ABSTRACT
Individuals’ political beliefs may have a causal history that includes a lot of factors that don’t seem conducive to accuracy or knowledge. In this chapter we consider the epistemology of such factors. We consider the notion of bias and its contested relationship to rationality, including in the complex history of these concepts in psychology and cognitive science. We outline the structure of debunking arguments and note some theoretical challenges for these arguments, in particular the challenge of developing a “cudgel” narrow enough to leave us with at least some knowledge but broad enough to rule out the sorts of beliefs we want to be able to debunk. We close by considering various “rationalizing strategies” which establish that so-called cognitive biases aren’t actually irrational at all, with an extended discussion of recent work by Kevin Dorst.
