Abstract What should the public understand about climate change to form true beliefs and responsibly participate in democratic deliberation? We argue for a partly negative and partly positive answer. Negatively, the public does not need to understand the climate or first-order evidence in climate science: endeavors that pursue such first-order competence, such as mainstream critical thinking (CT) and logic-based inoculation strategies task non-experts with a demand they cannot reliably perform. We demonstrate this by applying such inoculation procedures to a sophisticated and credentialed argument against climate change, and show that encouraging non-experts to evaluate the first-order premises and scientific claims leads to epistemic trespassing. Positively, we argue that what the public actually needs for responsible participation in the climate debate is a more modest and attainable understanding of the social epistemology of science – understanding how the scientific consensus is formed and why the process is more reliable than the alternatives. This kind of understanding transforms blind reliance into rationally warranted trust. In doing so, we distinguish the process of higher-order critical assessment, the understanding it gives, and the calibrated deference it licenses, and we locate higher-order evidence on the side of warranted trust rather than first-order understanding. The result is an epistemically responsible framework for public engagement with climate science that redirects, rather than abandons, critical thinking.

Abstract A number of philosophers have argued that purely statistical theorems can non-causally explain empirical matters of fact. Marc Lange has coined the term Really Statistical Explanations (short: RS explanations) for such explanations. A toy example would be an explanation of the average value of a fair die after a large number of throws in terms of the purely statistical law of large numbers. More substantial examples include certain explanations of trait-fitness distributions, and explanations of the average number of particles emitted from a radioactive source. This paper takes issue with the view that RS explanations are non-causal. More specifically, it argues that Lange’s attempts at elucidating what makes such explanations non-causal are unsuccessful. Lange agrees that RS explanations supply information about causes. Yet, he argues, they are not causal, since they do not derive their explanatory power from supplying information about causes. I discuss several readings of this claim, and argue that none of them establishes Lange’s intended conclusion. Finally, I discuss a recent argument by Lange that tries to show that a causal construal of RS explanations cannot do justice to their unifying power, and argue that it is inconclusive.

Abstract According to a widespread view, nudges are freedom-retaining in virtue of choice set non-interference : they help agents make better choices without altering the sets of options agents choose amongst. The present paper argues that this view is false and that nudges in fact do both add and remove options from agents’ choice sets. Two distinct lines of argument support this case. The primary argument appeals to the role of attention and salience in shaping agents’ choice sets in rich environments. The secondary argument analyses options as bundles of behavioural outputs and relevant considerations, where nudges alter these bundles. I argue that the received concept of nudge as something that does not alter choice sets and is based on behavioural science is inconsistent: choice set non-interference can only be endorsed if the role of salience in shaping choice sets, a crucial aspect of human bounded rationality, is ignored. Choice set non-interference, a foundational assumption in the nudge literature, ought therefore to be abandoned. This is a far-reaching implication: a central premise of the nudge programme fails, and its broader justification must be rebuilt accordingly. The conclusion generalizes beyond nudges to behavioral policy more broadly. While appreciating that choice sets are shaped by nudges does not require us to consider them as freedom-undermining, it does require proponents of nudges to abandon choice set non-interference for a more nuanced account of the relevant sense of freedom, and to revise their arguments for nudges accordingly.

This paper introduces and analyzes a kind of analogical inference that, I argue, has been largely overlooked by philosophers and cognitive scientists. These are cases in which the primary inference is a multi-placed relation that connects already known or observed elements. Such relational analogical inferences are especially important in the social sciences. Contrasting them with other recognized types of analogical inference illuminates both their role in scientific inquiry and the warrants that govern their strength.

Abstract Oreskes and Conway’s (2010) paradigmatic cases for agnotology show how misplaced doubt can be deliberately produced in the minds of one’s audience, even when everything one asserts is strictly true. This phenomenon is well captured by a Gricean framework that places stress on the ability to convey false implicatures via true utterances. This paper uses the Gricean framework to expose the possibility that misleading audience impressions may be predictably generated by false implicatures even when—in contrast to Oreskes and Conway’s central cases—no strategy of deliberate manipulation is in place. This structural aspect of agnotology is illustrated by the controversy over the hormone pregnancy test Primodos, and it brings with it suggestions for how to expose and combat these problems of miscalibrated epistemic attitudes.

Abstract This paper discusses three different versions of the title question. First, it addresses the question of whether trust, as a special form of shaping interpersonal relationships of reliance, is the right form to aspire to in the case of the relationship of the public to science. Would it be better to strive for plain reliance? Second, when we talk about public trust in democratic politics, distrust is often considered at least as important as trust. Can this be applied to public trust in science? Or are there reasons that make distrust specifically problematic in the epistemic context? Third, while trust has been argued to be indispensable both within science and with regard to the reliance of the public on science, advocates of open science appear to consider this obsolete in light of the replicability debate and the intended changes to improve the odds for replications. Is substituting control for trust a viable path to epistemic improvement?

Abstract In this paper, I present a philosophical analysis of Biolinguistics, including a number of proposals that point in the direction of its recognition as a full-fledged discipline or, perhaps, an interfield theory. My approach shall be a perspectival one, both in the spirit of Michela Massimi’s perspectival realism, but also following William Wimsatt’s investigation of complexity, where perspectivism also plays a key role, sometimes overlapping Massimi’s view. In doing so, I will focus on what today may be considered to be the two mainstream frameworks within Biolinguistics, namely Chomsky’s Minimalist Program and Kirby’s culturalist approach, in order to illustrate how an analysis in terms of perspectives seems to better carve the geography of the issues than other proposals. This will allow me to identify a number of additional perspectives that may concern anyone interested in the biolinguistic enterprise, which I put forth here to complement, qualify and, in some cases, replace the traditional questions that have so far driven research in linguistics and biolinguistics.

Abstract The role of values in scientific contexts has become a large topic of discussion in philosophy and elsewhere. Climate economics, like many sustainability sciences, experiences stark divergences between different scientific perspectives on what the future will look like and how to best manage that future. Starkest amongst these are tensions between growth and degrowth perspectives. In this paper we suggest that these tensions are entangled with political and other non-epistemic values, such that value entrenchment underlies much science in this domain. This creates significant problems for policy-makers and the public trying to rely on scientific information. As a result some have suggested that scientists should accept the role of values, be transparent with them and trust that scientific methods can serve to de-bias approaches. However, evidence from cognitive science and studies of scientific integrity suggests that the formation of isolated value-laden bubbles is an undesirable state of affairs which undermines the integrity of all the scientific approaches involved. Instead we see importance in ensuring that approaches are not isolated but rather compelled to interact through institutional imperatives, adversarial collaboration and the development of common ground. There does need to be active reflection on values and biases. We consider how these might operate in the case of green growth and degrowth theories. In effect we will emphasize the importance of interdisciplinarity as necessary to manage the risks generated by value-entrenchment.