Myside bias is the tendency to favour one's prior beliefs in the gathering and evaluation of evidence. Despite it being a bias, it is unclear whether myside bias should always be considered epistemically irrational and which, if any, intervention it requires. It is also unclear which demarcation criteria we could use to make out rational and irrational applications of myside reasoning. The consensual and veritistic effects of myside bias are relevant to these issues, but they remain largely unknown. Can agents that deliberate with a myside bias ever come to agreement? How would interventions against myside bias shape our pathway to the truth? This talk contributes to our understanding of myside bias by exploring these consensual and veritistic dynamics in a computational model of artificial, rational agents. Simulations on the model suggest that there are at least two types of myside bias with significantly different epistemic effects. These results contribute to understanding the function of myside bias in our reasoning and when we should intervene.

Recent work in formal social epistemology has employed agent-based models from the Bala-Goyal framework to study the mechanisms involved when the so-called "Tobacco strategy" undermines collective inquiry. Motivated by limitations of these models, we propose an alternative based on a recently introduced framework for normative argument exchange across networks. We implement representations of two distinct types of industry influence: 'Obfuscating' directs inquiry to experiments with low expected value of information. 'Misleading' filters private research and only communicates misleading signals from the world. We explored the impacts of both strategies on the polarization & mean error of, and flow of information through, social networks of scientists via computer simulations. We conclude that even against highly optimistic background assumptions and in a less simplified model of inquiry, industry influence poses a significant potential threat.

In this paper, I introduce a new non-summative account of group beliefs for agential groups. My account makes use of the notion of common belief, which is well studied and formalized in game theory and multi-agent epistemic logic. I argue that group beliefs for agential groups can be accounted for in terms of propositions that are commonly believed to be believed by some members of the group, provided that no member has objections to let these propositions be the group’s stance. I argue that this account has several promising features. First, it satisfies Lackey’s Group Lie Desideratum. Second, it allows the ascriptions of background group beliefs, something the joint acceptance accounts are seemingly unable to do. Third, it allows the ascriptions of the correct group beliefs in cases in which there is a systematic mismatch between privately held beliefs and openly shared expressions of beliefs, something Lackey’s Group Agent Account is seemingly unable to address.

I argue against the mainstream views of ignorance and the lack of true beliefs as a necessary condition for an x to qualify as ignorance. I argue that the lack of true belief condition is not compatible with ignorance instances developed by critical theorists, for example white ignorance. I then conclude that we should seek a perspective that does not use the lack of true belief as a condition for an x to be an instance of ignorance. I propose instead the Potentia view of ignorance, focusing on the lack of epistemic agency in the ignorant subject, which can be formulated as: S is ignorant of P iff S has the potentia to know that P. I defend that the Potentia view has many advantages, one of them being to be compatible with critical theories such as white ignorance.