THE UNIVERSITY, THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL, AND THE ART OF CONVERSATION

COMMENTARY THE UNIVERSITY, THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL, AND THE ART OF CONVERSATION Waldomiro J. Silva Filho Federal Univerity of Bahia Maria Virginia Machado Dazzani Federal Univerity of Bahia Giuseppina Marsico University of Salerno and Federal University of Bahia ----------> AU: Chapter headings are not numbered in APA INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEM Throughout the world, the university is the most important institution for the production and diffusion of scientific knowledge, and the training of professionals, technologists, and qualified specialists in diverse knowledge areas. Moreover, the university gathers thinkers from different intellectual positions to tackle the incalculable number of topics of importance to humanity. It is the core of this book titled University in the 21st century, edited by Geberth and Woller (2023) we have been kindly invited to comment upon. The cultural scenario at the beginning of the 21st century presents the university with new challenges, principally because of the crisis in liberal University in the 21st Century, pp. xiii–xxx Copyright © 2023 by Information Age Publishing www.infoagepub.com All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. xiii xiv W. J. SILVA FILHO ET AL. democracies (Brennan, 2016; Dazzani & Souza, 2016; Levitski & Ziblatt, 2019; Marsico, 2018; Sampaio, 2010; Santos & Sampaio, 2020; Valsiner et ----------> al., 2018). We can divide these challenges into two categories: (a) political and social; and (b) institutional. In terms of political and social challenges, a AU: New in APA 7: use “et series of events in the cultural sphere pose a serious threat to the traditional al.” for three or achievements of liberal democratic societies, such as the position of science more authors right from the and scientific knowledge, and the role of universities. Among these events, first citation.. we note the rise of political groups from the far right, the proliferation of obscurantist movements, attacks on scientists, intellectuals, artists, and journalists, and the existence of a digital world involved in the mass diffusion of disinformation and lies produced on an industrial scale. These events tear at the epistemic web of contemporary societies.1 In reference to something we describe here as institutional challenges, the new economic liberalism (also known as neoliberalism) tends to view the university exclusively as an institution that trains a skilled workforce to meet market demands and produces transferable technologies for the chain of production. At the same time, there is a tendency to diminish the relevance of, and consequently funding for, the humanities and social sciences (Battaly, 2014). We will not address this second aspect directly here.2 There are two topics of interest to us in this chapter that may contribute with the general goal of the volume: (1) the notion of the tearing of the public epistemic web, the loss of epistemic confidence in institutions such as science, the university and professional journalism and (2) how the university can actively help to confront this cultural trend. We will call this notion of the tearing of the public epistemic web the “epistemic quagmire.” As suggested above, one of the most striking impacts of this “epistemic quagmire” is the erosion of trust in epistemic agents (Dazzani et al., 2020). This has created a tendency to discard the notion of reliable informants and, therefore, any distinction between a merely personal opinion and a rationally justified belief, between truth based on good, publically accessible, evidence and a mere point of view (of an individual or a group). In this “epistemic quagmire” the public arena and public debate have disintegrated, while “polarizations” have emerged that cannot be overcome through arguments, better reason, or evidence. Moreover, as in the cases of the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change, this erosion of the public epistemic constitutes a grave threat to the rights and lives of millions of men and women. In this chapter, we will argue that, faced with this new scenario, one of the university’s missions is to lead the defence of the public epistemic arena. To this end, among other things, the university should train students in the intellectual skills required to participate as “public intellectuals” in the public debate, while, at the same time, constituting an arena for this public debate and a vehicle for information that reduces polarization. Commentary xv The central concept here is the conversation: a cooperative task between epistemic agents in search of the best means and reasons on which to base their beliefs in the case of a disagreement or difference of opinion. The university can and should contribute to civil conversation. The chapter is divided into four sections. In the first, entitled “Epistemic Quagmire,” we will present what, in our opinion, describes the erosion of the public epistemic arena in current societies. In the second and more extensive section, “The Art of Conversation,” we present a theoretical formulation about conversation as a public arena of dispute from epistemic disagreements; here we propose that the conversation is an epistemically regulated practice of vital importance for the life of democratic societies. In the third, “Conversation and Polarization,” we discuss one of the consequences of the erosion of the public epistemic arena. In the last section, “The University and the Public Intellectual,” we outline how the university can contribute to understanding and confronting the cultural movement eroding the public epistemic arena.3 EPISTEMIC QUAGMIRE In a democracy, epistemic trust in institutions and other people is absolutely essential. Not only in democracy, but in human experience in general, we are