Manufactured Dissent, Climate Science, and Epistemic Vice!!The Epistemic Role of Manufactured Dissent in Climate Science, ITAS, Karlsruhe, 28-29 October 2015.!

Ian James Kidd"i.j.kidd@durham.ac.uk"https://durham.academia.edu/IanJamesKidd"

The claim!

x is epistemically corrupting if it aims (and succeeds) in creating social conditions conducive to the development and exercise of epistemic vice by agents operating within them "

Inquiry, virtue, and vice!

If inquiry qua activity is to go well, it requires inquirers with various appropriate epistemic character traits."

Dissent, harassment, and intimidation!

Biddle and Leuschner on detrimental dissent!!!•  Resource-wasting!!•  Intimidation !

"Are these epistemically corrupting?"

Epistemic timidity!

Epistemic timidity: a disposition to consciously, preemptively understate epistemic claims due to justified anticipation of hostile response.!

Nick Bowers, Scared Scientists!

Is dissent-manufacturing epistemically corrupting for epistemic timidity?!"Dissent-manufacturers willfully engage in intimidating acts that are intended to create a culture where it is reasonable to be disposed to consciously and preemptively understate one’s epistemic claims ""

Corruption and corruptibility!

Distinction:"

•  x is corrupting if it aims (successfully or not) to create social conditions conducive to the cultivation and exercise of vice by agents thus situated "

•  y is corruptible if the values, practices, and other features that would enable it to resist corrupting efforts are absent or diluted, either by accident, design, or due to interference"

Summary!

Manufactured dissent can be epistemically corrupting"!The manufacture of dissent in climate science is corrupting insofar as it aims to create social conditions characterized by actual or anticipated subjection to practices of intimidation a reasonable response to which is to adopt and encourage the epistemically timid disposition to consciously and preemptively understate epistemic claims"

Selected readings!

Battaly, Heather, ‘Epistemic Virtue and Vice: Reliabilism, Responsibilism, and Personalism’, in M. Slote and C. Mi (eds.), Moral and Intellectual Virtues in Western and Chinese Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2015)""Biddle, Justin and Leuschner, Anna, ‘Climate skepticism and the manufacture of doubt: Can dissent in science be epistemically detrimental?’, European Journal of Philosophy, forthcoming.""Gelfert, Axel, ‘Climate scepticism, epistemic dissonance, and the ethics of uncertainty’, Philosophy and Public Issues 3.1 (2013): 167-208.""Kidd, Ian James, ‘Charging others with epistemic vice’, The Monist, forthcoming.""Oreskes, Naomi and Conway, Eric, Merchants of Doubt (New York: Bloomsbury Press)."