The most charitable way of reading Goldman’s Bayesian proposal is from the perspective of authoritative regulation. To discuss the importance of epistemic authorities for Goldman, I will examine the notion of epistemic paternalism, which is one form of authority. Discussing the authoritative role within epistemic paternalism is also helpful for understanding the normative role that Goldman envisions for social epistemics. In the present section, I focus on epistemic paternalism and its attendant picture of epistemic agency, while in the next and final section on Goldman’s social epistemology, I link epistemic paternalism back to Bayesianism.
Epistemic paternalism entails that not all relevant and available information should always be heard. Epistemic paternalism is defined as “whenever a ‘communication controller’ interposes their own judgment rather than allowing the audience to exercise theirs” (Goldman 1991). The specific type of authority being exercised in epistemic paternalism is communication control, the authority filtering out any information that would have a veritistically negative effect. A wide variety of domains exhibit this dynamic, such as legal and education systems. If the significance of a piece of information is easily over- or under-estimated by its audience, then the authority may filter it out so that the audience’s judgment is not likely misled. In the case of the legal system, for example, hearsay and the accused’s criminal history in addition to the
previously mentioned case of Bayesian inference are all excluded for fear of being over-
estimated by juries.24 In the former two cases—hearsay and the accused’s criminal history—the
24 One of the considerations that blocked the use of Bayesian inference in juror deliberation was the claim that jurors are likely to under-estimate or effectively forget the subjective judgments that underlie a set of
information is withheld despite being directly relevant. Yet Goldman considers the withholding as justified on epistemic grounds: blocking relevant information is epistemically justified if it improves the chances of acquiring the sought-after truth, such as the guilt or innocence of an accused.
The authoritative, paternalistic filtering of information represents one of two loci of cognitive control that Goldman recognizes. In a footnote from the 1978 Epistemics essay, Goldman states that epistemics covers both “the self-regulation of cognitive processes” as well as the “third-person control of cognitive traits” (520; original emphasis). Goldman’s goal is to expand traditional epistemology’s purview beyond the individual; in the passage, the specific concern is with how tool-use and education shape cognitive subjects. Goldman implicitly commits himself to the view that first- and third-person regulation are the only two loci of cognitive regulation. Either the epistemic subject imposes a change on herself, or a third-person (as a specially tuned external force) imposes the change on the subject. While this is an
improvement on traditional epistemology’s exclusive focus on self-regulation, I think there is at the very least one other loci of cognitive intervention, namely second-person participation. But the importance of second-person participation to epistemology does not appear as a possibility to Goldman. In Chs. 2 – 3, I use Turner’s weak empathy model and the enactivist concept of
participatory sense-making to argue that second-person interaction is of distinct if not primary epistemic importance. But for present purposes, I mention the possibility of second-person participation in order to highlight another under-theorized element of the testimony view’s transmission picture, namely the implicit passivity of epistemic subjects.
likelihood values. In such a scenario, the conclusions based on Bayesian inference would be over-estimated due to an exaggerated appearance of objective certainty (Kusch 2002a).
One way to examine the passivity of epistemic subjects is by considering the parallels between first- and third-person regulation. Goldman (1978) notes that people do not have direct control over doxastic attitudes and that the most important “command variable” (i.e., cognitive element that an individual does control) is attention. This consideration relates to the importance of secondary epistemics, especially how practicing certain skills can be used to mold cognitive traits. And once the importance of secondary epistemics is granted, it follows that third-person interventions importantly influence individuals’ cognitive traits via secondary epistemics as well. Whatever can be counted as a “command variable” for an individual is susceptible to third- person control, beginning with attention.25 Given the profound influence of social circumstances and external forces more generally on an individual’s attention, the very notion of a “command variable” is at best a difference of degree rather than kind from the non-voluntaristic doxastic attitude.26 The essence of cognitive control thus suggested is that of filtering, and it is in this sense that Goldman’s cognitive subject is essentially passive.
The essence of epistemic agency consists in parsing perceptual inputs as opposed to a world-directed behavior. The epistemic agent does not control the causally determinate nature of perceptual input but does exercise some control over what input she is exposed to as well as what aspects of the input are taken as salient. A person, for example, may not be able to control the effect of advertising but can exercise some control as to what advertising they are exposed to (e.g., by avoiding TV). This is the basic sense in which filtering is the essence of epistemic agency. And the ultimate result of epistemically skilled filtering is increasing one’s stock of true beliefs. The molding of cognitive traits can be understood as types of filters: such habituated
25 The potency of advertising makes this a ubiquitous and non-trivial point.
26 I argue in Ch. 2 that the lack of a qualitative difference between Goldman’s command variables and non- voluntaristic cognitive states stems from grounding knowledge in causal determination. I further explicate and clarify this aspect of Goldman’s view of the cognitive subject by comparing his simulationist model of the mind to Turner’s weak empathy model.
traits influence what a cognitive subject exposes herself to, what she recognizes as salient, and also forms heuristics for processing the salient input. Likewise, other people—strictly in terms of their epistemic significance—are nothing more than particularly effective filters.
Goldman recognizes social epistemics as a distinct domain because other people often act as specialized filters, filtering information in ways analogous to an individual’s own acquired secondary cognitive skills. Other people essentially predigest and condense perceptual input. What another person shares reflects in part what they thought of as salient in addition to being the product of their own acquired epistemic skills: for these two reasons, the testimony of another person has at least the potential and often the actuality of providing true beliefs more efficiently than if an individual had to undergo the corresponding first-hand experiences herself. Epistemic paternalism, in turn, is one special type of social filter; in the case of epistemic paternalism, “pre-digestion” involves intentionally withholding relevant but likely misleading information. As with other kinds of social filters as well as an individual’s own acquired secondary cognitive skills, the benefit of epistemic paternalism derives from filtering input in order to lighten the burden on an individual’s cognitive processes.
In the present section, I examined epistemic paternalism in order to explore the nature of epistemic agency. Epistemic paternalism provides a helpful perspective on the issue by drawing attention to the second locus of cognitive control, namely third-person regulation. After
comparing third-person regulation with self-regulation, I concluded that for Goldman there is no qualitative difference in the nature of control for each locus because individual “command
variables” are susceptible to third-person regulation. The comparison also highlighted the passive nature of epistemic agency: the essence of epistemic agency—whether performed by an
order to more efficiently stockpile true beliefs. As noted at the beginning of the section, the authoritative role depicted in cases of epistemic paternalism is the most charitable way of considering Goldman’s Bayesian proposal. I expand on this idea in the next section, while presenting a summary overview of Goldman’s truth-oriented social epistemology.