APPLY TV Series 1 Episode 5
Argumentation and a three-tiered model of epistemic exchange
APPLY TV is a new series of online talks organised by the COST Action project CA17132: European Network for Argumentation and Public Policy Analysis (APPLY). Its main theme is public argumentation investigated from any of the theoretical perspectives present in the Action: philosophy, linguistics, communication, discourse analysis, computer science, psychology. Each speaker presents her or his most recent work on argumentation in compact episodes of 1hr, with 30 min dedicated to the presentation and 30 min to discussion.
Season 1
Episode 5
Wendesday 12/05/2021 16:00 CEST
Argumentation and a three-tiered model of epistemic exchange
Argumentation is often contrasted with testimony in that in cases of testimony, an epistemic agent (presumably) primarily evaluates the trustworthiness of the source of information (the informant), whereas in argumentation there is (presumably) primarily engagement with the content communicated. I have argued however (Dutilh Novaes 2020) that trust and trustworthiness in fact play an important role in argumentation too. From this analysis emerged a three-tiered model of epistemic exchange, inspired by the framework of social exchange theory (an influential framework in sociology and social psychology). According to this model, there are three stages for an instance of epistemic exchange to take place: 1- a relation of attention is established between the parties; 2- a relation of sufficient trust is established between the parties; 3- the parties can finally engage in fruitful epistemic exchange. This model generalizes beyond argumentation, and sheds new light on a number of phenomena that have attracted the interest of social epistemologists such as epistemic bubbles and epistemic injustice, among others. In this talk, I present the model in detail and discuss some of its applications.
Speaker: Catarina Dutilh Novaes
Hosted by Monika Maciuliene
The talk was streamed via the APPLY TV YouTube channel, and is available on demand, just below.