Dr Carline Klijnman
- School: School of Philosophy
- Mentor: Prof. Maria Baghramian
When Citizens Don’t Know Whom to Believe: Failures in the Testimonial Exchange of Political Information and Its Implications for Epistemic Democracy
Funded through a Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship 2024, I am currently preparing papers from my PhD research for publication. My research contributes to the emerging yet influential field of political epistemology. It inquires how the contemporary epistemic environment affects testimonial exchange of political information, and what the implications of these changes are for epistemic merits of democracy. Utilizing concepts and tools from the social epistemology of testimony, the thesis analyses the perceived ‘epistemic crisis’ (especially regarding denial of scientific consensus and contestation of expertise) and locates issues that have so far remained underexplored. It provides a deeper understanding of the epistemic challenges citizens face in determining which sources to trust, teases out their ethical dimension and discusses how these challenges bear on citizens’ epistemic responsibilities. Existing literature mainly emphasizes the effects of the epistemic crisis on belief outcomes (e.g. false beliefs and ignorance) and on instrumental conceptions of democracy. My thesis instead directs attention to underlying issues regarding the epistemic status of our beliefs, the undermining of fairness in testimonial exchanges and its implications for procedural (i.e. fairness based) conceptions of democracy.
In other work I also engage with various research interests at the intersection of political philosophy, ethics and epistemology, including: voting ethics, virtue and vice epistemology, moral and epistemic responsibility, moral encroachment, testimony, and epistemic justice.
Contact details:
Email: (opens in a new window)Carline Klijnman
Personal webpage: (opens in a new window)Carline Klijnman
Phil People: (opens in a new window)Carline Klijnman (Università degli Studi di Genova (PhD)) - PhilPeople
Academia: (opens in a new window)https://ucd.academia.edu/CarlineKlijnman