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Negotiating Epistemic Authority

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New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence (JSAI-isAI 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 10247))

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Abstract

Why do we trust what other people say, and form beliefs on the basis of their speech? One answer: they are taken to have epistemic authority. Intuitively this means that the other person (or institution, or group) is taken to be authoritative in what they say, at least with respect to a particular domain. Here, we want to claim that there are (at least) two varieties of epistemic authority, one based on reliability and one on assuming (nonepistemic) authority. We claim that both are subject to linguistic negotiation. This paper begins by reviewing McCready’s (2015) theory of reliability, and then turns to strategies for attempting to assume epistemic authority, focusing on those involving the use of not-at-issue content. We then show the results of two experiments which test the interaction of stereotypes about gender with epistemic authority, and how this is mediated by language use, focusing on the case of gendered pronouns. Finally, the results are explored for Bayesian views of argumentation and analyzed within McCready’s Reliability Dynamic Logic.

The authors would like to acknowledge the support of JSPS Kiban C Grant #16K02640, which partially supported this research, and to thank Heather Burnett, Christopher Davis, Michael Erlewine, Regine Lai, Zoe Luk, Makoto Kanazawa, Lukas Rieser, Henriette de Swart, Christopher Tancredi, and audiences at LENLS13, the Education University of Hong Kong, Keio University and the University of Paris 7.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Note that this is essentially identical to the definition of belief in [2].

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of English, Aoyama Gakuin University, Shibuya, Japan

    Elin McCready

  2. Department of Linguistics and Modern Language Studies, The Education University of Hong Kong, Tai Po, Hong Kong

    Grégoire Winterstein

Authors
  1. Elin McCready
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  2. Grégoire Winterstein
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Elin McCready .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Business Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tokyo, Japan

    Setsuya Kurahashi

  2. Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd., Kanagawa, Japan

    Yuiko Ohta

  3. Chiba University, Chiba, Japan

    Sachiyo Arai

  4. National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo, Japan

    Ken Satoh

  5. Ochanomizu University, Tokyo, Japan

    Daisuke Bekki

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McCready, E., Winterstein, G. (2017). Negotiating Epistemic Authority. In: Kurahashi, S., Ohta, Y., Arai, S., Satoh, K., Bekki, D. (eds) New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence. JSAI-isAI 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10247. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61572-1_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61572-1_6

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-61571-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-61572-1

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