Rethinking Information (Re:DIS)

In line with the Priority Programme’s epistemic approach to disinformation, the proposed project investigates the relationship between two competing ideals of belief formation, each of which suggests distinct understandings of and responses to disinformation.
In current legal debates, freedom of opinion is invoked as a constitutional restraint on regulating disinformation. This is justified but incomplete: Disinformative practices, though often protected by speakers’ freedom of opinion, also compromise recipients’ epistemic processes – in particular, their ability to form their beliefs freely on the basis of evidence and to exercise informed judgment. The constitutional commitment to freedom of opinion thus features on both sides of the challenge arising from disinformation. Only by recognizing this dual role can we hope to develop coherent approaches to its regulation, safeguarding the autonomy of both speakers and their audiences.
The proposed project seeks to elaborate this point by highlighting an often overlooked tension between two ideals of belief formation, both prominently featuring in constitutional law. On the autonomy-based conception, individuals are protected in forming and expressing beliefs without any obligation to provide reasons or justifications. The autonomy conception envisions an “inner citadel” in which individuals are free to believe whatever they wish and to speak as they please, shielded from undue interference. The evidence-based conception, by contrast, views belief formation as by its very nature governed by the epistemic reasons one has. Freedom of belief formation, on this conception, is not primarily negative – freedom from authority – but a positive capacity to form judgments that are responsive to reality. Beliefs do not form within the walls of an inner citadel, they have a mind-to-world direction of fit.
The autonomy-based conception is firmly established in constitutional doctrine, which affirms that beliefs and their expression are protected regardless of how unfounded or irrational they may be. The evidence-based conception underlies a wide array of legal regulations that impose epistemic obligations, ranging from anti-defamation laws to epistemic duties of care in media law. It is also implicit in the FCC’s rulings that “demonstrable" and "deliberate" falsehoods fall outside the scope of protection afforded by freedom of opinion. We thus are confronted with two competing conceptions of free opinion, each unable to explain and justify central tenets of free expression doctrine. The project seeks to unfold and, at best, resolve the tension described by proposing a conception that accommodates and integrates the demands of both autonomous and evidence-based belief formation. To that purpose, it draws on a number of key debates in epistemology (evidentialism, doxastic voluntarism, epistemic authority, epistemic autonomy) and bridges currently disconnected bodies of philosophical and legal research.