Echo Chambers and Collective Epistemic Vice

Abstract

Echo chambers are a recently popularised subject for discussion in terms of their presenting or not presenting an epistemic problem. One common assumption about echo chambers is that they are bad for the overall epistemic climate. Also in recent upswing in popularity is the discussion of epistemic vices, which attempts to explain some types of epistemically bad or problematic phenomena in terms of flaws in epistemic character. A recent account by C. Thi Nguyen argues that echo chambers are self- isolating epistemic structures that sustain their epistemic isolation through epistemically unwarranted mechanisms that give increased credibility to the testimony of in-group-members and decreased credibility to that from outside the group. This does not mean that the members adhering to this behaviour are necessarily epistemically vicious, however, but that the socioepistemic structure itself is. In this work, I aim to make clear whether the interpretation of echo chambers as collectively but not individually epistemically vicious is viable through the lens of a responsibilist perspective on collective epistemic vice. I do this through setting up desiderata that a theory of collective epistemic vice would optimally meet in order to explain echo chambers as collectively epistemically vicious and then evaluating extant accounts of collective epistemic vice and some on collective virtue against these. No account analysed is a perfect fit, but the evaluation I give of these might present an indication of what to take into account going forward. Elsewise, if one is so inclined, the present theoretical inability to explain echo chambers in this way might constitute a reason to examine whether echo chambers might be better explained in terms of individual epistemic vice, or to pursue other avenues of explanation altogether.