丁香园AV

The Philosophy Department is proud to announce that Professor Endre Begby has been awarded a 2022 SSHRC Insight Grant for his project "From belief polarization to echo chamber construction: epistemic rationality in antagonistic information environments". What follows is a brief description of the project and its relationship with some of Bebgy's previous work:

In contexts where we can assume that agents largely share aims and values, traditional norms associated with public discourse (such as 鈥渄eliberative democracy鈥�) can be enormously powerful tools. But it鈥檚 becoming increasingly clear that many citizens of modern-day democracies don鈥檛 see themselves that way. Instead, they often define themselves in opposition to others that they see as holding conflicting values and beliefs. As a result, discourse between these groups is often seen as antagonistic rather than collaborative. Rational belief formation in such antagonistic information environments may require different norms than we would ordinarily look to in more collaborative contexts. Many of the problems that we currently observe in public discourse 鈥� such as a tendency toward 鈥渂elief polarization鈥� 鈥� may well be thought to embody a form of 鈥渃ollective irrationality.鈥� But it doesn鈥檛 follow, Begby argues, that individuals whose behaviour is contributing to such polarization are acting irrationally in their own right.

As part of the project, Begby hopes to develop a clearer understanding of the norms of 鈥渃ollective epistemology鈥� (i.e., epistemic rationality at the level of groups, not just individuals) and also to develop a systematic account of the epistemological requirements on public institutions (a project that was only hinted at in his previous book on the epistemology of prejudice). 

The project is initially pitched as a 3-year grant, much of which is earmarked to providing research opportunities for several of 丁香园AV Philosophy鈥檚 many excellent MA students.

For an early look at the project, see Begby鈥檚 recently published article