Watching People Watching People: Culture, Prestige, and Epistemic Authority

ABSTRACT

Novices sometimes misidentify authorities and end up endorsing false beliefs as a result. In this paper, I suggest that this phenomenon is at least sometimes the result of culturally evolved mechanisms functioning in faulty epistemic contexts. I identify three background conditions which, when satisfied, enable expert-identifying mechanisms to function properly. When any one of them fails, that increases the likelihood of identifying a non-authority as authoritative. Consequently, novices can end up deferring to merely apparent authorities without having failed in any epistemic obligations.

KEYWORDS:

• Epistemic authority
• experts
• cultural psychology
• trust

Disclosure statement

No financial interest or benefit that has arisen from the direct applications of this research.

Notes

1. The data here are open to interpretation. It’s possible that responses are motivated by simply reporting their beliefs about the election. But it’s also possible that responses are motivated by other commitments: e.g. reporting that the election was fraudulent because they support Trump but not necessarily because they believe the election was actually fraudulent. That’s all to say that while 77% of Trump voters report believing he lost because of fraud, their actual beliefs or motivations for reporting their belief as they do might differ. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.

2. Being a sham epistemic authority is a relational, external property. Individuals are shams with respect to some set of conditions, including minimally the domain over which one is presumed to be authoritative.

3. Matter of Giuliani, 197 A.D.3d 1, 146 N.Y.S.3d 266, 2021 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 4197, 2021 NY Slip Op 04086 (Supreme Court of New York, Appellate Division, First Department. June 24, 2021, Entered).

4. In Gentile v. State Bar of Nevada, 501 U.S. 1030 (1991), the court argued that lawyers, because they are perceived by the public as being in a position of knowledge, are a “crucial source of information and opinion”. Public expectations of lawyers ground the claim that Giuliani ought to have known that the facts he publicly stated needed verifying.

5. Whether epistemic norms should be characterized in terms of virtues or duties is an aside to the main question. So throughout the argument, when appropriate, I’ll talk about both obligations and virtues so no one feels left out and everyone can play.

6. See also Anderson (2011) for a similar list. For criticism, see Matheson (2005); Coady (2006); Scholz (2009); Zagzebski (2012), and Guerrero (2017). For a review of the literature, see Grundmann (forthcoming).

7. The present paper is one attempt to pick up where Stichter (2015) leaves off: how novices credit others with expertise.

8. See Henrich (2018) for cases like these and others. In case you’re curious, preparing cassava for consumption is a three-day process. If this process is shortened in any way, it leaves enough cyanide in the root pulp to kill a person. But death doesn’t come on quickly if preparations are cut a day short. The cyanide builds up until death comes on weeks or months later. By that time, it would be hard to say exactly what had killed the person.

9. See Chellappoo (2020) for criticism of positing prestige bias as an explanation for identifying prestigious individuals.

10. Many thanks to Gloria Origgi and T.Y. Branch for suggesting discussion of this point.

11. This fits with the cultural evolutionary approach: cultures are solutions to problems and there are different ways to solve similar problems. Cf. Shweder (1991), Heine (2020).

12. It could be that, with Wittgenstein ([1953] 2009), we follow rules blindly. Even so, there’s still some rule at work and that’s the important thing.

13. An anonymous reviewer asks whether it’s really plausible to believe that a novice would regard both Trump and Clinton as equally capable, especially given the racist and sexist baggage of Trump. My answer is: yes, and for the reasons given above. Whether or not the baggage impugns Trump’s success as a president depends, in part, on culturally agreed-upon criteria. If the population is split on those criteria and if some of those criteria downplay the significance of this sort of baggage, then it’s plausible a novice could see Trump as more qualified and as the superior authority. By analogy, Martin Luther King, Jr. is an important figure in the American Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. But there’s evidence that he was a philanderer and perhaps was even tolerant of some of his closer associates participating in acts of rape — though it’s worth noting that these are from FBI documents that are perhaps less than reliable in this context. In thinking about King as an epistemic authority — perhaps with respect to moral knowledge — one might object if the success criteria include anything about remaining faithful in one’s marriage.

14. I recommend the documentaries Mystery of the Polka King and The Man Who Would Be Polka King.

15. Thanks to meeting-goers at the Social Indicators of Trust conference for articulating this worry. And for an anonymous reviewer for pushing me to clarify it.

16. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pressing clarification.

17. Thanks to the participants of the Social Indicators of Trust conference, the Philosophy of Experts/Expertise Reading Group on Facebook, Gloria Origgi, T.Y. Branch, Anna Marie Medina, Greta Turnbull, Vinai Norasakkunkit, Richard Kenneth Atkins, and Garland Rossman for discussion and encouragement.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Charles Lassiter

Charles Lassiter is associate professor of philosophy at Gonzaga University. His research interests lie at the intersection of mind, culture, and technology. His research is available at charleslassiter.weebly.com.