Misinformation, Content Moderation, and Epistemology

Misinformation, Content Moderation, and Epistemology
Author: KEITH RAYMOND. HARRIS
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2024-07-10
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9781032636870

This book argues that misinformation poses a multi-faceted threat to knowledge, while arguing that some forms of content moderation risk exacerbating these threats. It proposes alternative forms of content moderation that aim to address this complexity while enhancing human epistemic agency. The proliferation of fake news, false conspiracy theories, and other forms of misinformation on the internet and especially social media is widely recognized as a threat to individual knowledge and, consequently, to collective deliberation and democracy itself. This book argues that misinformation presents a three-pronged threat to knowledge. While researchers often focus on the role of misinformation in causing false beliefs, this deceptive potential of misinformation exists alongside the potential to suppress trust and to distort the perception of evidence. Recognizing the multi-faceted nature of this threat is essential to the development of effective measures to mitigate the harms associated with misinformation. The book weaves together work in analytic epistemology with emerging empirical work in other disciplines to offer novel insights into the threats posed by misinformation. Additionally, it breaks new ground by systematically assessing different forms of content moderation from the perspective of epistemology. Misinformation, Content Moderation, and Epistemology will appeal to philosophers working in applied and social epistemology, as well as scholars and advanced students in disciplines such as communication studies, political science, and social psychology who are researching misinformation.

Misinformation, Content Moderation, and Epistemology

Misinformation, Content Moderation, and Epistemology
Author: Keith Raymond Harris
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2024-04-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 104008642X

This book argues that misinformation poses a multifaceted threat to knowledge, while arguing that some forms of content moderation risk exacerbating these threats. It proposes alternative forms of content moderation that aim to address this complexity while enhancing human epistemic agency. The proliferation of fake news, false conspiracy theories, and other forms of misinformation on the internet and especially social media is widely recognized as a threat to individual knowledge and, consequently, to collective deliberation and democracy itself. This book argues that misinformation presents a three-pronged threat to knowledge. While researchers often focus on the role of misinformation in causing false beliefs, this deceptive potential of misinformation exists alongside the potential to suppress trust and to distort the perception of evidence. Recognizing the multifaceted nature of this threat is essential to the development of effective measures to mitigate the harms associated with misinformation. The book weaves together work in analytic epistemology with emerging empirical work in other disciplines to offer novel insights into the threats posed by misinformation. Additionally, it breaks new ground by systematically assessing different forms of content moderation from the perspective of epistemology. Misinformation, Content Moderation, and Epistemology will appeal to philosophers working in applied and social epistemology, as well as scholars and advanced students in disciplines such as communication studies, political science, and social psychology who are researching misinformation. The Introduction and Chapter 1 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY- NC- ND) 4.0 license.

The Epistemology of Fake News

The Epistemology of Fake News
Author: Sven Bernecker
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2021-06-10
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0192609424

News is vital for a healthy democracy. Collective decision-making requires accurate, reliable information. Nevertheless, much of the information we encounter is inadequate for this task. And some—peddled by politicians, profiteers, bots and algorithms—is fake. Social media platforms and emerging technologies allow fake news to dominate our information landscape. An adequate understanding our current information landscape calls for a new discipline, the epistemology of fake news. The epistemology of fake news studies knowledge communication under imperfect conditions. This book is the first sustained inquiry into the new epistemology of fake news. The chapters, authored by established and emerging names in the field, pursue three goals. First, to analyse the meaning and novelty of 'fake news' and related notions, such as 'conspiracy theory.' Second, to discuss the mechanics of fake news, exploring various practices that generate or promote fake news. Third, to investigate potential therapies for fake news.

