Abstract
Abstract Disagreement is ubiquitous: people, including scientists in all fields of knowledge, disagree about a wide variety of topics—from mundane facts about what’s the best way to reach the airport, to complex matters such as the degree of reliability of climate models. Clearly, disagreement plays a crucial role in virtually all our intellectual practices. The literature on the topic is growing, but core epistemological features of disagreement remain unclear, especially in scientific contexts. The first part of the project aims to fill this lacuna. Drawing important distinctions, we develop a framework to analyze scientific disagreement. This helps clarify the nature as well as the mechanics of disagreement. We then turn to the public’s understanding of scientific disagreement. We expect to gain a fine picture of common misconceptions that folk have in relation to scientific disagreement so as to identify some basic strategies to counter an increasingly common form of science denialism which poses a threat to society. Moreover, we contend that to convey an accurate picture of how science works, disagreement cannot be simply dismissed as something devaluing science and thus something to avoid. On the contrary, it must be conceived for what it is: a central constituent of the scientific enterprise. Our project thus helps developing strategies to communicate the scientific culture to the public that can counter science denialism. From a broader perspective, the project aims to achieve a better grasp of how the public’s (mis)conception of scientific disagreement may affect the democratic texture of societies and the ideal of inclusiveness. The second part of the project investigates occurrences of disagreement in two areas of scientific inquiry—mathematics and risk analysis of extreme events—with the following aims: (i) testing and fine-tuning our general framework; (ii) providing a detailed and realistic understanding of the scientific practices in these two limit cases, which are strategic for our project for two reasons. First, they are epistemically peculiar areas of scientific inquiry where misconceptions about the nature of the practice and of disagreement are prominent. Because mathematics is commonly conceived as a highly idealized practice, disagreement there is wrongly taken to indicate the presence of some deep shortcoming. In contrast, risk analysis is perceived to be highly fallible where disagreement is taken to be mundane thus inviting the wrong inference that the whole practice lies on epistemically shaky foundations. Second, since both mathematics and risk analysis are ubiquitous in science, an analysis of disagreement in these two areas is key to understanding disagreement in science in general. Overall, the project will advance our understanding of disagreement, it will cast new light on the inner workings of the scientific culture and put fallible but effective human agents back into philosophical discussions about science.
Results achieved
The project developed an integrated analysis of scientific disagreement combining epistemology, social epistemology, formal modelling, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of risk. Its general framework examined how social and epistemic filters shape disagreement, consensus, polarization and fragmentation, and how these dynamics bear on scientific denialism, post-truth and trust in science. “Modelling Epistemic Filters”, forthcoming in the Cambridge University Press volume Misinformation and Other Epistemic Pathologies, formalizes these mechanisms through Hegselmann–Krause models. The framework was further articulated in “Non-Ideal Epistemology. The Epistemic Filters Model” and “Biases, Epistemic Filters, and Explainable Artificial Intelligence”. Further studies developed during the project concern the properties of formal models, group truth approximation, the division of cognitive labour, peerhood and epistemic trust, and misconceptions of scientific disagreement. Research on truth and the normative dimensions of disagreement produced the open-access article “The Post-Truth Crisis and Alethic Minimalism”, the Cambridge Elements volume Logic and Science, the chapters “The Normative Profile of Agnosticism. Some Case Studies in the Philosophy of Mathematics” and “Logical Abductivism: Challenges and Prospects”, and work on retraction, suspension of judgement and disagreement in logic. The collective dimension of disagreement was investigated through a new nonsummative account of group belief, the article “The Group Agent Account and the Pluralistic Ignorance Problem”, published in Episteme, and the submitted paper “Operative Members, Group Belief