Summer Term 2025
How we have set our sails for the summer semester …
Below this is the reading schedule for the coming semester. It’s not set in stone, so there might be changes. It includes descriptions of the content of the texts and the thematic arch of the semester. If you have wishes or recommendations for how we should change this arch or for texts that prop up this arch better, please reach out to veronika.lassl(Replace this parenthesis with the @ sign)univie.ac.at.
The 6th and 7th texts of the year give us an introduction to the latter part of our topic: the spread of misinformation.
Friday, 7.03. #6 Novaes, Catarina Dutilh & de Ridder, Jeroen (2021). Is Fake News Old News? In Sven Bernecker, Amy K. Flowerree & Thomas Grundmann (eds.), The Epistemology of Fake News. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198863977.003.0008 [24pp]
Friday, 14.03. #7 Wikforss , Åsa (2023). The Dangers of Disinformation. In Hana Samaržija & Quassim Cassam (eds.), The Epistemology of Democracy. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003311003-7 [23pp]
The 8th, 9th and 10th texts give us formal methods for modelling how false beliefs spread.
Friday, 21.03. #8 O’Connor, Cailin & Weatherall, James Owen (2021) Modeling How False Beliefs Spread. In Michael Hannon & Jeroen de Ridder (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Political Epistemology. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429326769-25 [11pp],
and
#9 Singer et al. (2021) Epistemic Networks and Polarization. In Michael Hannon & Jeroen de Ridder (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Political Epistemology. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429326769-17 [12pp]
Friday, 28.03. #10 Sullivan, Emily and Alfano, Mark (2020). Vectors of epistemic insecurity. In Ian James Kidd, Heather Battaly & Quassim Cassam (eds.), Vice Epistemology. https://doi.org/10.1080/09672559.2020.1782562 [15pp]
Our session on April 4th will be dedicated to evaluating the abstracts of graduate students who would like to present at our conference and selecting who will be accepted.
Friday, 4.04. ABSTRACT SELECTION
Our 11th and 12th texts pick up discussions we will have encountered in the previous papers concerning large groups of non-ideal epistemic agents. They will introduce important debates in contemporary epistemology, specifically concerning epistemic deference to experts and epistemic autonomy. Our hope is that these texts set us up to think about what role epistemic experts and critical thinking play in navigating misinformation and epistemic bubbles.
Friday, 11.04. #11 Somin, Ilya (2023) Top-Down and Bottom-Up Solutions to the Problem of Political Ignorance. In Hana Samaržija & Quassim Cassam (eds.), The Epistemology of Democracy. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003311003-19 [29pp]
Friday, 18.04. Easter break
Friday, 25.04. Easter break
Friday, 2.05. #12 Grundmann, Thomas (2021). Facing Epistemic Authorities: Where Democratic Ideals and Critical Thinking Mislead Cognition. In Sven Bernecker, Amy K. Flowerree & Thomas Grundmann (eds.), The Epistemology of Fake News. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198863977.003.0007 [22pp]
The 13th text is a paper arguing that academic institutions are at a risk of being epistemic bubbles. This will prepare us for Quassim Cassam’s talk which (as of February 2025) will be about whether academic philosophy has become an epistemic bubble. The 14th text is a paper by Quassim Cassam (also in preparation of his talk). We have requested a recommendation from him, but in case we don’t receive one, we will read a paper by him that is relevant to the “Spread of Misinformation” part of our topic.
Friday, 9.05. #13 Stanovich, Keith (2023). Myside Bias in Individuals and Institutions. In Hana Samaržija & Quassim Cassam (eds.), The Epistemology of Democracy. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003311003-12 [25pp]
Friday, 16.05. #14 Cassam, Quassim (2021). Bullshit, Post-Truth and Propaganda. In Elizabeth Edenberg, and Michael Hannon (eds.), Political Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192893338.003.0004 [15pp]
Wednesday, 21.05. Talk by Quassim Cassam
Our 15th and 16th texts will venture into virtue epistemology. Samaržija’s text is on the relationship between echo chambers and fanaticism and how epistemic virtue and vice can uphold or counteract the two. Eylon’s text is on the epistemic virtue of partisanship and how it can also act as a vice by facilitating the spread of misinformation and the emergence of epistemic bubbles and echo chambers.
Friday, 23.05. #15 Samaržija, Hana (2022). The Epistemology of Fanaticism. Echo Chambers and Fanaticism. In Leo Townsend et al. (eds.), The Philosophy of Fanaticism: Epistemic, Affective, and Political Dimensions. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY:Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003119371-6 [19pp]
Friday, 30.05. #16 Eylon, Yuval (2021). Partisanship as Virtue and Vice. In Nancy E. Snow & Maria Silvia Vaccarezza (eds.), Virtues, Democracy, and Online Media. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge. https://doi,org/10.4324/9781003083108-16 [13pp]
On Friday, June 6th, we will host a workshop with presentations by James Conant and Matthias Haase (both from the University of Chicago). After that, during the regular session time, we will discuss the first texts by one of our keynotes, Keith Harris. We will continue reading texts from our keynotes, Megan Fritts and Giulia Napolitano, in the following two weeks.
Friday, 6.06. [TIME TBD] Workshop with James Conant and Matthias Haase
and
[TIME TBD] #17 Harris, Keith Raymond (2023). Beyond belief: On disinformation and manipulation. Erkenntnis:1-21. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-023-00710-6 [20pp]
Friday, 13.06. #18 Fritts, Megan & Cabrera, Frank (2022). Fake News and Epistemic Vice: Combating a Uniquely Noxious Market. Journal of the American Philosophical Association (3):1-22. https://doi.org/10.1017/apa.2021.11 [22pp]
Friday, 20.06. #19 Napolitano, M. Giulia (2021). Conspiracy Theories and Evidential Self-Insulation. In Sven Bernecker, Amy K. Flowerree & Thomas Grundmann (eds.), The Epistemology of Fake News. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 82-105. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198863977.003.0005 [17p]
Our last text (a shorter one, due to exam time) opens up a perspective that has come woefully short in our reading: the role of affects in polarization and our appreciation of evidence.
Friday, 27.06. #20 Emily, McWilliams (2021). Affective Polarization, Evidence, and Evidentialism. In Michael Hannon & Jeroen de Ridder (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Political Epistemology. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429326769-18 [11pp]