Research Seminar in Decision and Action Theory: Laura Engel (University of Hamburg)

Title:

Misrepresenting Epistemic Reasons in Group Deliberation

Abstract:

Group deliberation is often taken to be an epistemically valuable collective decision-making mechanism. Many proponents of deliberation argue that strategic behavior should not be part of the deliberative process. However, individuals with conflicting preferences face a lot of incentives and opportunities to strategically manipulate the outcome of the deliberation. I will focus on a particular kind of strategic manipulation: misrepresenting epistemic reasons. I will argue that the deliberative process is vulnerable to this kind of strategic misrepresentation. This is because deliberation can only be epistemically successful if individuals reveal epistemic reasons for accepting evidence, in the form of information on the correlation between sources of evidence. Often, individuals face complex and opaque source correlation structures that are hard to trace and verify. This opens up opportunities for strategic misrepresentation of these epistemic reasons. Such manipulation can also be observed in other modes of communication, for example if conspiracy theorists ascribe dependence to independent news sources or experts. I will discuss possible escape routes to avoid strategic misrepresentations of epistemic reasons in deliberation. In particular, I will suggest a specific structure of deliberation where deliberators first focus on the aggregation of preferences and then the collection of evidence in order to reduce their incentives to strategize.

The seminar will be held in person, but here is a Zoom link for remote participation:
https://lmu-munich.zoom.us/j/93279453658?pwd=MGRkZ1lOYTVtK2tleWVHbFZ4UFNzZz09