Knowledge Resistance and "Bad Beliefs" with Åsa Wikforss

In this talk Åsa Wikforss, professor of practical philosophy, discusses the rationality of “bad beliefs”, as defined in Levy (2021): Beliefs that go against easily available expert consensus. Such beliefs may be an expression of knowledge resistance, in which case they are irrational. According to Levy, however, these beliefs are typically rational. That philosophers have assumed them to be irrational, he suggests, is simply a reflection of a much too narrow conception of the relevant evidence. I argue that Levy’s attempt to rescue bad beliefs from being irrational fails, and that there are reasons to think that in the central cases bad beliefs tend to be irrational. However, Levy’s reasoning highlights an important detection challenge when it comes to studying knowledge resistance in the wild: A bad belief may be the result of knowledge resistance but it may also be perfectly rational given the subject’s prior beliefs. The challenge has consequences for the standard experiments on motivated cognition, as carried out by Kahan and colleagues, suggesting a confound in the experimental design. Preliminary data from new experiments carried out by a team from the RJ program on knowledge resistance suggest the confound is very real.This recording is from a research seminar held at the Institute for Futures Studies, Stockholm, Sweden in March 2025. Åsa Wikforss, professor of theoretical philosophy at Stockholm University and member of the Swedish Academy. Her research involves topics such as the philosophy of language, the nature of belief, and consciousness.Moderator: Gustaf Arrhenius. Research seminars are held at the institute most Wednesdays and are open to the public.