title: Rationality: a social-epistemology perspective.
abstract: Both in philosophy and in psychology, human rationality has traditionally been studied from an "individualistic" perspective. Recently, social epistemologists have drawn attention to the fact that epistemic interactions among agents also give rise to important questions concerning rationality. In previous work, we have used a formal model to assess the risk that a particular type of social-epistemic interactions lead agents with initially consistent belief states into inconsistent belief states. Here, we continue this work by investigating the dynamics to which these interactions may give rise in the population as a whole.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Philosophy, University of Groningen Groningen, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Sylvia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wenmackers
authors.affiliation: Center for Molecular Modeling, Ghent University Ghent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Danny E P
authors.initials: DE
authors.lastname: Vanpoucke
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Philosophy, University of Groningen Groningen, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Igor
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Douven
keywords: beliefs; computer simulations; inconsistency; opinion dynamics; probability; rationality; social epistemology; theory