Abstract
This chapter focuses on the curation of cognitive niches understood as the curation of eco-cognitive chances: as chances can be faked, it seems intuitive to think that the inhibition of chance-faking contexts is a good activity of chance curation. Yet, could this activity sometimes be counterproductive? The question will be answered positively considering the case of bullshit as a case of fake chances, but also as a fertile ground for learning and developing intuitions. Ultimately, this chapter will argue that the peculiar context, that is the cognitive niche supporting the (potentially) fake chances, is the discriminating factor: indeed, a rich cognitive niche may benefit from certain kind of fake chances—which should therefore not be inhibited—whereas a poorer niche might not benefit from this situation, and therefore the preclusion of fake chances is an act of chance curation in those contexts.
Parts of this chapter were originally published in L. Magnani, T. Bertolotti (2013). Selecting chance curation strategies: Is chance curation related to the richness of a cognitive niche? International Journal of Knowledge and Systems Science vol 4(1) (pp. 50–61). Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
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Notes
- 1.
This point is all the more interesting considering that Frankfurt ’s proposal was indeed received by curat ors of certain kind of cognitive niches as a curat ion manual (Perla and Carifio 2007).
- 2.
A full illustration of the various negative and positive cognitive role of fallacies is given in Magnani (2009, Chap. 7). Fallacies are a highly relevant topic in eco-cognitive epistemology and therefore mentioned several times along this book: in particular, they had a crucial theoretical role when exploring linguistic camouflage and those strategies aimed at its debunking (Sect. 2.4).
- 3.
Sustainers of the New Atheists, sociobiologists and cognitive scientists of religion will probably deem the last two paragraphs to be quite an oversimplification. It is probably so, but as I stated the intention here is not to exhaustively eviscerate the matter (which will be the object of a dedicated study in the near future), but just to point out how—as for chance discovery and chance curat ion—religion does pose a similar riddle to bullshit . A more complete analysis of religion, from an epistemological and pragmatic perspective, will be the object of Part III.
- 4.
As stated earlier, bullshit ing is not to be confused with intentional lying.
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Bertolotti, T. (2015). Curating the Richness of Cognitive Niches. In: Patterns of Rationality. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 19. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17786-1_6
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