AIANI Guest Lecture “Nullius in Verba: Skepticism in the Epistemology of Testimony”, and international workshop “Believing on Authority?”, with Dr. Arnon Keren (Haifa/Oxford)

Conspiracy theories, fake news, so-called ‘alternative facts’– modern societies, technologically advanced as never before, are increasingly dispensing with truth. A massive decay of fundamental values of the enlightenment, of rational thinking, and of intellectual honesty has started to infiltrate public and political discourse. Philosophers deal with such problems by engaging in epistemology: What is knowledge? How can we distinguish good from bad reasons? What makes a belief justified and rational, what constitutes a good argument? Social epistemology in particular explores the interpersonal dimensions of knowledge acquisition and information transfer. Social epistemologists investigate the norms of factual assertion; they examine concepts such as expertise, epistemic injustice, and trust (and mistrust) in what others – including real or fake authorities – tell us.

These were the topics of a workshop with (and a public lecture by) Dr. Arnon Keren, Department of Philosophy, University of Haifa, and member of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. The events were hosted by the Institute for Christian Philosophy and organized by Federica Malfatti and Christoph Jäger. Keren’s work on intellectual authority has inspired much recent work on the social dimensions of knowledge, so it was no surprise that both his lecture and the workshop were very well received. Other workshop speakers included Jan Constantin (Köln), Katherine Dormandy (Innsbruck), Christian Feldbacher-Escamilla (Düsseldorf), Johannes Findl (Barcelona), Christoph Jäger (Innsbruck), and Federica Malfatti (Innsbruck). A major result of the workshop was that, although there is widespread need to rely on others’ expertise, critical and autonomous thinking are indispensable for putting us in a good position with respect to the truth.