argue that, if we conceive of XAI methods as idealized scientific models, this rationalization worry is dissolved. Idealized scientific models misrepresent their target phenomena, yet are capable of providing significant and genuine understanding of their targets. (shrink)

Discussion of epistemic responsibility typically focuses on belief formation and actions leading to it. Similarly, accounts of collective epistemic responsibility have addressed the issue of collective belief formation and associated actions. However, there has been little discussion of collective responsibility for preventing epistemic harms, particularly those preventable only by the collective action of an unorganized group. We propose an account of collective epistemic responsibility which fills this gap. Building on Hindriks' (2019) account of collective moral responsibility, we introduce the Epistemic (...) Duty to Join Forces. Our theory provides an account of the responsibilities of scientists to prevent epistemic harms during inquiry. (shrink)

Statistical fairness criteria are widely used for diagnosing and ameliorating algorithmic bias. However, these fairness criteria are controversial as their use raises several difficult questions. I argue that the major problems for statistical algorithmic fairness criteria stem from an incorrect understanding of their nature. These criteria are primarily used for two purposes: first, evaluating AI systems for bias, and second constraining machine learning optimization problems in order to ameliorate such bias. The first purpose typically involves treating each criterion as a (...) necessary condition for fairness. The second use involves treating criteria as sufficient conditions for fairness. Since the criteria are used for both roles, some researchers have treated them as both necessary and sufficient conditions, i.e., as definitions of algorithmic fairness. However, serious problems have been raised for the use of these fairness criteria. Under ordinary circumstances, it is impossible to satisfy multiple criteria at the same time. Moreover, there are counterexamples to both the sufficiency and necessity for fairness of each criterion. I argue that we should instead understand fairness criteria as merely providing evidence of fairness. In other words, satisfaction (or violation) of these criteria should be understood as potential evidence of fairness (or bias). Whether a criterion counts as evidence in a particular case will depend on stakeholders' background knowledge and the specific features of the system's task. This evidence account of fairness conditions provides guidance for recognizing both the appropriate uses and the limitations of fairness criteria. (shrink)

Scientists, philosophers, and other researchers commonly assert their theories. This is surprising, as there are good reasons for skepticism about theories in cutting-edge research. I propose a new account of assertion in research contexts that vindicates these assertions. This account appeals to a distinct propositional attitude called endorsement, which is the rational attitude of committed advocacy researchers have to their theories. The account also appeals to a theory of conversational pragmatics known as the Question Under Discussion model, or QUD. Hence, (...) I call the theory the EQUD model. Motivating this account is a recognition that the speech act of assertion has two roles to play in research contexts. The first is the advocacy role, in which researchers assert a theory in order to advocate for it. The second is the evidential role, which is used to add to the common stock of information available to a field of inquiry. The EQUD model provides an account of warranted assertion for both these roles in research contexts. This success provides support for the theory of endorsement. It also provides support for information updating accounts of assertion. (shrink)

Sometimes inquirers may rationally pursue a theory even when the available evidence does not favor that theory over others. Features of a theory that favor pursuing it are known as considerations of promise or pursuitworthiness. Examples of such reasons include that a theory is testable, that it has a useful associated analogy, and that it suggests new research and experiments. These reasons need not be evidence in favor of the theory. This raises the question: what kinds of reasons are provided (...) by pursuitworthiness considerations? Are they epistemic reasons or practical reasons? I argue that pursuitworthiness considerations are a kind of non-evidential epistemic reason, which I call an inquisitive reason. In support of this, I first point out two important similarities between the traditional pursuitworthiness considerations discussed in philosophy of science, which I call promise reasons, and certain social epistemic reasons that I call social inquisitive reasons. Specifically, both kinds of reason (1) favor pursuing a theory in a non-evidential way, and (2) concern promoting successful inquiry. I then propose recognition of a new category of normative reason: inquisitive reasons. This category contains both promise and social inquisitive reasons. Finally, I argue that inquisitive reasons share three essential features with previously recognized epistemic reasons: a connection to epistemic aims, explanatory independence, and the presence of a specific right-kind/wrong-kind reasons distinction. Each of these features have been used to argue that evidence should be treated as part of a distinct, independent domain of epistemic normativity. Since inquisitive reasons share these features, they too should be considered part of this independent epistemic domain. Thus, inquisitive reasons, including pursuitworthiness considerations, are epistemic reasons. (shrink)

I argue that recognizing a distinct doxastic attitude called endorsement, along with the epistemic norms governing it, solves the self-undermining problem for conciliationism about disagreement. I provide a novel account of how the self-undermining problem works by pointing out the auxiliary assumptions the objection relies on. These assumptions include commitment to certain epistemic principles linking belief in a theory to following prescriptions of that theory. I then argue that we have independent reason to recognize the attitude of endorsement. Endorsement is (...) the attitude of resilient and committed advocacy which is appropriate for researchers to have toward their own theory. Recognizing the importance of endorsement, and of its resiliency, gives us reason to deny the epistemic principles that serve as auxiliary assumptions in the self-undermining objection. This defuses the objection, and provides additional support for the theory of endorsement. (shrink)

Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

Intellectual courage requires acting to promote epistemic goods despite significant risk of harm. Courage is distinguished from recklessness and cowardice because the expected epistemic benefit of a courageous action outweighs (in some sense) the threatened harm. Sometimes, however, inquirers pursue theories that are not best supported by their current evidence. For these inquirers, the expected epistemic benefit of their actions cannot be explained by appeal to their evidence alone. The probability of pursuing the true theory cannot contribute enough to the (...) expected epistemic benefit for the action to count as courageous rather than reckless. Thus, there must be some other epistemic consideration which favors their action, besides evidence for their theory. I argue that the proper account of intellectual courage requires recognition of inquisitive reasons: a distinct category of epistemic reasons which concern successful inquiry. This category includes reasons to think a theory itself is promising, e.g., that the theory suggests potentially fruitful new research. It also includes social epistemic reasons, e.g., that pursuing a theory will improve the distribution of cognitive labor. Inquisitive reasons help explain why researchers who pursue improbable theories count as intellectually courageous, rather than reckless. The expected epistemic benefit of an action is partially determined by the inquisitive reasons in its favor. On my account, intellectually courageous inquiry requires acting in a way that is sensitive to inquisitive reasons. (shrink)

Virtue epistemology has been divided into two camps: reliabilists and responsibilists. This division has been attributed in part to a focus on different types of virtues, viz., faculty virtues and character virtues. I will argue that this distinction is unhelpful, and that we should carve up the theoretical terrain differently. Making several better distinctions among virtues will show us two important things. First, that responsibilists and reliabilists are actually engaged in different, complementary projects; and second, that certain responsibilist critiques of (...) reliabilism miss the mark. With these distinctions on the table, we can see that the virtue reliabilist project is in some ways more fundamental than the responsibilist project, since the latter importantly depends on the former. I argue that the distinctively epistemic value of the responsibilist’s character virtues is derived from their connections to the reliabilist’s constitutive virtues. While this will give us a unified account of the epistemic value of intellectual virtues, it is not a reduction of the responsibilist project to the reliabilist one; rather, it as a way of securing the separate importance of each project by clarifying how they relate to one another. (shrink)

Reliabilism is an intuitive and attractive view about epistemic justification. However, it has many well-known problems. I offer a novel condition on reliabilist theories of justification. This method coherence condition requires that a method be appropriately tested by appeal to a subject’s other belief-forming methods. Adding this condition to reliabilism provides a solution to epistemic circularity worries, including the bootstrapping problem.

Bayesian confirmation theory is our best formal framework for describing inductive reasoning. The problem of old evidence is a particularly difficult one for confirmation theory, because it suggests that this framework fails to account for central and important cases of inductive reasoning and scientific inference. I show that we can appeal to the fragmentation of doxastic states to solve this problem for confirmation theory. This fragmentation solution is independently well-motivated because of the success of fragmentation in solving other problems. I (...) also argue that the fragmentation solution is preferable to other solutions to the problem of old evidence. These other solutions are already committed to something like fragmentation, but suffer from difficulties due to their additional commitments. If these arguments are successful, Bayesian confirmation theory is saved from the problem of old evidence, and the argument for fragmentation is bolstered by its ability to solve yet another problem. (shrink)

It is often irrational to believe philosophical claims because they are subject to systematic disagreement, under-determination, and pessimistic induction. Along with some other authors in this volume, I argue that many philosophers should (and do) have a different attitude to their own philosophical commitments. On my account, this attitude is a form of epistemic acceptance called endorsement. However, several objections have been raised to this view and others like it. One worry is that endorsement is spineless: that people who merely (...) endorse their theories fail to have a stable, global commitment to their views. A second worry is that endorsement, and the assertions it licenses, are objectionably insincere. Here, I defend the theory of endorsement from these objections. I suggest that endorsement can be more resilient than belief, while better supporting both intellectual courage and humility. Then, I argue that endorsement can be perfectly sincere, since it is not deceptive. (shrink)

