The Epistemic Cognition of Evaluating Sources

• In Event: Learning From Others: Advancing Theory and Research on Learning From Sources

Abstract

Our objective is to present a psychological model of understanding sources, including both testimonial and non-testimonial sources. The model is grounded in an extensive review of both philosophical and psychological literatures (Chinn, Buckland, & Samarapungavan, in press). We have shown that philosophical work provides many insights about epistemic cognition that can inform psychological research, and in a wide-ranging review of over 200 major works in philosophy as well as over 250 psychological and educational papers, we have developed a model that integrates philosophical and psychological insights on these issues.

Among the significant features of the model are the following: (1) The model emphasizes the role of a multitude of sources, beyond the sources typically considered by psychologists. For example, it includes sources discussed extensively by philosophers such as memory, perception (seldom explicitly discussed by psychologists), and introspection. It also incorporates sources such as religious sources (revelation, scripture), fiction, and art. (2) The model emphasizes that most knowledge derives not from a single source but from multiple interacting and interdependent sources. For example, an individual’s physics knowledge likely derives from the testimony of scientists, from experiences, from reasoning about experiences and other information, and from memory (one must be able to remember what one has experienced and reasoned about). The model specifies conditions under which different sources will be active and inactive. (3) The model asserts that nearly all knowledge has testimony as one of its sources, as discussed briefly in the introduction to this symposium. (4) The model indicates that sources should be conceived of as complex causal processes by which knowledge is produced. For example, a science teacher and a priest may both provide testimony, but their statements originate in complex causal histories of past inquiry and learning. In the case of the science teacher, this involves past experimentation, the processes by which scientists consolidate and argue about evidence, the processes of producing textbooks, and so on. Understanding sources thus requires untangling the very different causal processes by which knowledge claims are produced. People have prior beliefs about which of these processes can reliably produce knowledge and which cannot. Indeed, there many different kinds of processes by which knowledge is produced. Many of these processes are social processes, such as argumentation, collaborative problem solving, and so on. (5) Finally, the effectiveness of these processes for generating knowledge depends crucially on the instantiation of a variety of conditions. The model thus specifies the conditions that people believe to determine whether the processes reliably produce knowledge or not. The model specifies 14 significant individual, social, and institutional processes that interact to produce knowledge claims, together with a range of conditions under which each process is likely to yield knowledge.

In the paper, we present evidence for our model from the philosophical and psychological literatures. We also highlight how the model can provide an integrated account of the data presented in the other four papers of this symposium, and we show how it suggests a variety of new lines of promising research.

Authors

• Clark A. Chinn, Rutgers University

• Luke Andrew Buckland, Rutgers University