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Epistemology Current Themes Seminar: Emilia Wilson (St Andrews) “Epistemic Corrosion and Informative Falsity”
20th October 2022 @ 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm
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Abstract: In this presentation, I examine the how epistemic value of a piece of information can come apart from its accuracy and argue that this can be leveraged when implementing ameliorative projects. I first show that distortions in our interpretive schemas furnish us with correspondingly distorted interpretations, giving rise to epistemic and communicative obstacles. In such cases, even accurate information can worsen an agent’s epistemic position: I term this epistemic corrosion. In cases of epistemic corrosion, accurate information is transformed into a misleading truth via the agents’ (distorting) interpretive process. Secondly, I argue that, in order to bypass the resulting epistemic and communicative obstacles, we may leverage a particular kind of informative falsity. These are statements which are strictly false (as interpreted by the hearer) but which nevertheless advance the hearer’s overall understanding. I end by highlighting the potentially controversial significance of this proposal for attempts to implement ameliorative projects.
