New paper! Identity-protective reasoning—defending beliefs tied to cherished social identities—is often seen as a cognitive vice driving polarization and democratic dysfunction. But what if it’s not all bad? 🧵
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I argue identity-protective reasoning can play a positive epistemic role, both individually and collectively. And this epistemic role matters especially in contexts where we should worry more about elite capture of our informational context rather than polarization. 2/
Collectively, it acts as a kind of epistemic insurance policy. By enabling groups to test divergent beliefs, it creates a division of cognitive labor. This helps guard against the risk that the total evidence might be misleading. (Cf lots of phil of science, from Lakatos to @kevinzollman.com) 3/
Individually (and less often noted!), it can correct for distortions caused by ideologically biased evidence. This is especially crucial for marginalized groups, who often face evidence that devalues their identities, beliefs, and practices. (@catsaintcroix.bsky.social on evidential oppression!) 4/
In fact, from marginalized positions, identity-protective reasoning isn’t just a defense against distorted evidence—it’s a tool for resisting dominant ideologies and developing resistant standpoints. Tying beliefs to identities can provide an epistemic advantage 5/
Notice that this does not generalize to all kinds of identity-protective reasoning. The idea is that its epistemic value is indexed to social position: it can entrench ignorance, but, when the evidence is systematically distorted, it can provide pockets of escape from dominant distortion 6/
Identity-protective reasoning can entrench polarization. For those who think polarization is The Big Risk for democracies, this makes it the enemy. But, what if, as @samuel-bagg.bsky.social and @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social suggest, we should worry more about elite capture? 7/
This seems very similar to something I'm working on myself, though from a layman perspective. I'm very interested in reading your work. Thank you for sharing it here!
Omg. Caro. I literally just sent in a draft on snobbery that focuses on unwarranted identity-protective reasoning. I will absolutely be updating it with this absolutely perfect ref. This is so excellent.
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