Epistemology and Ethics in the Digital Age: Bullshit, Bots and Big Data

PHIL 389 Instructor: Ulf Hlobil; Th 8:45-11:30 am, Fall 2020

Computers and the internet are shaping our ways of experiencing and interacting with the world in fundamental ways.  In this course, we will reflect on the implications of this fact for our knowledge of the world as well as ethical and political implications.  The two central topics are, first, how digital technology changes our ability to acquire and use knowledge and, second, how digital technology may threaten our ability to act effectively and responsibly.  With respect to the first, we will look at the internet’s potential to democratize knowledge and the potential of big data for the social sciences, but also at dangers resulting from phenomena like personalized search results and news feeds.  The distinctions between knowledge and understanding and between lying and bullshitting will help us to make sense of our predicament.  Regarding effective and responsible action, we will look at some of the things that happened online during the 2016 US election, such as fake news, trolls, and the use of bots by political campaigns.  Starting from there, we will then broaden our perspective and think more generally about the use of power, new forms of communication, and surveillance technology in the digital age.

We will start by looking at a couple of recent events and phenomena related to the 2016 US election and to Wikipedia.  We will identify core problems and potentials of digital technology with respect to knowledge acquisition and effective action by working through these examples on the basis of journalistic pieces and recent papers in philosophy and psychology.  We then turn to some classic philosophical texts to help us understand what is going on, which will include Harry Frankfurt’s “On Bullshit”, excerpts from Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, Aristotle’s Rhetoric, and Mill’s On Liberty.  Then we will return to more recent philosophical papers on ethical and political implications of digital technology and related issues.  This will include papers by Rae Langton, Miranda Fricker, and Philip Kitcher.  We end by turning back to the issues of knowledge and understanding.  Here recent work by Allison Hills and Duncan Pritchard will be relevant.

No prior knowledge of philosophy or digital technology is required. Thoughtful existence, an open mind, a questioning spirit, willingness to read challenging texts, and to talk together in rigorously critical way are all that is needed.

Texts:  The texts will be available via Moodle