Åsa Wikforss recently gave a talk in Peritia’s lecture series [Un]Truths: Trust in an Age of Disinformation, on the topic of knowledge resistance. Among other things, the talk focused on how to demarcate this very concept. From the talk’s “abstract”:
The talk examines the concept of knowledge resistance from a philosophical point of view. Knowledge resistance involves ignorance, but not all ignorance involves knowledge resistance. While ordinary ignorance can be overcome by supplying information, evidence, it is distinctive of knowledge resistant ignorance that supplying information does not help since the evidence is resisted. At a first approximation, then, knowledge resistance involves resisting available evidence. However, this characterization needs to be unpacked to be of any use. How is the notion of resistance to be understood and which are the psychological mechanisms involved? To what extent does knowledge resistance involve irrationality? And what does it mean for evidence to be available?
Those interested may visit Peritias website and find a link to the book chapter draft which this talk was largely based on. This chapter will be published in Knowledge Resistance‘s upcoming volume titled Knowledge resistance in high-choice information environments.