and Motivating Reasons”. The research on mathematical practice analysed disagreement about proofs, definitions, justification, explanation, intuition, formalization, technological assistance and epistemic trust. Its outputs include “The Epistemological Subject of Mathematics”, “Proofs for a Price: Tomorrow’s Ultra-rigorous Mathematical Culture”, “Mathematical Justification Without Proof”, “Trust in Mathematics” and “What Mathematical Explanation Need Not Be”. Research was also developed on rival axiomatic and abstractive conceptions of mathematical definitions, intuition in twentieth-century algebraic geometry, diagrammatic reasoning and the planned Cambridge Elements volume Human Epistemology of Mathematics. The risk-analysis strand examined uncertainty and disagreement concerning rare and extreme events through imprecise utilities, non-standard measures and intersubjective probability. It produced “Confidence in Probabilistic Risk Assessment” in Philosophy of Science and developed further research on the distinction between risk and uncertainty, the representation of uncertainty and disagreement in IPCC reports, cost–benefit analysis, incommensurability, severe uncertainty and the subjectivist foundations of risk. A further study in this area was submitted to scientific journals. Further outputs addressed disagreement, scepticism, epistemic authority, recognition and adversarial argumentation. They include “The Times They Are A-Changing: Hesse and Feyerabend on Observation, Explanation, and Theory-Change”, the critical notice on Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language at 40, “The Debasing Demon”, “Dogmatism and Easy Knowledge: Avoiding the Dialectic”, “Skepticism Needs No Scenarios” and “Innkeeper! Is the Wine Good? Phenomenal Conservatism and the Arbitrariness Problem”. “Wittgenstein’s On Certainty and Rational Authority” was revised and remained under consideration. Additional work was developed on conciliation and self-defeat, epistemic injustice, the duty to engage and disagreement dynamics within scientific communities. The project implemented an extensive programme of scientific exchange, training and dissemination. Activities included the reading group on Bad Beliefs; SEeD#2024 and the second SEeD workshop; the symposium on Razionali fino in fondo; the Workshop on Disagreement in the Exact Sciences; the International Meeting of the Association for Mathematical Practice; the workshop “Understanding Scientific Disagreement”; the symposium on Overfitting and Heuristics in Philosophy; the BoBoPa and Euphilo seminar series; the IUSS Philosophy Seminars, Epistemology Series; “Il Policy Advice tra filosofia e decisioni pubbliche”; “Risk, Harm and Freedom”; activities on non-ideal epistemology, Trust and AI, political disagreement and Michael P. Lynch’s On Truth in Politics; the workshops “Truth, Politics, and Disagreement” and “Truth, Disagreement and Normativity”; the International Conference Inference in Pavia; the Seminar Series in Mathematical Education; and a seminar on “Multiple Mechanisms for Polarization”. International visits and exchanges involved St Andrews, TU Berlin and Bayreuth, while visiting researchers were hosted at IUSS Pavia. Results were presented at numerous conferences, workshops and invited seminars in Europe, the United States and South Korea. Public-facing activities included participation in Engage 2024, the Festival della Scienza di Genova, Lucca Comics, initiatives for mathematics education and the teacher-training school and conference “Accordi e disaccordi nella scienza” at Fondazione Golinelli. These activities translated the project’s theoretical results into tools for understanding scientific practice, disagreement, polarization and science denialism. The project proceeded without significant departures from the approved plan or reported implementation challenges. Open Science and Open Access were promoted through dedicated activities and open-access publication. Workshops and symposia pursued gender balance, achieving a 50/50 balance for “Understanding Scientific Disagreement”, while SEeD#2024 included plenary sessions on Women in Philosophy and on Open Science and Open Access. The activities were carried out in accordance with DNSH, generational, equal-opportunity and related compliance principles.Project details
Unibo Team Leader: Filippo Ferrari
Unibo involved Department/s:
Dipartimento delle Arti
Coordinator:
ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - Università di Bologna(Italy)
Total Eu Contribution: Euro (EUR) 239.238,00
Total Unibo Contribution: Euro (EUR) 122.280,00
Project Duration in months: 24
Start Date:
30/11/2023
End Date:
28/02/2026
