by Rachel Robison-Greene
As soon as Joan opened her eyes for the first time, she knew things. The knowledge didn’t always stick around long; she formed beliefs based on fleeting perceptions. Eventually she came to recognize the familiar sights, smells, and sounds of her parents and family. As she grew, she found that she could direct and control some of what she knew. She used that power to craft her identity. She found she loved to learn facts about history. She enjoyed figuring out how to cook new dishes for the people she loved. She was excited each time she could identify a plant at a glance.
Human beings are blessed and cursed with this power—the power not only to know things, but to take ownership of and control over what we know. We use this ability in the service of the life quest that is determining who we are and what we care about.
In his Meditations on First Philosophy, the philosopher Rene Descartes famously engaged in a reflective survey of the things he’d come to believe in his life. He recognized the weight of that responsibility and took it seriously. He describes the process,
Some years ago I was struck by the large number of falsehoods that I had accepted as true in my childhood, and by the highly doubtful nature of the whole edifice that I had subsequently based on them. I realized that it was necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last. But the task looked an enormous one, and I began to wait until I should reach a mature enough age to ensure that no subsequent time of life would be more suitable for tackling such inquiries. This led me to put the project off for so long that I would now be to blame if by pondering over it any further I wasted the time still left for carrying it out. So today I have expressly rid my mind of all worries and arranged for myself a clear stretch of free time. I am here quite alone, and at last I will devote myself sincerely and without reservation to the general demolition of my opinions.
Descartes recognized that there was something irresponsible about being nothing more than a passive receiver of beliefs. An infant can be excused for simply forming beliefs on the basis of sense impressions. The older we get, the more of a responsibility we have to make sure that we believe true things. Or, at the very least, we have a responsibility to try not to believe false ones.
Over the past thirty years, epistemologists have recognized the importance of the distinctly social features of knowledge. Questions concerning when we’re justified, the nature of perception and memory, and the value of introspection are interesting, but so too are questions about testimony, epistemic justice, and belief-formation environments that are inescapably social.
Belief formation processes can be painful. Reading, writing, and speaking with others take both time and vulnerability. We open ourselves up to criticism and judgment. Early on, our knowledge bases are small and many of our beliefs are not just inaccurate, they’re silly and ill founded. We grow and become knowledgeable and wise when we are willing to face criticism and refutation and when we are epistemically humble enough to learn from those who know more. These are epistemic virtues that it is important for a society to encourage its members to develop.
Resilience is difficult to build, and it can be tempting to give up or to take shortcuts. AI provides people with those shortcuts and tempts them in that direction. Why read a challenging paper and discuss it with peers and teachers when it’s possible to just have the finer points summarized? Why work through difficult language when AI can present the same material in a way anyone could understand?
AI threatens to build communities of belief formers with shallow knowledge bases—beliefs formed on the basis of summaries rather than more substantive investigations. It flattens and homogenizes the culture of knowledge in social spaces.
We develop our bodies through rigorous exercise. The same thing is true of our minds. Our innate curiosity motivates us to learn about the things that matter to us. Our knowledge about the things that matter to us is central to who we are, and it is in the best interest of each individual as well as in the collective interest of the larger group to do what it takes to make sure those identities are deep and rich. The kinds of identities that we value the most aren’t crafted through shallow engagement. They’re crafted through epistemic virtue.
It can also be easy in this technology rich environment to direct our curiosity toward things that are bright, flashy, and fast. Short form content distracts us from material with more substance. I’ve argued above that there are social dimensions that should govern how we form beliefs, but there are also clear social dimensions that govern the subjects we should seek out.
People appeal to lack of knowledge to excuse them from responsibility, and sometimes that is warranted. None of us can know everything. That said, there are facts that it’s important to know as a responsible citizen of a community. If a person concerns themselves with only with knowing the number of blades of grass on a lawn, the number of grains of sand on a beach, or the personal histories of all the stars of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, they’re failing to satisfy their obligations as knowers in a community. Limiting oneself to meaningless knowledge isn’t universalizable. Someone has to care about knowing what matters and we all should.
As is often noted, knowledge is power. We live in an epistemic climate in which the rich and powerful have used surveillance capitalism to know most of what there is to know about everyone with a social media profile. It’s no time to dull our epistemic senses. Shallow people are easy to manipulate.
Joan notices that most of her beliefs aren’t really up to her. She just finds herself with beliefs about the day’s weather or how many cars are on the freeway. Some beliefs are up to her, however, and she knows it’s her obligation to choose wisely.
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