Changing Minds with Style∗

Changing Minds With Style∗ Carolina Flores April 2021 Abstract People often respond to evidence in ways we don’t anticipate. This causes trouble for understanding those who respond to evidence in ways that differ from our own and for our ability to rationally engage with them. I argue that we can address these problems by seeing others’ ways of interacting with evidence in terms of epistemic style. I offer an analysis of epistemic styles as ways of responding to evidence which express epistemic character, that is, a recognizable way of being an epistemic agent. I argue that we have reason to think that people take up epistemic styles in robust, though context-dependent, ways. This allows us to use models of others’ epistemic styles to predict their responses to evidence in relevant contexts, enabling us to select evidence that they are likely to find persuasive. More importantly, sensitivity to epistemic styles gives us a way of understanding those whose epistemic behavior is at odds with our own, instead of seeing their behavior as the result of irredeemable irrationality. 1 Introduction People interact with evidence in a wide range of ways. For example, evidence that persuaded you might leave others cold, or make them retrench. What to one person obviously indicates nefarious intentions, to another suggests bumbling incompetence. Where one person briskly rules out alternative explanations, another keeps them live, refusing to make up their mind. This variation in way of interacting with evidence compromises our ability toun- derstand one another, often leading us to think that others’ responses to evidence respond are due to deep irrationality. And it poses an under-noticed problem for at- tempts at rational persuasion. How are we to select evidence, and more generally, carve out a strategy of persuasion, without knowing how our interlocutors will interact with evidence? And how can we come to acquire this knowledge in the face of the diversity of responses we encounter? Troublingly, such problems for understanding ∗Acknowledgements: Thanks to Laura Callahan, Elisabeth Camp, Danny Forman, Alex Guerrero, Tyler John, Kelsey Laity D’Agostino, Ting-An Li, Matt McGrath, James McIntyre, Thi Nguyen, Jill North, Dee Payton, Susanna Schellenberg, Ernest Sosa, Caroline Von Klemperer, Christopher Willard-Kyle, and Elise Woodard for helpful comments on previous drafts. Thanks also to participants in the Rutgers Aesthetics Graduate Seminar for helpful discussion. 1 and rational persuasion compromise our ability to rationally deliberate, and therefore constitude a threat to central democratic practices. To address these problems, I introduce the notion of epistemic style. I analyze epistemic styles as ways of interacting with evidence that express an epistemic character, that is, a distinctive way of being an epistemic agent. Though the notion of epistemic style has remained under-theorized, the phenomenon is familiar: think here of the charge that American politics has come to be dominated by the “ paranoid style,” which expresses “heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fan- tasy” (Hofstadter 2012), of the distinctive ways in which analytic philosophers tend to reason, or of the rigidity of thought of which we accuse bureaucrats (Graeber 2012). I do not take these examples to be curious peculiarities. To the contrary, people take up epistemic styles in stable and predictable ways, tracking facts about social context, their goals, and their affective state, among other factors. This relative stability enables us to model others’ epistemic styles in a context, and to use such models to select effective strategies for persuasion. Perhaps more importantly, sensitivity to epistemic style furthers our understanding of others. The plan for the paper is as follows. In§2, I articulate difficulties for understanding and rational persuasion raised by the multiplicity of ways in which people interact with evidence, and suggest that they constitute a serious social and political problem. In §3, I develop my analysis of epistemic styles. In §4, I argue that people take up epistemic styles with enough stability to enable observers to construct adequate models of others’ epistemic style. In §5, I argue that, equipped with such models, we can come to understand others’ responses to evidence and select more effective strategies of persuasion, addressing the difficulties canvassed in§2. I respond to ethical worries about sensitivity to epistemic styles in §6. 2 The Messy Reality of Interactions with Evidence There is a wide range of different ways in which one may respond to evidence.Dif- ferent people—and even one person when placed in different contexts—can and do respond to evidence different ways. This occurs even when people share the sameset of doxastic attitudes. For one, we find variation in what evidence agents find compelling. For example, some people are unlikely to change their mind based on first-hand testimony, but find statistical surveys highly persuasive, whereas others are resistant to statistical evidence, taking it to occlude crucial fine-grained aspects of human experience.