[Sci-tech-public] STS Circle, November 12 - Alfred Moore (Please RSVP)

[STS]

STS Circle at Harvard
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Alfred Moore
University College Cork, Philosophy

on
Epistemic Disobedience

Monday, November 12
12:15-2:00 p.m.
Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Room 100F

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Lunch is provided if you RSVP.
Please RSVP to sts<mailto:sts at hks.harvard.edu>@hks.harvard.edu<mailto:sts at hks.harvard.edu> by 5pm Wednesday, November 7.

Abstract: Expert authority, it is often thought, is undermined by criticism, dissent and contestation from lay people (such as climate change deniers). In this paper I will argue that such contestation can actually be constitutive of democratic practices of expert authority. In the first part of the paper I will specify the concept of 'epistemic disobedience', which I define as organized minorities refusing to accept expert claims to authority. In the second part of the paper, I will discuss the democratic value of epistemic disobedience. I will point to a number of democratic effects, drawing on analogies with the relation between civil disobedience and political authority. I will conclude by highlighting the potential dangers of this form of organized mistrust of expertise. In contrast to many critics of the politicization of science, the dangers I highlight are not to do with lay people holding false beliefs. Rather, I suggest that the chief danger is that the multiplication of forms of contestation and resistance can undermine democratic capacities for collective action.


Biography:Alfred Moore is a Democracy Fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. He is in the final stages of a three year Marie Curie Fellowship project titled 'Epistemology and Democracy in Complex Societies,' supported by the EU's FP7 programme. He is visiting Harvard from University College Cork, Ireland, where he is an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy, teaching a range of courses in political theory. He has a PhD from the University of Bath, and before he joined UCC he was a research assistant in the Department of Political Science, University of Hannover. He specializes in political theory, democratic governance, and the politics of science and technology.




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