Board Room
Nov 11, 2022 01:15 PM - 03:15 PM(America/New_York)
20221111T1315 20221111T1515 America/New_York The Origins of Belief Polarization

Belief polarization occurs when individuals diverge in their beliefs about some hypothesis when updating on certain kinds of evidence. It a persistent feature in society, with important ramifications for scientific, political and cultural discourse. Conventionally, belief polarization has often been treated as a consequence of irrationality. However, a spate of recent work in philosophy, psychology, cognitive science has tried to better understand its causes. A number of authors in fields such as psychology and cognitive science, economics and philosophy have claimed that belief polarization arises even in rational agents, updating on the same evidence. Efforts to study belief polarization, its causes and consequences, have utilized a number of very different assumptions about the types of agents, their boundedness, the logical and probabilistic relationships between their beliefs and their epistemic relationships with other agents. This symposium will address the origins of belief polarization, and consider whether this picture is compatible with Bayesian rationality. This interdisciplinary symposium serves to connect several active research programs investigating the phenomenon of belief polarization from different perspectives in order to better understand the origins of belief polarization. It will present the state-of-the-art of the literature. Furthermore, it will serve to foster intellectual progress in the field by connecting scholars from a range of diverse and active research programs and backgrounds, including social epistemology, social political philosophy and cognitive science.

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Belief polarization occurs when individuals diverge in their beliefs about some hypothesis when updating on certain kinds of evidence. It a persistent feature in society, with important ramifications for scientific, political and cultural discourse. Conventionally, belief polarization has often been treated as a consequence of irrationality. However, a spate of recent work in philosophy, psychology, cognitive science has tried to better understand its causes. A number of authors in fields such as psychology and cognitive science, economics and philosophy have claimed that belief polarization arises even in rational agents, updating on the same evidence. Efforts to study belief polarization, its causes and consequences, have utilized a number of very different assumptions about the types of agents, their boundedness, the logical and probabilistic relationships between their beliefs and their epistemic relationships with other agents. This symposium will address the origins of belief polarization, and consider whether this picture is compatible with Bayesian rationality. This interdisciplinary symposium serves to connect several active research programs investigating the phenomenon of belief polarization from different perspectives in order to better understand the origins of belief polarization. It will present the state-of-the-art of the literature. Furthermore, it will serve to foster intellectual progress in the field by connecting scholars from a range of diverse and active research programs and backgrounds, including social epistemology, social political philosophy and cognitive science.