¹ People also vary in what inferences they draw from the evidence. This can be due to finding different hypotheses salient (Nelson 2010). For example, noticing a child’s manual dexterity might lead their art teacher to infer that they could become a painter, while their ambitious parents infer that they would make a highly-paid sur- geon. Similarly, theoretical values—roughly, what features one takes to make for good 1. This variation can also come in degrees: some people might find statistical evidence convincing, butonly to a low extent, while for a different agent this is extremely weighty evidence. Thanks to Caroline Von Klemperer for pointing this out. 2 explanations for observations—affect what one infers from evidence (Kuhn 1977, Dou- ven 2009, Willard-Kyle 2017).² The Quinean with a preference for desert landscapes will opt for a theory with few postulates, whereas the maximalist will prefer a more complex theory that fits more data. As a result, they will come to different beliefs based on the same evidence. Such values and interests affect what one does with the evidence one receives more generally. Sometimes, we make up our minds impulsively, jumping to conclusions immediately. Other times, we cautiously consider many alternative hypotheses, and keep them all on the table until decisive evidence comes in. Sometimes we are comfortable with uncertainty, and able to hold in mind considerations pointing in different directions; other times, uncertainty feels intolerable. Sometimes we carefully think through the implications of evidence we receive. Other times, we make only the most obvious adjustments in the light of evidence. All of these factors end up affecting what conclusions we draw. Further, people set their evidential thresholds—their thresholds for how much (compelling) evidence it takes to change their mind—in a wide range of different ways. For example, grit in pursuing one’s goals is often aided by resistance to evidence that points to low probability of success, mediated by high evidential thresholds for changing beliefs about one’s chances of succeeding (Paul and Morton 2018). Defeatists do the opposite, taking even the smallest setback to show that they are doomed. Evi- dential thresholds can also vary globally. Some adopt a suspicious, skeptical attitude across the board and require a lot of evidence to update any of their views. At the other extreme, one may adopt a starry-eyed, omnivorous mindset and let one’s mind fluctuate with any evidence that comes one’s way. I do not mean to suggest that all these ways of interacting with evidence are rational, or epistemically permissible. I am merely noting that we do, as a matter of fact, find such variation in how people interact with evidence. Plausibly, not allways of interacting with evidence are rational. It is fairly uncontroversial that some epistemic thresholds, weightings of theoretical values, and so on result in epistemically impermissible responses to evidence.³ Beyond that, there is substantive disagreement. Proponents of uniqueness hold that, given a body of beliefs and evidence, there is precisely one rationally permissible response (White 2013, Dogramaci and Horowitz 2016, Schultheis 2018). Permissivists think that there is at least sometimes more than one permissible response, and differ as to how varied they take epistemically permissible responses to be (Douven 2009, Kelly 2013, Willard-Kyle 2017, Callahan forthcoming). Again, I am neutral on this debate: my focus here is on the descriptive claim that people respond in different ways, not on the rationality of those responses. The consequences of this diversity are far-reaching. Encountering a person who interacts with evidence in ways that are very different from your own can be a deeply disconcerting experience. Such responses can appear unintelligible. Why would someone respond in a way that is so different from our own? What could they possi- 2. Such theoretical values are not necessarily, or typically, consciously articulated. 3. Though not entirely uncontroversial: James (1979) argues that such settings are part of one’s passional life, and beyond rational assessment. One might then additionally think that the results of any such settings are epistemically permissible. 3 bly be thinking? This generates a sense of distance and alienation, and can easily lead to thinking that it is just not worth engaging with them. More specifically, finding others’ responses to evidence unintelligible easily leads to thinking they are deeply irrational—not merely that they responded to some evidence irrationally. Grimm (2019) labels this tendency to infer deep irrationality “judg- mentalism.” On judgmentalist views, others’ responses to evidence, where they differ from our own, are the result of their inability to reason well. From our vantage point, others appear not just to be responding irrationally (which they may or may no be), but to be irredeemably irrational.

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