Hostname: page-component-f554764f5-nwwvg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-20T16:47:17.079Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

In Epistemic Networks, Is Less Really More?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Sarita Rosenstock ,
Justin Bruner  and
Cailin O’Connor
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We show that previous results from epistemic network models by Kevin J. S. Zollman and Erich Kummerfeld showing the benefits of decreased connectivity in epistemic networks are not robust across changes in parameter values. Our findings motivate discussion about whether and how such models can inform real world epistemic communities.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 84 , Issue 2 , April 2017 , pp. 234 - 252
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

†

We would like to thank Liam Kofi Bright, Remco Heesen, Bennett Holman, Aydin Mohseni, Hannah Rubin, Kim Sterelny, Jim Weatherall, and Kevin Zollman for helpful comments and feedback, as well as Jeff Barrett, Simon Huttegger, Louis Narens, Don Saari, Brian Skyrms, and the other participants in the UC Irvine Social Dynamics research group. We are also grateful for questions and comments from the audiences at the following 2016 conferences: Medical Knowledge in a Social World at UC Irvine, Models and Simulations at the University of Barcelona, the Formal Epistemology Workshop at the University of Gröningen, and the Lund Conference on Games, Interaction Reasoning, Learning, and Semantics. This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant STS-1535139.

References

Alexander, J. M. 2013. “Preferential Attachment and the Search for Successful Theories.” Philosophy of Science 80 (5): 769–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bala, V., and Goyal, S.. 1998. “Learning from Neighbours.” Review of Economic Studies 65 (3): 595–621.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cartwright, N. 1991. “Replicability, Reproducibility, and Robustness: Comments on Harry Collins.” History of Political Economy 23 (1): 143–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Douven, I., and Kelp, C.. 2011. “Truth Approximation, Social Epistemology, and Opinion Dynamics.” Erkenntnis 75 (2): 271–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grim, P. 2009. “Threshold Phenomena in Epistemic Networks.” In AAAI Fall Symposium: Complex Adaptive Systems and the Threshold Effect, 53–60. Menlo Park, CA: AAAI.Google Scholar
Heesen, R., Bright, L. K., and Zucker, A.. 2014. “Vindicating Methodological Triangulation.” PhilSci Archive. http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/11158/.Google Scholar
Holman, B., and Bruner, J. P.. 2015. “The Problem of Intransigently Biased Agents.” Philosophy of Science 82 (5): 956–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jönsson, M. L., Hahn, U., and Olsson, E. J.. 2015. “The Kind of Group You Want to Belong To: Effects of Group Structure on Group Accuracy.” Cognition 142:191–204.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kummerfeld, E., and Zollman, K. J. S.. 2016. “Conservatism and the Scientific State of Nature.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 67 (4): 1057–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levins, R. 1966. “The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology.” American Scientist 54 (4): 421–31.Google Scholar
Mason, W. A., Jones, A., and Goldstone, R. L.. 2008. “Propagation of Innovations in Networked Groups.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 137 (3): 422–33.Google ScholarPubMed
Mayo-Wilson, C., Zollman, K., and Danks, D.. 2013. “Wisdom of Crowds versus Groupthink: Learning in Groups and in Isolation.” International Journal of Game Theory 42 (3): 695–723.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muldoon, R. 2013. “Diversity and the Division of Cognitive Labor.” Philosophy Compass 8 (2): 117–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Odenbaugh, J., and Alexandrova, A.. 2011. “Buyer Beware: Robustness Analyses in Economics and Biology.” Biology and Philosophy 26 (5): 757–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orzack, S. H., and Sober, E.. 1993. “A Critical Assessment of Levins’s The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology (1966).” Quarterly Review of Biology 68 (4): 533–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quine, W. V. O. 1936. “Truth by Convention.” In Philosophical Essays for A. N. Whitehead, ed. Lee, O. H.. London: Longmans, Green.Google Scholar
Lee, O. H. 2013. Word and Object. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google ScholarPubMed
Skyrms, B. 2010. Signals: Evolution, Learning, and Information. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strevens, M. 2010. “Reconsidering Authority: Scientific Expertise, Bounded Rationality, and Epistemic Backtracking.” In Oxford Studies in Epistemology, Vol. 3, ed. T. S. Gendler and J. Hawthorne. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Weisberg, M. 2006. “Robustness Analysis.” Philosophy of Science 73 (5): 730–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wimsatt, W. C. 2012. “Robustness, Reliability, and Overdetermination (1981).” In Characterizing the Robustness of Science, ed. Soler, Léna, 61–87. Dordrecht: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wray, K. B. 2013. “The Future of the Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” Topoi 32 (1): 75–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zollman, K. J. 2007. “The Communication Structure of Epistemic Communities.” Philosophy of Science 74 (5): 574–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zollman, K. J. 2010. “The Epistemic Benefit of Transient Diversity.” Erkenntnis 72 (1): 17–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zollman, K. J. 2012. “Social Network Structure and the Achievement of Consensus.” Politics, Philosophy and Economics 11 (1): 26–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zollman, K. J. 2013. “Network Epistemology: Communication in Epistemic Communities.” Philosophy Compass 8 (1): 15–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Rosenstock et al. supplementary material

Rosenstock et al. supplementary material

Download Rosenstock et al. supplementary material(File)
File 52.8 KB