Illegitimate Values, Confirmation Bias, and Mandevillian Cognition in Science

Peters, Uwe

doi:10.1093/bjps/axy079

Cited by 13 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Confirmation bias is typically taken to be epistemically problematic, as it leads to partial and therewith for the individual less reliable information processing and contributes to failures in, for instance, perspective-taking with clear costs for social and other types of cognition (Mercier and Sperber 2017: 215;Steel 2018;Peters 2018;Dutilh Novaes 2018). Prima facie, the bias thus seems maladaptive.…”

Section: Evolutionary Accounts Of the Biasmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Even if confirmation bias is maladaptive for individuals, it might still be adaptive for groups. For instance, Smart (2018) and Peters (2018) hold that in groups with a sufficient degree of cognitive diversity at the outset of solving a particular problem, each individual's confirmation bias might help the group as a whole conduct a more in-depth analysis of the problem space than otherwise. When each subject is biased towards a different particular proposal on how to solve the problem, the bias will push them to invest greater effort in defending their favored proposals and might, in the light of counterevidence, motivate them to consider rejecting auxiliary assumptions rather than the proposals themselves.…”

Section: The Group-cognition Accountmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In recent years, confirmation bias (or 'myside bias'), 1 that is, people's tendency to search for information that supports their beliefs and ignore or distort data contradicting them (Nickerson 1998;Myers and DeWall 2015: 357), has frequently been discussed in the media, the sciences, and philosophy. The bias has, for example, been mentioned in debates on the spread of "fake news" (Stibel 2018), on the "replication crisis" in the sciences (Ball 2017;Lilienfeld 2017), the impact of cognitive diversity in philosophy (Peters 2019a;Peters et al forthcoming;Draper and Nichols 2013;De Cruz and De Smedt 2016), the role of values in inquiry (Steel 2018;Peters 2018), and the evolution of human reasoning (Norman 2016;Mercier and Sperber 2017;Sterelny 2018;Dutilh Novaes 2018).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…In the same vein, Steel (2018) holds that the bias involves an "epistemic distortion [that] consists of unjustifiably favoring supporting evidence for [one's] belief, which can result in the belief becoming unreasonably confident or extreme" (897). Similarly, Peters (2018) writes that confirmation bias "leads to partial, and therewith for the individual less reliable, information processing" (15).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Some philosophers are optimistic, arguing that the bias has in fact significant advantages for the individual, groups, or both (Mercier and Sperber 2017;Norman 2016;Smart 2018;Peters 2018). Others are pessimistic.…”

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confidence: 99%

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What Is the Function of Confirmation Bias?

Peters

2020

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Confirmation bias is one of the most widely discussed epistemically problematic cognitions, challenging reliable belief formation and the correction of inaccurate views. Given its problematic nature, it remains unclear why the bias evolved and is still with us today. To offer an explanation, several philosophers and scientists have argued that the bias is in fact adaptive. I critically discuss three recent proposals of this kind before developing a novel alternative, what I call the 'reality-matching account'. According to the account, confirmation bias evolved because it helps us influence people and social structures so that they come to match our beliefs about them. This can result in significant developmental and epistemic benefits for us and other people, ensuring that over time we don't become epistemically disconnected from social reality but can navigate it more easily. While that might not be the only evolved function of confirmation bias, it is an important one that has so far been neglected in the theorizing on the bias.

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Section: Evolutionary Accounts Of the Biasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Group-cognition Accountmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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What Is the Function of Confirmation Bias?

Peters

2020

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An argument for egalitarian confirmation bias and against political diversity in academia

Peters

2020

Synthese

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It has recently been suggested that politically motivated cognition leads progressive individuals (e.g., liberals) to form beliefs that underestimate real differences between social groups (e.g., in academic performance) and to process information selectively to support these beliefs and an egalitarian outlook. I contend that this tendency, which I shall call 'egalitarian confirmation bias', is often 'Mandevillian' in nature. That is, while it is epistemically problematic in one's own cognition, it often has effects that significantly improve other people's truth tracking, especially that of stigmatized individuals in academia. Due to its Mandevillian character, egalitarian confirmation bias isn't only epistemically but also ethically beneficial, as it helps decrease social injustice. Moreover, since egalitarian confirmation bias has Mandevillian effects especially in academia, and since progressives are particularly likely to display the bias, there is an epistemic reason for maintaining (rather than counteracting) the oftennoted political majority of progressives in academia. That is, while many researchers hold that diversity in academia is epistemically beneficial because it helps reduce bias, I argue that precisely because political diversity would help reduce egalitarian confirmation bias, it would in fact in one important sense be epistemically costly.

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Rethinking the history of peptic ulcer disease and its relevance for network epistemology

Radomski

Šešelja

Naumann

2021

HPLS

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The history of the research on peptic ulcer disease (PUD) is characterized by a premature abandonment of the bacterial hypothesis, which subsequently had its comeback, leading to the discovery of Helicobacter pylori—the major cause of the disease. In this paper we examine the received view on this case, according to which the primary reason for the abandonment of the bacterial hypothesis in the mid-twentieth century was a large-scale study by a prominent gastroenterologist Palmer, which suggested no bacteria could be found in the human stomach. To this end, we employ the method of digital textual analysis and study the literature on the etiology of PUD published in the decade prior to Palmer’s article. Our findings suggest that the bacterial hypothesis had already been abandoned before the publication of Palmer’s paper, which challenges the widely held view that his study played a crucial role in the development of this episode. In view of this result, we argue that the PUD case does not illustrate harmful effects of a high degree of information flow, as it has frequently been claimed in the literature on network epistemology. Moreover, we argue that alternative examples of harmful effects of a high degree of information flow may be hard to find in the history of science.

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Illegitimate Values, Confirmation Bias, and Mandevillian Cognition in Science

Cited by 13 publications

References 45 publications

What Is the Function of Confirmation Bias?

What Is the Function of Confirmation Bias?

An argument for egalitarian confirmation bias and against political diversity in academia

Rethinking the history of peptic ulcer disease and its relevance for network epistemology

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