The Independence Thesis: When Individual and Social Epistemology Diverge

Abstract

Several philosophers of science have argued that epistemically rational individuals might form epistemically irrational groups and that, conversely, rational groups might be composed of irrational individuals. We call the conjunction of these two claims the Independence Thesis, as they entail that methodological prescriptions for scientific communities and those for individual scientists are logically independent. We defend the inconsistency thesis by characterizing four criteria for epistemic rationality and then proving that, under said criteria, individuals will be judged rational when groups are not and vice versa. We then explain the implications of our results for descriptive history of science and normative epistemology.Philosophers and social scientists have often argued (both implicitly and explicitly) that rational individuals can form irrational groups and that,

Conservatism and the Scientific State of Nature

“…Ultimately, scientists desire to find the most effective treatment for peptic ulcer disease-to pull the arm that, on average, provides the highest payoff. Mayo-Wilson et al ([2011]) argue that research in psychology follows a similar pattern. For example, in research on concept formation there are a number of broad theories postulating different cognitive mechanisms for categorization.…”

“…In this article, we focus on a set of strategies for tackling bandit problems known as -greedy strategies (Sutton and Barto [1998]; Huttegger [unpublished]; Mayo-Wilson et al [2011]). These strategies allow for an explicit representation of a scientist's willingness to explore apparently worse alternatives: high 's correspond to high exploration rates, and low 's correspond to low exploration rates.…”

Individual irrationality, network structure, and collective intelligence: An agent‐based simulation approach

“…Network structure, however, is beyond their attention. Mayo-Wilson, Zollman, and Danks studied the independence between individual rationality and collective rationality in the scientific communities [19]. Then, they further explored the performance of several boundedly rational strategies in multiarmed bandit problems [20].…”

Vindicating methodological triangulation

“…However, work in social epistemology implies that what may be a rational strategy for an individual inquirer may be disadvantageous for the community as a whole if generally adopted (Mayo-Wilson et al 2011). Hence, while our model vindicates individuals in exploiting methodological triangulation, it does not show that science would be better off if all scientists were triangulators.…”