Rationally self-ascribed anti-expertise

Bommarito, Nicolas

doi:10.1007/s11098-009-9441-3

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…7). I agree with Bommarito (2010) that self-ascriptions of anti-expertise are not necessarily irrational for finite reasoners 29 . Based on veritistic considerations alone, an anti-expert who believes herself to be an anti-expert is in a better epistemic position than an anti-expert who does not believes herself to be an anti-expert: at the very bottom, the first has one more true belief than the second.…”

Section: Rational Suspensionsupporting

confidence: 80%

“…In the fortunate cases where we find ourselves able to consciously change our beliefs or withhold regarding a topic, such doxastic changes often require a good deal of time to execute. During this time, to deny our own epistemic failures is not only to be dishonest with ourselves but also to rob ourselves of one of the strongest motives to keep attempting to bring about a change” (Bommarito 2010: 418).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Epistemic Sanity or Why You Shouldn't be Opinionated or Skeptical

Dantas¹

2022

Episteme

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I propose the notion of ‘epistemic sanity’, a property of parsimony between the holding of true but not false beliefs and the consideration of our cognitive limitations. Where ‘alethic value’ is the epistemic value of holding true but not false beliefs, the ‘alethic potential’ of an agent is the amount of extra alethic value that she is expected to achieve, given her current environment, beliefs, and reasoning skills. Epistemic sanity would be related to the holding of (true or false) beliefs that increase the agent's alethic potential (relevant beliefs) but not of beliefs that decrease it (this is related to cognitive parsimony). Suspension of judgment, forgetting, and clutter avoidance are the main contributors to an agent's epistemic sanity, where this paper focuses on suspension. I argue that rational suspension favors the holding of true and relevant beliefs, which is not the case for the extremes of opinionation (no suspension) and skepticism (general suspension). In the absence of evidence, opinionated agents are often forced to rely on principles such as the principle of indifference, but suspension dominates indifference in terms of alethic value in some conditions. A rational agent would only find it beneficial to adopt skepticism if she considers herself to be an anti-expert about her entire agenda, but then ‘flipping’ beliefs maximizes expected alethic value in relation to skepticism. The study of epistemic sanity results in an ‘impure’ veritism, which can deal with some limitations of veritism (e.g., explaining the existence of false but relevant beliefs).

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Section: Rational Suspensionsupporting

confidence: 80%

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confidence: 99%

Epistemic Sanity or Why You Shouldn't be Opinionated or Skeptical

Dantas¹

2022

Episteme

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“…Egan and Elga recommend that agents escape irrationality by giving up the beliefs that are the target of the anti‐expertise evidence; having given up the target beliefs, an agent no longer has reason to consider herself an anti‐expert. But Nicolas Bommarito (2009) provides a kind of example that casts doubt on whether, even in some variants of the non‐paradoxical sorts of cases considered by Egan and Elga, we should see the self‐attribution of anti‐expertise as itself irrational. Consider the following example: 16…”

Section: Anti‐expertise Paradox Casesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Higher‐Order Evidence¹

Christensen

2010

Philos Phenomenol Research

251

188

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A new anti-expertise dilemma

Raleigh

2021

Synthese

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Instability occurs when the very fact of choosing one particular possible option rather than another affects the expected values of those possible options. In decision theory: An act is stable iff given that it is actually performed, its expected utility is maximal. When there is no stable choice available, the resulting instability can seem to pose a dilemma of practical rationality. A structurally very similar kind of instability, which occurs in cases of anti-expertise, can likewise seem to create dilemmas of epistemic rationality. One possible line of response to such cases of instability, suggested by both Jeffrey (1983) and Sorensen (1987), is to insist that a rational agent can simply refuse to accept that such instability applies to herself in the first place. According to this line of thought it can be rational for a subject to discount even very strong empirical evidence that the anti-expertise condition obtains. I present a new variety of anti-expertise condition where no particular empirical stage-setting is required, since the subject can deduce a priori that an anti-expertise condition obtains. This kind of antiexpertise case is therefore not amenable to the line of response that Jeffrey and Sorensen recommend. 1. Introduction: Instability and Anti-Expertise Instability is the general phenomenon that occurs when the very fact of choosing one particular possible option rather than another affects the expected values of those possible options. Such instability can crop up both when we are considering which action to perform and also when we are considering what to believe-so the affected values in question could either be utilities or truth-values (accuracy). The aim for this paper is to present a new case of instability of the latter kind, concerning whether or not to believe a proposition, one which creates, I will suggest, a novel kind of 'anti-expertise' dilemma for epistemic rationality. However, since the former kind of instability, concerning the expected utility of different possible actions, has been much more frequently discussed, let's begin by very briefly rehearsing one of the best-known examples in the decision theory literature: Gibbard & Harper's (1978) classic 'Death in Damascus' case 1. 1 "Death works from an appointment book which states time and place; a person dies if and only if the book correctly states in what city he will be at the stated time. The book is made up weeks in advance on the basis of highly reliable predictions. An appointment on the next day has been inscribed for him. Suppose, on this basis, the man would take his being in Damascus the next day as strong evidence that his appointment with Death is in Damascus, and would take his being in Aleppo the next day as strong evidence that his appointment is in Aleppo... If... he decides to go to Aleppo, he then has strong grounds for expecting that Aleppo is where Death already expects him to be, and hence it is rational for him to prefer staying in Damascus. Similarly, deciding to stay in Damascus would give him strong...

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Rationally self-ascribed anti-expertise

Cited by 3 publications

References 5 publications

Epistemic Sanity or Why You Shouldn't be Opinionated or Skeptical

Epistemic Sanity or Why You Shouldn't be Opinionated or Skeptical

Higher‐Order Evidence¹

A new anti-expertise dilemma

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Rationally self-ascribed anti-expertise

Cited by 3 publications

References 5 publications

Epistemic Sanity or Why You Shouldn't be Opinionated or Skeptical

Epistemic Sanity or Why You Shouldn't be Opinionated or Skeptical

Higher‐Order Evidence1

A new anti-expertise dilemma

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Higher‐Order Evidence¹