Social Epistemology

Aydin Mohseni (University of California, Irvine), Cole Williams (University of California, Irvine)
Typically, public discussions of questions of social import exhibit two important properties: (1) they are influenced by conformity bias, and (2) the influence of conformity is expressed via social networks. We examine how social learning on networks proceeds under the influence of conformity bias. In our model, heterogeneous agents express public opinions where those expressions are driven by the competing priorities of accuracy and of conformity to one's peers. Agents learn, by Bayesian conditionalization, from private evidence from nature, and from the public declarations of other agents. Our key findings are that networks that produce configurations of social relationships that sustain a diversity of opinions empower honest communication and reliable acquisition of true beliefs, and that the networks that do this best turn out to be those which are both less connected and less centralized.

Jan-Willem Romeijn (University of Groningen), Remco Heesen (University of Cambridge)
This paper offers a new angle on the common idea that the process of science does not support epistemic diversity. Under minimal assumptions on the nature of journal editing we prove that editorial procedures, despite being impartial in themselves, disadvantage less prominent research programs. This purely statistical bias in article selection further skews existing differences in the success rate and hence attractiveness of research programs, and exacerbates the reputation difference between the programs. The paper ends with a number of recommendations that may help promote scientific diversity through editorial decision making.

Haixin Dang (University of Pittsburgh)
I argue in this paper that collaborators do not, in fact, need to reach board agreement over the justification of a consensus claim. This is because maintaining a diversity of justifiers within a scientific collaboration has important epistemic value. Existing views of collective justification overemphasize consensus and agreement among collaborators. I develop a view of collective justification which depends on the diversity of epistemic perspectives present in a scientific group. I argue that a group can be collectively justified in asserting that P as long as the disagreement among collaborators over the reasons is itself justified. I outline two epistemic "mechanisms" which are sources of diversity of justifiers in a scientific collaboration. Both of these mechanisms lead to a diversity of reasons among collaborators which should be maintained and not minimized. This diversity itself then is of epistemic value to the collaboration. In conclusion, I make a case for multi-method collaborative research and work through an example in the social sciences.

Boyer-Kassem Thomas (Université Grenoble Alpes), Cyrille Imbert (CNRS)
For two centuries, collaborative research has become increasingly widespread. Various explanations of this trend have been proposed. Here, we offer a novel functional explanation of it. It differs from accounts like that of Wray (2002) by the precise socio-epistemic mechanism that grounds the beneficialness of collaboration. Boyer-Kassem and Imbert (2015) show how minor differences in the step-efficiency of collaborative groups can make them much more successful in particular configurations. We investigate this model further, derive robust social patterns concerning the general successfulness of collaborative groups, and argue that these patterns can be used to defend a general functional account.