Articles and papers by Michael P Lynch
Society, 2024
Does truth matter? If so, what's is the nature of its value? A critical notice of Wrenn's new boo... more Does truth matter? If so, what's is the nature of its value? A critical notice of Wrenn's new book on the topic.
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Applied Epistemology, edited by J. Lackey, 2021
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Oxford Handbook of Social Epistemology
Epistemologists have begun to dive in earnest into the particular
problems raised by the interne... more Epistemologists have begun to dive in earnest into the particular
problems raised by the internet. In this paper, we aim to discuss one important
aspect of our digital life: what we’ll call the personalization of information. In
what follows we’ll argue that such personalization can make us worse off from
the epistemic point of view, specifically, that living with it risks epistemic harms
similar to those suffered in certain traditional skeptical scenarios.
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Blackwell Companion to Applied Epistemology, 2018
In this paper, we argue that certain facts about googling make it particularly interesting to the... more In this paper, we argue that certain facts about googling make it particularly interesting to the applied epistemologist. Our practices involving search-engines not only have a distinctive character, that character puts some traditional epistemic questions in a new light. This paper examines two of those questions. The first concerns the extent to which googling raises problems similar to familiar quandaries surrounding testimonial knowledge. The second—and more radical—concerns whether googling is a type of distributed or extended knowledge.
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Topoi, 2021
In this paper we discuss three different kinds of disagreement that have been, or could reasonabl... more In this paper we discuss three different kinds of disagreement that have been, or could reasonably be, characterized as deep disagreements. Principle level disagreements are disagreements over the truth of epistemic principles. Sub-principle level deep disagreements are disagreements over how to assign content to schematic norms. Finally, framework-level disagreements are holistic disagreements over meaning not truth, that is over how to understand networks of epistemic concepts and the beliefs those concepts compose. Within the context of each of these kinds of disagreement it is not possible for the parties to the dispute to rationally persuade one another through only offering epistemic reasons for their conflicting points of view. However, in spite of the inability to rationally persuade, we explore how it may nevertheless be possible to rationally navigate each of these varieties of deep disagreement.
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Southern Journal of Philosophy , 2022
Are most people sincere when they share misinformation and conspiracies online? This question, wh... more Are most people sincere when they share misinformation and conspiracies online? This question, while natural and important, is difficult to answer for obvious reasons. But it also applies poorly to one of the main vehicles for misinformationmemes. And it can be ambiguous; as a result, we should be mindful of two distinctions. First, a distinction between belief and a related propositional attitude, commitment. And second, the distinction between the propositional content of an attitude and what I will call its political meaning. I will suggest that these distinctions not only can help us understand how we communicate online, but they also suggest a lesson about what we should be focusing on when fighting misinformation.
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NOMOS, 2021
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Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 2021
Bald-faced lying by political leaders is an important phenomenon, but it is easy to misunderstand... more Bald-faced lying by political leaders is an important phenomenon, but it is easy to misunderstand in ways that undermine our ability to combat its strange effectiveness. In this paper, I aim to first analyze political bald-faced lies and then examine the threat they pose to the norms of democratic discourse. My goal is not to answer the empirical question of how frequently denials of obvious facts occur in politics; it is the normative question of understanding what harms they cause—particularly when they are made by those in political power. As Hannah Arendt noted, there are times in political life when truth, “if it happens to oppose a given group’s profit or pleasure, is greeted…with greater hostility” (2006, 231). Arguably we are living in one of those times.
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Reason, Bias, and Inquiry: New Perspectives from the Crossroads of Epistemology and Psychology. , 2020
A longstanding and influential thought is that for democracies to function well—or perhaps to fun... more A longstanding and influential thought is that for democracies to function well—or perhaps to function at all—they need vigorous but reasonable public discourse. The ideal is that they should be spaces of reasons—spaces where reasons for policy decisions can be exchanged and maybe even listened to. Yet there is mounting evidence suggesting that not only are human beings subject to biases and errors in reasoning, but we are also particularly bad at spotting when they are affecting us. As a result, one might suspect that we should be deeply skeptical about whether public discourse can ever be reasonable.
In this paper, we follow this suspicion to its logical conclusion, raising a novel skeptical argument based on the problem of what we’ll call “bad-bias.” This skeptical argument, we believe, raises a serious challenge to the possibility of reasonable public discourse. Even so, reflection on the argument also points us toward new ways of confronting this challenge—a challenge that arguably goes to the heart of democracy itself.
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The Routledge Handbook of Humility, 2020
Can we be intellectually humble about our own convictions? Should we be? These are the two questi... more Can we be intellectually humble about our own convictions? Should we be? These are the two questions I want to examine in this chapter. These questions, while overtly philosophical, have a personal and a political relevance in our lives. Most people have, at one point or another, felt the anxiety-producing tension between recognizing that their convictions may be improvable on the one hand, and wishing to hold fast to their principles on the other. This tension can arise whenever we find our convictions challenged or even queried. Most of us desire to not appear dogmatic, but we also find it uncomfortable to question those ideas we hold most dear. Doing so seems to raise the prospect that we might not be as committed as we wish to be. Politically speaking, this tension manifests itself as a familiar conflict between two democratic ideals. One ideal is that of the committed, engaged public-citizens with convictions who are willing to lobby and vote for them. Democracies strive for this ideal because an apathetic electorate is an obviously ineffective electorate. Yet it is also an ideal that citizens should listen to, and deliberate about, each other's convictions. But that can be politically difficult, as any politician can tell you. It is often politically unwise to appear willing to listen to the other side. Most people, and most democracies, tend to operate on the assumption that the tensions just sketched can be relieved, or at least lived with. I agree, or at least hope, that this is true. But in order to relieve this tension we must first understand its elements. To this task I now turn. 12.2 Conviction What is a conviction? It is not just a strongly held belief. I strongly believe I am writing on a computer at the moment but that isn't a conviction of mine. I suggest instead that convictions are identity-reflecting commitments. 1 Let's expand on these points. As Wittgenstein famously opined, sometimes reasons just run out, and "our spade is turned" on bedrock. That is how we often think of our deepest convictions as the ground on which our worldview stands. They become part of the landscape, our frame of reference, our "picture of the world" that is the very "background against which [we] distinguish between what is true and what is false" (Wittgenstein, 1969, §94). As a result, convic
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Synthese , 2019
The answers to the question(s) in the title depend on which pluralisms one is talking about. Ther... more The answers to the question(s) in the title depend on which pluralisms one is talking about. There are a lot of them, and they have little in common. We will focus here on our own views. For truth pluralism, we consider the view articulated in Michael Lynch’s Truth as one and many (2009) and Crispin Wright’s Truth and objectivity (1992). For logical pluralism, it is Stewart Shapiro’s Varieties of logic (2014).
