Imperfect Cognitions

Today's post is an interview with Paolo Costa, who is a researcher at the Center for Religious Studies of the Bruno Kessler Foundation and leads the Resilient Beliefs project, and Eugenia Lancellotta, who is a postdoctoral researcher on the project. We talked about the Resilient Beliefs project.  Paolo Costa KMH: What is the 'Resilient Beliefs' project all about? PC & EL: It is a collaborative program involving 9 researchers in philosophy and theology and three different institutions: the Fondazione Bruno Kessler in Trento, in Italy, and the Universities of Innsbruck and Brixen in Austria. It is about hyper-robust beliefs, so to speak. By “hyper-robust beliefs” I mean beliefs that are especially resistant to criticism and change induced by counterargument and counterevidence. Now, these beliefs are often seen as irrational, because we tend to link rationality with revisability, flexibility, adaptability, etc.  But, of course, people who change their mind too ea...

As part of the Knowledge Resistance project, a conference was organised in Stockholm from 23rd to 25th August 2022 to bring together philosophers, psychologists, media studies researchers, and journalists and discuss recent work on misinformation. This event was organised by Åsa Wikforss ( interviewed on knowledge resistance here ).  Stockholm University, Albano In this report, I will summarise some of the talks. DAY 1 In his talk entitled “Resistance to Knowledge and Vulnerability to Deception”, Christopher F. Chabris (Geisinger Health System) argued that we need to understand our vulnerabilities to deception in order to appreciate the social aspects of knowledge resistance. He illustrated with many interesting examples of famous deceptions and frauds how deceivers exploit blind spots in our attention and some of our cognitive habits.  Christopher Chabris For instance, we tend to judge something as accurate if it is predictable and consistent. We make predictions all t...