The Epistemology of Deceit in a Postdigital Era

The Epistemology of Deceit in a Postdigital Era
Author: Alison MacKenzie
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022-08-05
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9783030721565

This edited book collection offers strong theoretical and philosophical insight into how digital platforms and their constituent algorithms interact with belief systems to achieve deception, and how related vices such as lies, bullshit, misinformation, disinformation, and ignorance contribute to deception. This inter-disciplinary collection explores how we can better understand and respond to these problematic practices. The Epistemology of Deceit in a Postdigital Era: Dupery by Design will be of interest to anyone concerned with deception in a ‘postdigital’ era including fake news, and propaganda online. The election of populist governments across the world has raised concerns that fake news in online platforms is undermining the legitimacy of the press, the democratic process, and the authority of sources such as science, the social sciences and qualified experts. The global reach of Google, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms has shown that they can be used to create and spread fake and misleading news quickly and without control. These platforms operate and thrive in an increasingly balkanised media eco-system where networks of users will predominantly access and consume information that conforms to their existing worldviews. Conflicting positions, even if relevant and authoritative, are suppressed, or overlooked in everyday digital information consumption. Digital platforms have contributed to the prolific spread of false information, enabled ignorance in online news consumers, and fostered confusion over determining fact from fiction. The collection explores: Deception, what it is, and how its proliferation is achieved in online platforms. Truth and the appearance of truth, and the role digital technologies play in pretending to represent truth. How we can counter these vices to protect ourselves and our institutions from their potentially baneful effects. Chapter 15 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

American Conspiracism

American Conspiracism
Author: Luke Ritter
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2024-07-02
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1040041299

This important collection explores the social effects of popular American conspiratorial beliefs, featuring the work of 22 scholars representing multiple academic disciplines. This book aims to better understand the phenomenon of American conspiracism by investigating how people acquire their beliefs, how conspiratorial stories function in politics and society, the role of conspiracy theories in the formation of national identities, and what conspiratorial beliefs mean to individual believers. Topics include QAnon, the Boogaloo Boys, the satanic panic, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Assassination, the Great Replacement Theory, anti-Catholic nativism, Flat Earth belief, Elvis Lives, COVID-19 denial, and much more. Each essay is accessibly and engagingly written without compromising quality. American Conspiracism is essential reading for students of psychology, political science, and U.S. history, as well as journalists, independent researchers, and anyone interested in American conspiracies.

How Should We Rationally Deal with Ignorance?

How Should We Rationally Deal with Ignorance?
Author: Nadja El Kassar
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2024-09-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1040144039

This book addresses two questions that are highly relevant for epistemology and for society: What is ignorance and how should we rationally deal with it? It proposes a new way of thinking about ignorance based on contemporary and historical philosophical theories. In the first part of the book, the author shows that epistemological definitions of ignorance are quite heterogeneous and often address different phenomena under the label "ignorance." She then develops an integrated conception of ignorance that recognizes doxastic, attitudinal, and structural constituents of ignorance. Based on this new conception, she carves out suggestions for dealing with ignorance from the history of philosophy that have largely been overlooked: virtue-theoretic approaches based on Aristotle and Socrates, consequentialist approaches derived from James, and deontological approaches based on Locke, Clifford, and Kant. None of these approaches individually provide a satisfying approach to the task of rationally dealing with ignorance, and so the author develops an alternative maxim-based answer that extends Kant’s maxims of the sensus communis to the issue of ignorance. The last part of the book applies this maxim-based answer to different contexts in medicine and democracies. How Should We Rationally Deal with Ignorance? will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in epistemology, political philosophy, feminist philosophy, and the social sciences.

Social Virtue Epistemology

Social Virtue Epistemology
Author: Mark Alfano
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 620
Release: 2022-07-29
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1000607305

This collection of 19 chapters, all appearing in print here for the first time and written by an international team of established and emerging scholars, explores the place of intellectual virtues and vices in a social world. Relevant virtues include open-mindedness, curiosity, intellectual courage, diligence in inquiry, and the like. Relevant vices include dogmatism, need for immediate certainty, and gullibility and the like. The chapters are divided into four key sections: Foundational Issues; Individual Virtues; Collective Virtues; and Methods and Measurements. And the chapters explore the most salient questions in this areas of research, including: How are individual intellectual virtues and vices affected by their social contexts? Does being in touch with other open-minded people make us more open-minded? Conversely, does connection to other dogmatic people make us more dogmatic? Can groups possess virtues and vices distinct from those of their members? For instance, could a group of dogmatic individuals operate in an open-minded way despite the vices of its members? Each chapter receives commentary from two other authors in the volume, and each original author then replies to these commentaries. Together, the authors form part of a collective conversation about how we can know about what we know. In so doing, they not only theorize but enact social virtue epistemology.