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Democracies, Dewey and others have argued, are ideally spaces of reasons—they allow for an exchan... more Democracies, Dewey and others have argued, are ideally spaces of reasons—they allow for an exchange of reasons both practical and epistemic by those willing to engage in that discourse. That requires that citizens have convictions they believe in, but it also requires that they be willing to listen to each other. This paper examines how a particular psychological attitude, “epistemic arrogance”, can undermine the achievement of these goals. The paper presents an analysis of this attitude and then examines four arguments for how its adoption—especially by the powerful—undermines the ideal of democracy as a space of reasons.
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Oxford Scholarship Online, Nov 23, 2017
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Truth pluralism, as I understand it, is the view that there is more than one property proposition... more Truth pluralism, as I understand it, is the view that there is more than one property propositions can possess that makes them true when they are lucky enough to be so. In this essay, I aim to clarify pluralism by
concentrating on three questions any pluralist theory of truth must answer:
How do we identify the properties in virtue of which propositions
are true?
How are those properties related to truth?
What determines which of these properties a given proposition must
have in order to be true?
This paper appears in N. Pedersen and Wright, Truth and Pluralism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
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In this paper, we offer a brief, critical survey of contemporary work on truth. We begin by refle... more In this paper, we offer a brief, critical survey of contemporary work on truth. We begin by reflecting on the distinction between substantivist and deflationary truth theories. We then turn to three new kinds of truth theory—Kevin Scharp's replacement theory, John MacFarlane's relativism, and the alethic pluralism pioneered by Michael Lynch and Crispin Wright. We argue that despite their considerable differences, these theories exhibit a common " pluralizing tendency " with respect to truth. In the final section, we look at the underinvestigated interface between metaphysical and formal truth theories, pointing to several promising questions that arise here.
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How is information pollution distorting democracy? A new preface for the French translation of In... more How is information pollution distorting democracy? A new preface for the French translation of In Praise of Reason.
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In this essay, I examine four different reasons for thinking that political dissent has epistemic... more In this essay, I examine four different reasons for thinking that political dissent has epistemic value. The realization of this epistemic value hinges in part on what I’ll loosely call the epistemic environment, or the environment in which individuals come to believe, reason, inquire, and debate. In particular, to the degree that our social practices encourage and even embody an attitude of epistemic arrogance, the epistemic value of dissent will be difficult to realize. Ironically, it is precisely then that dissent is most often needed.
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This paper argues that academic freedom's value lies with the political value of truth and the ro... more This paper argues that academic freedom's value lies with the political value of truth and the role its pursuit plays in justifying the ideals of academic freedom and democracy.
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Articles and papers by Michael P Lynch
problems raised by the internet. In this paper, we aim to discuss one important
aspect of our digital life: what we’ll call the personalization of information. In
what follows we’ll argue that such personalization can make us worse off from
the epistemic point of view, specifically, that living with it risks epistemic harms
similar to those suffered in certain traditional skeptical scenarios.
In this paper, we follow this suspicion to its logical conclusion, raising a novel skeptical argument based on the problem of what we’ll call “bad-bias.” This skeptical argument, we believe, raises a serious challenge to the possibility of reasonable public discourse. Even so, reflection on the argument also points us toward new ways of confronting this challenge—a challenge that arguably goes to the heart of democracy itself.
concentrating on three questions any pluralist theory of truth must answer:
How do we identify the properties in virtue of which propositions
are true?
How are those properties related to truth?
What determines which of these properties a given proposition must
have in order to be true?
This paper appears in N. Pedersen and Wright, Truth and Pluralism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
problems raised by the internet. In this paper, we aim to discuss one important
aspect of our digital life: what we’ll call the personalization of information. In
what follows we’ll argue that such personalization can make us worse off from
the epistemic point of view, specifically, that living with it risks epistemic harms
similar to those suffered in certain traditional skeptical scenarios.
In this paper, we follow this suspicion to its logical conclusion, raising a novel skeptical argument based on the problem of what we’ll call “bad-bias.” This skeptical argument, we believe, raises a serious challenge to the possibility of reasonable public discourse. Even so, reflection on the argument also points us toward new ways of confronting this challenge—a challenge that arguably goes to the heart of democracy itself.
concentrating on three questions any pluralist theory of truth must answer:
How do we identify the properties in virtue of which propositions
are true?
How are those properties related to truth?
What determines which of these properties a given proposition must
have in order to be true?
This paper appears in N. Pedersen and Wright, Truth and Pluralism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).