Ordinary people – myself emphatically included – have no way to determine the truth of all but the most simplistic factual claims, which does not keep anyone from having strong opinions. Let’s take the evolution v. creationism (or “intelligent design”) debate. Suppose that you argue in favor of creationism. I claim in response:
“The theory of evolution is among the most secure elements in all of human knowledge. It is on par with claims such as: matter is made of atoms, DNA transmits the blueprint of organisms from generation to generation, light is an electromagnetic wave, which, at times, also behaves like a particle, etc. Any form of creationism or intelligent design is hogwash.ǃ?
How do I know that? I have not conducted any experiments myself, nor have I spent any significant time studying the results of the experiments conducted by others. The answer is that I trust science as an institution. I trust that the adversarial process of promoting competing theories, of peer review, of organized research with its mixed rewards of academic recognition and authority within largely autonomous institutions, justifies my belief in the truth of a proposition endorsed by the scientific community. In other words, my trust in a particular social organization underwrites my truth claims. Trust is therefore epistemologically prior to truth.
The question is thus, whom do I trust? I trust whoever has been designated as trustworthy by the trusted institution (which, of course, is a reflexive definition). For starters, I trust experts with the right credentials, for example, a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from a reputable university. The credentials are a proxy for the truth of the statements made by their bearer. In addition to verifying credentials, I will also make sure that the expert talks about his or her field of expertise, that his or her knowledge is current, and that he or she is an accepted (i.e., trusted) authority within the field, which is established primarily through reputation, publications, review articles, prizes, etc. Once the credentialing process has been completed to my satisfaction, I have validated my truth claim, in much the same manner as I validate the identity of an email recipient through the degree of trust placed in their public PGP key by others. The defensibility of truth claims thus rests almost solely on social webs of institutional and interpersonal trust relations. In a sense that improves our ability to critically assess the truth of a proposition, because it seems that ordinary people are much better equipped to make judgments as to whether someone is trustworthy compared to whether something is true.
Going back to the initial question, I believe that the theory of evolution is correct and any form of creationism is hogwash, because my web of trust, within which I can justify my beliefs, is broader, denser, and deeper than yours. The institutions that I rely on are in turn relied on by more reputable institutions than the ones that you base your trust on. The individuals whose assessment I trust are affiliated with more reliable institutions than the ones that you trust, and so on. I am right and you are wrong, because my claims are backed by a more relevant, reliable, and higher quality social consensus than yours. Once again, truth is a function of social arrangements and webs of trust.
Now suppose that, hypothetically, in response to my defense, you are able to drop disreputable institutions such as the “Discoveryǃ? Institute and a number of associated cranks as nodes from your relied-upon web of trust. Suppose that you point me to a group of people, who, by my own standards, are trustworthy. Suppose further that these people speak out in favor of creationism. What now? At this point I have to decide more specifically whom to trust, the members of my “team evolutionǃ? or those of your “team creationism.” On what basis will I be able to make that decision?
The theory of cultural cognition suggests that I will make that decision on the basis of basic cultural values. I will be inclined to place trust in people who share a comparable outlook on life with me in respect to two pairs of values: individualism – collectivism, and hierarchism – egalitarianism. All significant flavors of trust, or so the cultural theorists argue, are a result of these ingredients. As an egalitarian, I will tend to trust those who share these values. As an hierarchist, you will trust those who share your world-view. But how do I know whether “my” scientists are egalitarians, and how do you know that “yours” are hierarchists? By looking at who else trusts them. “My” team will be part of a larger network of trust, and within that network, I will be able to recognize cultural fit without great difficulty, simply because I am already part of that network. For example, if Brian Leiter speaks highly of Paul Myers, I will be inclined to take his views seriously. Conversely, you will probably be inclined to discount his views for precisely the same reason. So in the end, truth is matter of trust, and trust is a matter of cultural values. Or, as Dan Kahan and Donald Braman put it: “[C]ultural commitments are prior to factual beliefs.”
At this point, the critical question about the power of rational discourse arises, about our ability (or inability) to transcend our social network of trust in search for “truly” reliable authorities as proxies for truth. I am cautiously optimistic in that regard, but others disagree. For example, Kahan and Braman would probably hold that my example above is unrealistic. Cultural biases don’t politely wait their turn until I arrive at a point where I have to choose between two teams of equally well-credentialed and trusted experts. In reality, such predispositions are much more powerful and don’t just tip the scale in the case of equilibrium. Rather, they will let me hold on to factual claims that resonate with my value orientations even when faced with mountains of evidence to the contrary, or rather, even if confronted with an overwhelmingly large, dense, and deep web of trust underwriting a contrary factual position. The latter, of course, is true with respect to creationism and intelligent design. “Their” web of trust is thin and connected to nodes that discredit those who question the theory of evolution. The fact that truth is a social construct doesn’t mean that you can’t be wrong.
I remain hopeful that methodical critical thinking, actual or metaphorical cross examinations, and our (hopefully) increasing sophistication in evaluating the quality of competing webs of trust (Daubert style), will permit us to distinguish truth from falsehood. That search for truth, however, in most instances, will really be a search for trustworthiness.