Intellectual Dependability

Intellectual Dependability
Author: T. Ryan Byerly
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2021-03-31
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1000372596

Intellectual Dependability is the first research monograph devoted to addressing the question of what it is to be an intellectually dependable person—the sort of person on whom one’s fellow inquirers can depend in their pursuit of epistemic goods. While neglected in recent scholarship, this question is an important one for both epistemology—how we should conceptualize the ideal inquirer—and education—how we can enable developing learners to grow toward this ideal. The book defends a virtue theory according to which being an intellectually dependable person is distinctively a matter of possessing a suite of neglected virtues called "the virtues of intellectual dependability" that are themselves distinctively concerned with promoting epistemic goods in others’ inquiries. After defending the existence and educational significance of these virtues as a group, the book turns toward the project of identifying and conceptualizing several specific instances of these virtues in detail. Virtues discussed include intellectual benevolence, intellectual transparency, communicative clarity, audience sensitivity, and epistemic guidance. In each case, an interdisciplinary treatment of the nature of the virtue and its relationship to other virtues, vices, and personality features is offered, drawing especially on relevant research in Philosophy and Psychology. The book concludes with a chapter devoted to identifying distinctive ways these virtues of intellectual dependability are manifested when it is inquiring communities, rather than individuals, that occupy the position of intellectual dependence. By directing attention to the ideal of intellectual dependability, the book marks a novel turn of scholarly interest explicitly toward a neglected dimension of the ideal inquirer that will inform both epistemological theorizing and educational practice.

The Routledge Handbook of Political Epistemology

The Routledge Handbook of Political Epistemology
Author: Michael Hannon
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 522
Release: 2021-04-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1000371921

As political discourse had been saturated with the ideas of "post-truth", "fake news", "epistemic bubbles", and "truth decay", it was no surprise that in 2017 The New Scientist declared: "Philosophers of knowledge, your time has come." Political epistemology has old roots, but is now one of the most rapidly growing and important areas of philosophy. The Routledge Handbook of Political Epistemology is an outstanding reference source to this exciting field, and the first collection of its kind. Comprising 41 chapters by an international team of contributors, it is divided into seven parts: Politics and truth: historical and contemporary perspectives Political disagreement and polarization Fake news, propaganda, and misinformation Ignorance and irrationality in politics Epistemic virtues and vices in politics Democracy and epistemology Trust, expertise, and doubt. Within these sections crucial issues and debates are examined, including: post-truth, disagreement and relativism, epistemic networks, fake news, echo chambers, propaganda, ignorance, irrationality, political polarization, virtues and vices in public debate, epistocracy, expertise, misinformation, trust, and digital democracy, as well as the views of Plato, Aristotle, Mòzǐ, medieval Islamic philosophers, Mill, Arendt, and Rawls on truth and politics. The Routledge Handbook of Political Epistemology is essential reading for those studying political philosophy, applied and social epistemology, and politics. It is also a valuable resource for those in related disciplines such as international relations, law, political psychology, political science, communication studies, and journalism.

AI Ethics

AI Ethics
Author: Paula Boddington
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 531
Release: 2023-03-30
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9811993823

This book introduces readers to critical ethical concerns in the development and use of artificial intelligence. Offering clear and accessible information on central concepts and debates in AI ethics, it explores how related problems are now forcing us to address fundamental, age-old questions about human life, value, and meaning. In addition, the book shows how foundational and theoretical issues relate to concrete controversies, with an emphasis on understanding how ethical questions play out in practice. All topics are explored in depth, with clear explanations of relevant debates in ethics and philosophy, drawing on both historical and current sources. Questions in AI ethics are explored in the context of related issues in technology, regulation, society, religion, and culture, to help readers gain a nuanced understanding of the scope of AI ethics within broader debates and concerns. Written with both students and educators in mind, the book is easy to use, with key terms clearly explained, and numerous exercises designed to stretch and challenge. It offers readers essential insights into the evolving field of AI ethics. Moreover, it presents a range of methods and strategies that can be used to analyse and understand ethical questions, which are illustrated throughout with case studies.