Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Duration: 2019 - 2022

Code: PGC2018-098805-B-I00

Principal Investigator

Fernando Broncano-Berrocal (ferbroncano@gmail.com)

All researchers

IP1: Fernando Broncano-Berrocal (University of Barcelona)

IP2: Jesús Navarro (University of Seville)

Other researchers

Javier González de Prado (UNED)

Lola Medina (FPI Fellow, University of Seville)

Daniel Barbarrusa (FPI Fellow, University of Seville)

Ignacio Gómez Ledo (PIF Fellow, University of Seville)

Dani Pino (PIF Fellow, University of Seville)

Moisés Barba (FPU Fellow, Autonomous University of Madrid)

Summary

Risk is part of our lives, and a certain aspect of such risk is epistemic. "Epistemic risk" is usually understood as the possibility of forming wrong beliefs, or being mistaken, which may be distinguished from any practical consequence thereof. Thus conceived, the notion of epistemic risk is relevant in different ongoing debates in epistemology, such as (1) virtue epistemology; (2) the nature of epistemic luck; (3) closure and the safety principle; (4) the epistemology of testimony, and (5) the ethics of belief. Although some work has been done attempting to define epistemic risk and to distinguish its main varieties, we believe that further investigation is required not only regarding those debates, but also some other relevant contemporary disputes in epistemology and beyond.

This research project aims to fill this lacuna by redefining the concept itself and by distinguishing new varieties of epistemic risk, with special attention to the field of social epistemology. The basic idea of this project is quite simple: a neutral characterization of epistemic risk can be offered so as to provide a common ground for taxonomizing types of epistemic risk, which can, in turn, be applied to a number of ongoing debates in epistemology. In particular, we hold that the notion of epistemic risk can be articulated, in full generality, with the following schema:

ER: An epistemic practice is epistemically risky for an agent S if and only if, because of being involved in it, S’s epistemic interests are at risk of being compromised.

According to ER, the bearers of epistemic risk are the epistemic practices of agents and what is put at risk are the epistemic interests of such agents—including, but not limited to, the risk that they form false beliefs. Given this general characterization, our hypothesis is that different types of epistemic risk can be distinguished depending on what kinds of epistemic practices the agents in question are involved in and on what kinds of epistemic interests and goals the relevant risks jeopardize.

To begin with, the kinds of risks that are relevant in epistemology would at least include two basic truth-related varieties, i.e., (1) veritic risk (the risk of being mistaken) and (2) suspension risk (the risk of not attaining truth). But epistemic risk may also arise at the second-order level, which is the level of epistemic assessment—a variety of epistemic risk that we may call (3) second-order risk. In addition, pathological forms of epistemic dependence can also give rise to (4) the risk of being epistemic defenselessness, and one specific form of epistemic dependence, epistemic trust, would also be liable to two distinctive forms of epistemic risk, such as (5) the risk of epistemic betrayal (on the part of the trustor) and (6) the risk of non-compliance with one’s epistemic duties (on the part of the trustee). Finally, some epistemic risks specifically arise in collective contexts, such as (7) individual-group dissonance risk (the risk that one’s individual beliefs clash with the collective view of the group one belongs to), and (8) deliberative epistemic risk, associated to deliberation in group settings.

With this approach, we aim to carry out a systematic investigation covering most of the spectrum of varieties of epistemic risk and implications thereof, offering new valuable insights to some of the most heated debates in the epistemological landscape.