Epistemic Trust in Socio-Technical Epistemic Systems

Epistemic trust, the function of trust in knowledge lies at the heart of this proposal. Within philosophy, epistemic trust is a contested topic because knowledge is usually considered to depend on evidence and not on trust. The very idea of knowledge as justified true belief implies an autonomy of the knower that seems to be opposite to the epistemic dependence that trust relations imply. Yet any analysis of epistemic practices in science as well as in everyday life shows how deeply our knowledge depends on trust in other people. Without trusting in what others have told us, we would neither know some of the most basic facts about ourselves nor could we have achieved the most advanced scientific knowledge. This is the central dilemma of epistemic trust: while on the one hand it seems that the almost everything we know depends on our trust in the testimony of others, the status of testimonial knowledge and the role of epistemic trust remain highly controversial. Yet things are even more complicated. Within contemporary epistemic practices trust is not only placed in other humans, but also in technologies, processes, institutions and content. Indeed, information and communication technologies (ICT) play a special role for epistemic trust, because they cannot only be trusted themselves, they also increasingly mediate and organize trust relations between all other entities as well. In the proposed project I therefore want to analyze and re-assess central debates around epistemic trust by taking into account that practices of epistemic trust take place within dynamic and entangled socio-technical epistemic systems consisting of multiple human and non-human agents. Two research topics will be of central interest: the relationship between epistemic trust and epistemic vigilance as well as the notion of epistemic responsibility. To understand epistemic trust in socio-technical epistemic systems, philosophical analyses need to take into account insights from other disciplines, most notably from computer science and the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). Therefore, I will not only discuss literature from those fields, but I will also closely collaborate with computer scientists in this project. The project is structured in five work packages (WP). WP 1 will provide a state of the art report on relevant research on epistemic trust from different disciplines. WP 2 and 3 will consist in two case studies on ICT and epistemic trust. WP 2 on trust in multi-agent systems will be conducted in collaboration with the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute in Barcelona, WP 3 on trust in recommender systems will be a collaboration with computer scientists from the Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Trento. The insights obtained in these case studies will be used to re- conceptualize the notion and the central problems of epistemic trust in socio-technical epistemic systems in WP 4. Finally in Work Package 5, implications for practices of epistemic trust by users, designers of socio-technical epistemic systems as well as implications for research on epistemic trust will be explored.

Epistemic trust, i.e. the function of trust in knowledge, lay at the heart of this project. Within philosophy, epistemic trust is a contested topic because knowledge is usually considered to depend on evidence rather than trust. The very idea of knowledge as justified true belief implies an autonomy of the knower that seems to be opposite to the epistemic dependence that trust relations imply. Yet any analysis of epistemic practices in science as well as in everyday life shows how deeply our knowledge depends on trust in other people. Without trusting in what others have told us, we would neither know some of the most basic facts about ourselves, nor could we have achieved advanced scientific knowledge. Within contemporary epistemic practices, trust is not only placed in other humans, but also in technical processes and institutions. Indeed, various technologies of information, communication, and computation play a special role because they are not only trusted themselves, but also increasingly mediate and organize trust relations between other entities. In this project, our main focus was on multi-agent systems, recommender systems, search engines and (big) data analytics, since all of these technologies play an increasingly important role in shaping and changing contemporary knowledge practices by challenging trust relations, the attribution of responsibility, and traditional claims to knowledge. Our re-assessment of central debates around epistemic trust yielded two crucial insights: On the one hand, it became evident that contemporary knowledge practices cannot be fully apprehended without taking modern information and communication technologies into account. Almost all knowledge practices in everyday life, but in particular those within science, depend upon such technologies. On the other hand, given the socio-technically entangled nature of such knowledge practices, epistemological questions are frequently interwoven with ontological, ethical, and political questions and issues. A notion that emerged as particularly useful was that of epistemic responsibility: what are the responsibilities of us as knowers within such entangled environments? Understanding the requirements and challenges for trust, trustworthiness, knowledge and responsibility, as well as how these are interwoven, turned out to be of tremendous theoretical and practical import. Moreover, our decision to analytically combine epistemological, ethical, and political questions and concerns has proven highly productive. While the project was firmly rooted within philosophy, collaborations with researchers from other disciplines were built and maintained. Finally, the project has had impact beyond academia: Through various invitations to advice public policy and research funding bodies, we contributed to debates around Responsible Research and Innovation, provided guidance on how to integrate ICT research with social sciences and humanities, and stressed the importance of interdisciplinary assessments of contemporary knowledge practices.