Dear all,

we warmly invite you to the next APSE (Applied Philosophy of Science and Epistemology) Talk and Reading Circle. The talk will be held by Maria Baghramian (University College Dublin).

Talk: 

When: Thursday, 12.06.2025, 15:00 - 17:00
Where: HS 3A, NIG (Universitätsstraße 7, 1010 Wien)

Title: Disagreement and Trust – the case from democracy and sconce

Abstract

Trust in  democratic institutions has been in  steep decline across many western countries.  Trust in science and scientists, at least in some specific areas of science, has also come under question. It is widely accepted that a certain level of public trust is essential to any well-functioning democracy. Trust in science, in so far as scientific findings have a role in the public life, is also crucial. A great deal has been written about the so called “crisis of trust” in earth of these domains. Less has been said about the connections and the structural  similarities or dissimilarities between the two.

This paper is an attempt to investigate the parallels  between trust in science and in democratic politics by focusing on the deep and at times widespread disagreements present in both. I will argue that while  disagreement in both politics and science is necessary for  their proper functioning, certain types of disagreement  can also lead to disfunction and break down of trust.  I follow a familiar distinction between alethic,  normative and identity based sources  of disagreement using recent work by  Michael Lynch (2025) and Pippa Norris (2019) as  my examples of these differing approaches and argue that the corrosive type of disagreement that leads to breakdown of trust should be understood in terms of the commitments people have and develop in their lifetime rather than their  beliefs in truths or values.  Commitments have affective and conative features that are not always present in mere acts of believing (See for instance Bernard Williams  1981 and Timothy Scanlon, 1998). The connections between trust and commitments are also stronger and deeper than those with beliefs (see for instance John Holton, 1994). I conclude by auguring that a focus on disagreement between commitments, both normative and alethic, could be a more fruitful way of looking at the relationships between disagreement and trust in politics and in science.

Bio

Professor Maria Baghramian is Full Professor of American Philosophy at UCD School of Philosophy and a co-director of the UCD Post Graduate Programme in Cognitive Science, which she co-founded in 2000. She has held visiting posts in Harvard, MIT, University of Yerevan, Institut Jean Nicod, Paris and in various universities in China. She was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Harvard in 2013. Baghramian was elected to the Royal Irish Academy in 2010 and to its Council for two consecutive terms. In June 2022 she was elected to the Academia Europaea (The Academy of Europe). In 2022, she was Highly Commended in the Irish Research Council Researcher of the Year Awards.

She is, with the astrophysicist Luke Drury, the Principal Investigator of a research project on peer expert disagreement “When Experts Disagree” (WEXD), funded by the Irish Research Council. Currently, she is the coordinator and project leader of PERITIA – Policy, Expertise and Trust in Action – a Horizon 2020 multi-disciplinary research project funding of 3 million euro from the European Commission. In the European arena, Baghramian been an active member of three working groups on topics of truth, trust and science with the All European Academies (ALLEA) and its science and policy mechanism SAPEA. Internationally, she is a member of the steering committee of the International Federation of Philosophical Societies, a member of the Programme Committee of the 2024 World Congress, and a member of the International Cooperation Committee of the American Philosophical Association. She also has had numerous academic engagements in China and Armenia.

Baghramian has also organised over 40 international conferences, workshops and public lectures and is the founder and two term President of the Society for Women in Philosophy in Ireland and representative of Scholars at Risk programme. Baghramian has published extensively, including 14 edited and authored books, on topics from epistemology and contemporary American philosophy. She was also the editor of the International Journal of Philosophical Studies (2004-14) and the co-editor of Contemporary Pragmatism (2016-2021).

Reading Circle:

When: Thursday, 12.06.2025, 13:15 - 15:00
Where: HS 3A, NIG (Universitätsstraße 7, 1010 Wien)

We will focus our discussion on a forthcoming review article by Maria Baghramian and Silvia Caprioglio Panizza (attached doc):

Baghramian, Maria and Silvia Caprioglio Panizza (forthcoming) “Expertise and the Ethics of Trust: A Review” In: ETICA Yearbook.

Since the article is a review and a very good introduction to the topic, I only suggest these two short papers as additional introduction:

Croce, M., & Baghramian, M. (2024). Experts – part I: What they are and how to identify them. Philosophy Compass, e13009. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.13009

Croce, M., & Baghramian, M. (2024). Experts—Part II: The sources of epistemic authority. Philosophy Compass, e70005. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.70005

For further reading regarding the topic:

Lynch, M. (2025). On Truth in Politics: Why Democracy Demands It. Princeton: Princeton University Press. https://doi-org.uaccess.univie.ac.at/10.1515/9780691231945

Hardwig, J. (1991). The role of trust in knowledge. The Journal of Philosophy, 88(12), 693-708.

Warren, M. E. (Ed.). (1999). Democracy and Trust.Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511659959

All the best,

Ella Berger and Vinzenz Fischer, on behalf of the APSE team