Background: Efforts to better understand and improve letters of recommendation (LORs) in the resident selection process have identified unwritten rules and hidden practices that may limit their effectiveness. The objective of our study is to explore these unwritten rules and hidden practices more fully in one Canadian academic medical community. -/- Methods: We conducted semi-structured, discourse-based interviews with 18 faculty members from the departments of Internal Medicine and Psychiatry at the University of Manitoba, Canada. Interviews were guided by sample LORs (...) and were focused on experiences with either writing or reading LORs. We analyzed interviews using key concepts from genre theory and Aristotle’s appeals to ethos, logos, and pathos. -/- Results: Participants described how the practices surrounding LORs are guided by unwritten rules. These practices contributed to writers’ use of visible strategies and textual silence to establish credibility, build a strong case, and appeal to readers. Readers rely on similar strategies, but not always as intended by the writers. -/- Conclusions: The unwritten rules of one academic community can impede a nationally-facilitated resident selection process. Our findings highlight how critiques and potential improvements to LORs could benefit from considering the use of visible and invisible rhetorical strategies in specific contexts. (shrink)

One of the main lines of research in algorithmic fairness involves individual fairness (IF) methods. Individual fairness is motivated by an intuitive principle, similar treatment, which requires that similar individuals be treated similarly. IF offers a precise account of this principle using distance metrics to evaluate the similarity of individuals. Proponents of individual fairness have argued that it gives the correct definition of algorithmic fairness, and that it should therefore be preferred to other methods for determining fairness. I argue that (...) individual fairness cannot serve as a definition of fairness. Moreover, IF methods should not be given priority over other fairness methods, nor used in isolation from them. To support these conclusions, I describe four in-principle problems for individual fairness as a definition and as a method for ensuring fairness: (1) counterexamples show that similar treatment (and therefore IF) are insufficient to guarantee fairness; (2) IF methods for learning similarity metrics are at risk of encoding human implicit bias; (3) IF requires prior moral judgments, limiting its usefulness as a guide for fairness and undermining its claim to define fairness; and (4) the incommensurability of relevant moral values makes similarity metrics impossible for many tasks. In light of these limitations, I suggest that individual fairness cannot be a definition of fairness, and instead should be seen as one tool among several for ameliorating algorithmic bias. (shrink)

This paper examines how employees’ career aspirations benefit organizations, i.e., contribute to strengthening organizational capabilities and connections, by means of two aspects of contemporary work: proactive and relational. Data were collected from alumni of a public university in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in two waves with a one-year time lag. The results showed that employees with career aspirations strengthen: a) organizational capabilities; and b) organizational connections through their instrumental and psychosocial relationships. Interestingly, although employees’ career aspirations were positively associated with taking (...) charge, we did not find that taking charge mediates the relationship between career aspirations and employees’ individual contributions to organizational capabilities. This study is the first to examine how individual career aspirations benefit organizations, and it discusses the results in light of their novel contributions to theory and practice. (shrink)

We present RAWLSNET, a system for altering Bayesian Network (BN) models to satisfy the Rawlsian principle of fair equality of opportunity (FEO). RAWLSNET's BN models generate aspirational data distributions: data generated to reflect an ideally fair, FEO-satisfying society. FEO states that everyone with the same talent and willingness to use it should have the same chance of achieving advantageous social positions (e.g., employment), regardless of their background circumstances (e.g., socioeconomic status). Satisfying FEO requires alterations to social structures such as school (...) assignments. Our paper describes RAWLSNET, a method which takes as input a BN representation of an FEO application and alters the BN's parameters so as to satisfy FEO when possible, and minimize deviation from FEO otherwise. We also offer guidance for applying RAWLSNET, including on recognizing proper applications of FEO. We demonstrate the use of our system with publicly available data sets. RAWLSNET's altered BNs offer the novel capability of generating aspirational data for FEO-relevant tasks. Aspirational data are free from the biases of real-world data, and thus are useful for recognizing and detecting sources of unfairness in machine learning algorithms besides biased data. (shrink)

The contemporary canon of what constitutes ancient political thought was fixed in the course of the nineteenth century by the then newly reigning discipline of the philosophy of history. It made little difference whether this discipline was positivistically or dialectically inclined. Whatever the methodological commitment there was general agreement that the sources of ancient wisdom on the nature and ends of social and political life were to be found in the political and ethical writings of Plato and Aristotle and, to (...) a lesser extent, Cicero. Here Cicero was read, in part, as a repository of a Stoic political wisdom that had not survived in the original texts. According to this tradition, genuine, if not final, political wisdom is to be found in the reflections of these ancient thinkers -- not a totally unexpected conclusion to come from philosophers. For these nineteenth-century practitioners of Geistesgeschichte the essence of ancient experience is distilled in its inner life, its art, literature, religion, and above all in its philosophical speculation, but not, for instance, in its political experience as recorded in its history. (shrink)

Theory in Africa, Africa in Theory explores the place of Africa in archaeological theory, and the place of theory in African archaeology. The centrality of African models in reconstructions is explored, focusing on materiality and agency in the past. The differences between how African models are used in western theoretical discourse and the use of that theory within Africa are also highlighted, as a means to explore the nature of theory itself. Thus, this dual purposed volume is a timely intervention (...) into archaeological theory, deconstructing the taken-for-granted foundations of the ways we approach the past. (shrink)