The Dissenter

#1133 Blake Roeber - Political Humility: The Limits of Knowledge in Our Partisan Political Climate

Aug 7, 2025
Blake Roeber, a philosopher at Notre Dame specializing in epistemology, dives into the complexities of political knowledge and humility. He discusses how cognitive biases skew belief formation in our polarized climate, stressing the importance of skepticism and open dialogue. Roeber also critiques common political identities, examines the perils of echo chambers, and promotes mindfulness to broaden perspectives. His insights challenge listeners to recognize the limits of their knowledge and engage more thoughtfully with political issues.
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INSIGHT

Political Knowledge Limits in US

  • Political knowledge requires beliefs to be formed by reliable processes aimed at truth.
  • Current American politics is highly polarized, causing most political beliefs to lack such reliability and thus, knowledge.
INSIGHT

Nature of Political Knowledge

  • Political knowledge consists of propositions useful in partisan contests.
  • Knowing contested factual claims can be used to support one party's positions over the other.
INSIGHT

Political Knowledge from Testimony

  • Nearly all political knowledge comes from testimony, meaning information conveyed by others.
  • This includes verbal accounts, writings, statistics, and graphs given by humans to other humans.
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