Dear all,

We will have our next LIRa session tomorrow, on Thursday, 20 February 16:30.

To attend, please use our recurring zoom link: https://uva-live.zoom.us/j/89230639823?pwd=YWJuSnJmTDhXcWhmd1ZkeG5zb0o5UT09 (Meeting ID: 892 3063 9823, Passcode: 421723)

You can find the details of the talk below.

Speaker: Gerhard Schurz (Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf)

Date and time: Thursday, February 20th 2025, 16:30-18:00

Venue: online.

Title: Meta-Induction and Its Applications in Social Epistemology

Abstract.

Meta-induction has been developed as a new approach to Hume's problem of justifying induction.  The approach concedes the force of Hume’s sceptical arguments against the possibility of a non-circular justification of the reliability of induction. What it demonstrates is that one can nevertheless give a non-circular justification of the optimality of induction based on meta-induction. The method of meta-induction tracks the success records of all accessible methods of prediction or action (including advice from experts, peers, or algorithms) and combines them in a success-dependent way, in order to obtain a superior method that is provably optimal among all predic­tion methods accessible to the epistemic agent.

Since meta-induction can be viewed as a form of social learning, it has important applications in social epistemology. In the second part of the talk a form of social learning called local meta-induction is presented. In local meta-induction it is assumed that individuals can access only the success records of the individuals in their immediate epistemic neighborhood. It is shown that local meta-inductive learning can spread reliable information over the entire population, and has clear advantages compared to success-independent social learning methods such as peer-imitation and authority-imitation.

Hope to see you there!

The LIRa team