Recent work in social epistemology has shown that, in certain situations, less communication leads to better outcomes for epistemic groups. In this paper, we show that, ceteris paribus, a Bayesian agent may believe less strongly that a single agent is biased than that an entire group of independent agents is biased. We explain this initially surprising result and show that it is in fact a consequence one may conceive on the basis of commonsense reasoning.

On the Assessed Strength of Agents’ Bias / J. Landes, B. Osimani. - In: JOURNAL FOR GENERAL PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE. - ISSN 0925-4560. - 51:4(2020), pp. 525-549. [10.1007/s10838-020-09508-4]

On the Assessed Strength of Agents’ Bias

J. Landes
;
2020

Abstract

Recent work in social epistemology has shown that, in certain situations, less communication leads to better outcomes for epistemic groups. In this paper, we show that, ceteris paribus, a Bayesian agent may believe less strongly that a single agent is biased than that an entire group of independent agents is biased. We explain this initially surprising result and show that it is in fact a consequence one may conceive on the basis of commonsense reasoning.
Social epistemology; Formal epistemology; Reliability; Bias; Bayesian networks; Conjunction fallacy
Settore M-FIL/02 - Logica e Filosofia della Scienza
2020
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/2434/947890
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