Nothing about collective irrationalities makes sense except in the light of cooperation

Blancke, Stefaan

doi:10.1080/09515089.2023.2169602

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…9 While it is true that people sometimes regulate one another's adherence to epistemic norms, this kind of regulative activity is not analogous to what we see in the regulation of symbolic belief. Whereas the social functions of symbolic belief seem to play a crucial role in explaining the norms governing their expression (Blancke, 2023;Van Leeuwen, 2023), this is not the case with epistemic norms about consistency and sensitivity to evidence. Epistemic norms hold both in social and in nonsocial contexts, and do not require mindshaping to persist.…”

Section: Mindshapingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Symbolic belief in social cognition

Westra

2023

Philosophical Perspectives

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Keeping track of what others believe is a central part of human social cognition. However, the social relevance of those beliefs can vary a great deal. Some belief attributions mostly tell us about what a person is likely to do next. Other belief attributions tell us more about a person's social identity. In this paper, I argue that we cope with this challenge by employing two distinct concepts of belief in our everyday social interactions. The epistemic concept of belief is primarily used to keep track of what other people take to be true, and this informs how we predict and interpret their behaviors. The symbolic concept of belief, in contrast, is primarily used as a means of signaling one's social identity to other members of one's community. In turn, community members closely monitor each other's symbolic beliefs as a means of enforcing social norms.

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Section: Mindshapingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Symbolic belief in social cognition

Westra

2023

Philosophical Perspectives

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“…Others maintain that such beliefs result from biases allowing for cost-efficient inquiry (e.g., Gigerenzer, 2008 ), from being susceptible to logical fallacies (e.g., Brotherton & French, 2014 ) or other reasoning deficits (Pennycook & Rand, 2021 ; Pennycook et al, 2022 ). Again, others take these beliefs to stand in relation to social dynamics conducive to cooperation within their group (Blancke, 2023 ). What such views have in common is that—whilst one might want to grant that agents are practically rational in so believing—there seems to be something epistemically deficient, vicious, and/or blameworthy about how agents with bad beliefs acquire or maintain them (see, e.g., Harris, 2018 ; Glüer & Wikforss, 2022 ; Bardon, 2019 ; Peels, 2023 ; Williams, 2023 ; Cassam, 2018 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bad social norms rather than bad believers: examining the role of social norms in bad beliefs

Müller

2024

Synthese

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People with bad beliefs — roughly beliefs that conflict with those of the relevant experts and are maintained regardless of counter-evidence — are often cast as bad believers. Such beliefs are seen to be the result of, e.g., motivated or biased cognition and believers are judged to be epistemically irrational and blameworthy in holding them. Here I develop a novel framework to explain why people form bad beliefs. People with bad beliefs follow the social epistemic norms guiding how agents are supposed to form and share beliefs within their respective communities. Beliefs go bad because these norms aren’t reliably knowledge-conducive. In other words, bad beliefs aren’t due to bad believers but due bad social epistemic norms. The framework also unifies different explanations of bad beliefs, is testable and provides distinct interventions to combat such beliefs. The framework also helps to capture the complex and often contextual normative landscape surrounding bad beliefs more adequately. On this picture, it’s primarily groups that are to be blamed for bad beliefs. I also suggest that some individuals will be blameless for forming their beliefs in line with their group’s norms, whereas others won’t be. And I draw attention to the factors that influence blameworthiness-judgements in these contexts.

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“…The second problem is probably typically related to human cooperation and coalition‐making and has to do with other people's preferences, expectations, and beliefs about one's beliefs. In our social interactions, it pays off to express and act upon beliefs of which one assumes they are acceptable to one's relevant community (Blancke, 2023). To entertain and act upon unacceptable beliefs is to risk serious reputational damage and potentially detrimental social repercussions.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…We can, therefore, expect some cognitive systems to track what other people think and expect of us and calculate the reputational score for the beliefs we express and/or entertain. The output of these systems are beliefs that will be socially desirable and, therefore, not (necessarily) truth‐tracking (Blancke, 2023; Funkhouser, 2017; Mercier, 2020; Williams, 2020).…”

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confidence: 99%

The Puzzle of Belief Requires an Evolutionary Key to be Solved

Blancke

2023

Cognitive Science

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The puzzle of belief arises as currently no definition captures the various ways in which people believe. As a solution to this puzzle and to make the study of belief empirically tractable, Van Leeuwen and Lombrozo suggest acknowledging the plurality of beliefs and organizing beliefs according to their shared functions and traits. However, their proposal does not make yet the distinction between proper and derived functions of belief‐generating cognitive systems. For that, we need a theoretical perspective anchored in evolutionary thinking. Such a perspective allows us to recognize the adaptive problems belief‐generating cognitive systems solve and what sorts of beliefs they will tend to produce. By analyzing beliefs based on evolutionary considerations, we not only make the puzzle of belief empirically tractable, but also take an important step toward solving it.

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Nothing about collective irrationalities makes sense except in the light of cooperation

Cited by 6 publications

References 48 publications

Symbolic belief in social cognition

Symbolic belief in social cognition

Bad social norms rather than bad believers: examining the role of social norms in bad beliefs

The Puzzle of Belief Requires an Evolutionary Key to be Solved

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