Emergent Patterns of Collective Beliefs: Modeling Individual Belief Dynamics and Social Network StructuresView Abstract
SymposiumFormal Epistemology 01:15 PM - 03:15 PM (America/New_York) 2022/11/11 18:15:00 UTC - 2022/11/11 20:15:00 UTC
This study investigates how belief dynamics and social network structures generate different patterns of social change and diversity. The two belief dynamics studied here are indirect minority influence and random drift; the former is parameterized by a leniency threshold ($\lambda$) and the later by an error rate ($\epsilon$). The patterns of social change are examined in terms of magnitude, speed, and frequency. Diversity and polarization are examined in terms of global belief variation (inverse Simpson index) and local neighborhood difference (Hamming distance). Key findings are that indirect minority influence robustly produces a gradual, small, yet frequent social change across various network structures. However, random drift produces a rapid punctuated social change especially in a society with high connectivity such as complete, scale-free, or random networks but gradual changes in lattice or small world networks. When a society has a modular community structure, indirect minority influence generates a diversity regime whereas random drift generates a polarized regime. Finally, distinct tipping points for social change were identified in different network structures.\end{abstract}
Presenters
JJ
Jiin Jung
New York University
Co-Authors David Freeborn
Symposiast, University Of California, Irvine
SP
Scott Page
University Of Michigan
WC
William Crano
Claremont Graduate University
AB
Aaron Bramson
University Of Ghent
JM
John Miller
Carnegie Mellon University
Polarization is not (standard) BayesianView Abstract
SymposiumFormal Epistemology 01:15 PM - 03:15 PM (America/New_York) 2022/11/11 18:15:00 UTC - 2022/11/11 20:15:00 UTC
Belief polarization is the tendency for individuals with opposing beliefs to predictably disagree more upon being exposed to certain types of evidence. A variety of recent papers have argued that many of the core empirical results surrounding this effect are consistent with standard Bayesian or approximately-Bayesian theories of rationality. I argue that this is wrong. While there are some types of predictable polarization that are consistent with standard Bayesian models, the core of the phenomenon is not. This core is the fact that when individuals face polarizing processes (such as exposure to mixed evidence or like-minded discussion), they can predict their own polarization. In any standard Bayesian model, Reflection is a theorem. Thus no standard-Bayesian model can explain the type of (Reflection-violating) predictable polarization we observe. The culprit in this result is not probabilism, but the assumption that updates occur by conditioning on partitional evidence. I show that—given the value of evidence as a constraint on rational updating—this partitionality assumption is equivalent to the requirement that rational credences are always introspective, i.e. that when it’s rational to have a given probability, it’s rational to be certain that it’s rational to have that probability. I suggest, therefore, that if Bayesian accounts of polarization are to succeed, they must do so by rejecting the assumption of rational introspection.
Presenters
KD
Kevin Dorst
Massachusetts Institute Of Technology
Co-Authors David Freeborn
Symposiast, University Of California, Irvine
Belief Polarization, Group Polarization, and BiasView Abstract
SymposiumFormal Epistemology 01:15 PM - 03:15 PM (America/New_York) 2022/11/11 18:15:00 UTC - 2022/11/11 20:15:00 UTC
Belief polarization occurs when individuals with opposing initial beliefs strengthen their beliefs in response to the same evidence. In previous work (“Disagreement, Dogmatism, and Belief Polarization,” Journal of Philosophy 2008), I explored the hypothesis that the psychological mechanisms that give rise to belief polarization are rational ones, given what was then the best available account of those mechanisms provided by psychologists who had documented the phenomenon. In this talk I will further explore questions about the rationality of belief polarization in the light of the latest work in psychology, philosophy, and other disciplines. Particular attention will be devoted to questions about whether the reasoning that gives rise to belief polarization is biased reasoning, in an objectionable sense of “biased.” Such questions seem especially pressing given that, as is sometimes noted, even exemplary reasoning and paradigmatic episodes of knowledge acquisition are naturally described as involving certain epistemically innocuous or even beneficial biases. (Consider, for example, the ways in which vision scientists refer to the “biases” of our perceptual systems, without which perceptual knowledge would be impossible; or the ways in which cognitive scientists and philosophers seeking to understand exemplary inductive reasoning routinely speak of our “inductive biases.”) Finally, I consider the role that the mechanisms that give rise to belief polarization play in contexts of group polarization. In cases of group polarization, groups of like-minded individuals become increasingly extreme in their point of view as they share their opinions with one another, and thus, ever more polarized from other like-minded groups who begin with different opinions. I argue that although sharing evidence across different groups would often be socially desirable and epistemically beneficial, given plausible empirical assumptions it will often be practically rational for individuals within the groups to pass up opportunities to do so. \end{abstract}
Presenters
TK
Thomas Kelly
Princeton University
Belief polarization in agents with Bayesian Belief NetworksView Abstract
SymposiumFormal Epistemology 01:15 PM - 03:15 PM (America/New_York) 2022/11/11 18:15:00 UTC - 2022/11/11 20:15:00 UTC
Belief polarization occurs when the beliefs of agents diverge upon updating on certain types of evidence. Recent research indicates that belief can arise even amongst rational agents \cite{Jern_Polarization, Kelly_2008, O_Connor_Polarization}. Although the specific mechanisms differ, I distinguish two general origins of belief polarization. First is agent network-driven polarization \cite{Axelrod1997, HegselmannKrause, Macy2003, Deffluant2006, BaldassarriBearman, O_Connor_Polarization}, which arises due to the relationships between agents. With this form of polarization, epistemic influence between agents is determined by factors as the similarity in prior beliefs. The second origin is belief-network driven polarization \cite{Jern_Polarization, Kelly_2008}, which arises due to the relations between different beliefs held by agents. I argue that a formalism involving epistemic networks of agents, each with Bayesian belief networks allows us to represent both kinds of polarization in a unifying framework. I set out certain conditions under which each type of polarization can arise, in terms of the structure and relationships of the agents' epistemic and belief networks.
Presenters David Freeborn
Symposiast, University Of California, Irvine
symposiast
,
University of California, Irvine
Princeton University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
New York University
University of Nebraska Omaha
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