PATHOLOGIES OF TRUST: EPIDEMIOLOGICAL SOCIAL EPISTEMOLOGY

This project centers on the philosophy and epistemology of trust. In particular, I aim to sketch a pathological model of trust construing it along the lines of a disease that spreads in and influences a population. One interesting development in epistemology—philosophical work on what makes beliefs justified or rational—over the past few decades has been an explosion in work on social epistemology. We are bombarded with information in our social environment and some of it ends up influencing what and how we believe: our intellectual lives are thoroughly social. Our epistemological theories needs to reflect this fact. Plausibly, something like intellectual or epistemic trust helps explain how others around us cause us to have many of the beliefs that we do because we trust them, at least sometimes. This presentation describes a new account of trust within (social) epistemology. To begin, we focus on the social formation of beliefs. A few recent approaches to this utilize a contagion-based metaphor, understanding beliefs as analogous to a disease one catches from others in one’s environment. Instead of having beliefs as the disease, I argue that we should see them as the symptom of the real disease. What we really catch is trust and, from that, beliefs arise as its symptoms. I deploy this pathological model of trust in two ways First, I use epidemiological concepts to extend it. Taking an epidemiological model seriously invites implications for topics like quarantine, terminal and systemic illness, immunity, and super-spreaders for our intellectual lives—not just our physical ones. Second, I take the pathological model of epistemic trust developed and apply it to various burgeoning topics in social epistemology: conspiracy theories, fake news, echo chambers, and belief polarization. What results is a new model for understanding the social aspects of our believing; one that is illuminated by its connections to central epidemiological concepts and one that has interesting implications for a range of timely topics in social epistemology.