[tags]philosophy, creationism, intelligent design, cultural cognition[/tags]
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Jeff Lipshaw sent us the following interesting comment:
Really what Hanno Kaiser is doing, is struggling with the synthetic a priori of science versus the synthetic a priori of pure reason. I am not sure what Kant would say about the relative positions of trust and truth, but it is clear that something has to be a priori, and Hanno calls it trust. Once he has trust, he uses that to make sense of experience. To carry this to its logical extent, does he only order the world of law if he trusts somebody like Brian Leiter? (Personally I would trust Larry Solum more, but I digress.) Is Hanno’s ability to order experience based on his trust of his teachers? Parents? Whom did they trust? And on. And on.
I have two Kantian reactions: first, I think the Kantian categories: causation, time and space, etc. probably precede trust. I wonder if trust is even a priori – see above – trust is contingent not necessary. Second, even if trust really means some kind of faith, then it goes beyond the ability of reason to determine truth, and now bears the flaws of pure reason, which may or may not accord with experience. Or to put it another way, the infinite regress of my trust example above ends up with something like trust in God, which IS faith, and IS NOT science, because science continues to be the marriage of the reason of the observer – the Copernican Revolution (with what comes along a priori) to experience or possible experience.
Kaiser certainly describes a plausible understanding of certain types of debates over questions of truth and science. That our judgments about truth (in a world too complex to be fully comprehended in every detail by each individual in his or her personal experience) will necessarily rely on different webs of trust seems definitively correct, and may explain many aspects of intractable debate over particular issues of fact and belief (I believe X because I read it in the Times, which I trust, while you believe Y because you read it in the Post, which you trust). But I’m not sure the observation is applicable to the evolution/creationism conflict.
The belief or disbelief in evolution does not, I think, arise from conflicting webs of trust. Creationists don’t generally challenge the facts of the fossil record ÇƒÏ creationism does not arise from distrust of the geologists and paleontologists who gather the fossil records that provide the empirical basis for the theory of evolution. On their side, evolutionists do not, I think, generally accept evolutionary theory because they trust Darwin or Stephen Jay Gould or their biology professor but because the basic evolutionary explanation (inheritable traits that promote survival to the age of reproduction tend to spread) of the uncontroverted fossil record is logically compelling. Creationists take the same assumed fossil record and conclude not that the scientists who compiled it lied or erred, but rather that the record is irrelevant, that the belief that God created the world in its current form trumps both found evidence and the apparent satisfaction of a logically compelling and self-sufficient naturalistic explanation. Throughout human history, the concept of a supernatural and powerful presence creating and/or directing worldly events, a consciousness that one can in theory appeal to, placate and relate to as a fellow-consciousness, has been enormously comforting and satisfying to much of the human race, particularly when placed against the opposite idea of a universe where things happen without such a familiar and at least potentially helpful controlling consciousness. A theory that challenges and threatens to undermine that comfort and consolation is liable to be rejected by many people, not because the experts who produce particular evidence are not trusted, or that there is some alternative web of trust proposing different evidence, but because many people do not orient their belief system around seeking out naturalistic and logical explanations of evidence at all, but rather structure their belief systems around the comforting (to them) assumption of a powerful, supernatural creator. I suppose one could define such a belief system as itself an alternative web of trust, but defining the web of trust concept so broadly seems to me drain it of much explanatory power at all.
I’m very sorry it took a year for me to read this, because it absolutely mirrors the thoughts that I’ve been having on the subject for the longest while. When I spoke to anyone at the university about these ideas, I received a good hearing — still, it is as if these notions are on the bleeding edge of research in social epistemology, in that they have not quite sunk in as a matter of regular curriculum.
It occurs to me that merely appealing to culture as a determinant of trust, and not to experience in general, may be a problem. For a variety of idiosyncratic biographical reasons, I have come to have a distrust of both rhetorical bloviation and bland opining, due to encounters with gross errors and hyperbole in both. These are marks of resistence and are relatively deviant. After all, it’s an academic norm that one must, by default, trust those in neighboring disciplines to the affairs of their own subject, even if their approaches are epistemically (or even ontologically) suspect.
This fact about my biology and psychology may cause me to be more trusting of those who disclose their views in a relaxed, intelligible fashion. Others, for equally idiosyncratic reasons, might see reason as a contest of wills, a dialectic, and so be more trusting of Crossfire-style dissonance. But if I were to grow up with the intuition that loud and bold argument leading to the submission of the flock makes the best kind of argument, then I would be completely distrustful of both the fly-by-night, informal conversations and Crossfire-style debate, and instead be far more trusting of Jesus-on-the-Mount sermonizing. But these matters have to do with factors unique to me and my experience, including temperament and interaction.
Still, it’s ultimately an empirical question whether or not culture or idiosyncratic factors are more significant to behavior. It could be tested by taking kids from each category and exposing them to each variety of rhetoric, and seeing who is convinced by what.
Jeff: I don’t see anything in Hanno’s post about the a priori. Now there are certainly mentions of trust being prior to truth. But “a priori” means “prior to experience”, and if cultural transmission arises from experience with people, then it doesn’t qualify as “a priori”. Admittedly, though, these issues have been untreated in the present post.
Anyway, more generally, it seems to me that a Kantian way of thinking seems rather quaint when the full import of social epistemology is taken into account. In Hume, by contrast, we have direct statements about how to discern who to trust.