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The University of Chicago’s Independent Student Newspaper since 1892

Chicago Maroon

The University of Chicago’s Independent Student Newspaper since 1892

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Agnes Callard Discusses “Being Rational and Being Wrong” With Kevin Dorst at Night Owls Event

UChicago philosophy professor Agnes Callard discussed rationality and polarization with MIT philosophy professor Kevin Dorst.
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Courtesy of the Department of Philosophy
A flyer for the event.

At the latest installment of the Night Owls late-night debate series, UChicago philosophy professor Agnes Callard led a conversation titled “Are Your Political Opponents Rational?” with Kevin Dorst, a philosopher from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. By the time of the February 2 event, Classics 110 was filled over capacity, with latecomers sitting on the floor to watch.

Callard, who launched the Night Owls series in 2017, welcomed the audience before allowing Dorst to set the stage for his overarching argument about the theoretical rationality of our present state of political polarization. Dorst’s field of expertise is epistemology, which is a theory of knowledge concerned with the mind’s relationship with belief, truth, and justification.

Dorst’s core claim was that political polarization is caused by individuals responding rationally to ambiguous evidence. “When you present people with mixed evidence, you might think that it’ll make people less polarized. However, generally what happens is that people spend more time criticizing aspects of the study that oppose their viewpoint while accepting the one that they agree with as solid,” Dorst said. “So, when people have this tendency only to closely scrutinize their opposing argument, what effectively happens is an ambiguity symmetry in favor of their prior beliefs.”

Following the customary fifteen-minute break for cookies and hot chocolate, Callard pivoted the conversation, asking Dorst a question about Socrates: “Socrates thought true beliefs were a gift of God and therefore we should be empathetic towards those who have their beliefs wrong. I’m just interested to hear your reaction to that. How’s that different from your point of view?”

“There’s a part which I agree with, of empathy towards those who you disagree with,” Dorst responded. “On the other hand, I definitely disagree with Socrates. I think the view that no beliefs are epistemically rational is not stable, not coherent. It’s analogous to the view that there are no beliefs.”

After the event, Callard spoke with The Maroon about how this event with Dorst came to be. “[Political polarization] is a topic that I’ve been thinking about. I’ve been following Kevin’s work and have been reading it for years now. I feel like he has this super interesting angle that no one’s listening to or taking seriously.”

Speaking more generally about Night Owls, Callard said, “I’m often picking a topic as my chance to learn. It’s a funny thing in academia that you’re only really supposed to talk about things that you’re an expert in. For me, this event series is really nice because it gives me an opportunity to not be an expert and just be curious about something. I can invite someone who knows a lot more than I do and ask the sort of questions I would ask about their articles. I love this opportunity to be a novice about a subject and still be allowed to talk about it.”

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