epistemically dependent on one another, on the words of others, on the testimony (information) of others, since we depend on a network of epistemic cooperation in order to acquire knowledge about significant parts of the world inaccessible to isolated people or an isolated group. Moreover, one of the most important practices in all cultures refers to the appropriate distinction between reliable and unreliable sources of information. The survival and advance of civilizations depend on this. The greater the epistemic cooperation, the greater the human knowledge. In contemporary societies, certain institutions, such as science, professional journalism, the State itself and the university, have occupied a privileged position in the hierarchy of public epistemic trust. And it is these institutions that are at the center of a new cultural war. With no intention of being exhaustive, two recent events of global proportion have affected the natural inclination of human cultures in liberal democracies: 1. The rise to power of far-right politicians and parties through the legitimate means of the vote in consolidated democracies. These political agents bring with them a xenophobic agenda, conservative customs, ultraliberal economic relations, anti-scientism, and express attacks on intellectuals, artists, scientists, journalists, and xvi W. J. SILVA FILHO ET AL. universities, almost always with an appeal for inspiration from traditional or religious values to justify their actions, and: 2. The production of “disinformation” on an industrial scale, aimed at promoting and sustaining an extremist and negationist agenda. This production of lies (euphemistically called fake news and post-truth) attacks the epistemic credibility of science, the university, journalism, and any agent who expresses disagreement with the extremist agenda. The idea of post-truth, for example, means that many agents consider the truth, (understood as intersubjective agreement between statements—assertions—facts and available evidence), as not relevant, meaning that people and groups can form their own beliefs about crucial issues. In a movement that, for example, culminated in the United States (2016) and Brazilian (2018) elections, and in Brexit (2016), many people began to nurture a declared disregard for the truth and reality. Given this, based on a vague sense of “freedom of expression,” many social agents declared it natural to accept that all discourse is equally valid and, consequently, everyone has the right to choose what to believe, according to their private inclinations, ideology, and religion. 3. This has had an epistemically tragic consequence: it has loosened the bonds of social trust. Edward Craig (1990) calls the conditions under which individuals collectively organize to guarantee their survival a state of nature. Some of the basic needs of this “state of nature” are epistemic, that is they are needs that involve the sharing of true beliefs (and the avoidance of false ones) as a mechanism for survival. The combination of elements (1) and (2) above has created a quagmire, meaning that institutions, public trust, and the transmission of knowledge have no firm ground on which to move and prosper. ----------> AU: No reference for John Greco citation. Please add to reference list. According to John Greco (2020), our current social and political situation is characterized by the growth of a form of incivility marked by anti-scientism and tribalism: In many ways, it seems to me, the current situation can be diagnosed as a disintegration of epistemic communities, attended by increased suspicion and decreasing charity toward any perceived outsider. A salient feature is the ways in which those outside one’s own intellectual circles—those with whom one disagrees—are increasingly characterized as morally and/or intellectually flawed. Our only explanation of opinions that diverge from Commentary xvii our own is that those who hold them must be either immoral, ignorant, or irrational, or perhaps some combination of these. (p. ix) “Tribalism” or “tribal epistemologies” take shape within the circumscribed arenas of identity-based and dogmatic groups, and ideological corporations that exclusively view the world according to particular agendas and demands.4 Another important consequence is the way in which these contemporary societies have started to deal with epistemic disagreements, in other words, disagreements over beliefs about topics of interest. One example includes disagreements about the nature and means of tackling the COVID-19 pandemic (between 2020 and 2022) and climate change. Ideological, political, religious, and personal inclinations tend to create polarizations that hinder dialogue based on arguments and, consequently, rational agreement. We will return to this point in the third section. “Epistemic quagmire” and “polarization” are two faces of the same contemporary cultural phenomenon. ----------> AU: In the description of the four sections above, this section is titled “The Art of Conversation.” Please reconcile. EPISTEMOLOGY OF CONVERSATION The central concept of this chapter, the one upon which we have based our proposal for university action, is conversation. Perhaps there is no more frequent human event, which occurs equally across all cultures, than a meeting of one or more people to talk about commonplace and urgent topics, many of which are decisive for their existence. This is not what we are addressing here. In this chapter we consider the “Epistemology of Conversation” to be a field in social epistemology (Goldman & Whitcomb, 2011) dedicated to investigating the strictly epistemic norms that should govern a linguistic intervention between two or more people regarding a target proposition (or a series of target propositions) relevant to them. Sanford Goldberg’s (2020) Conversational Pressure is an important landmark in the Epistemology of Conversation since it directly explores the epistemic phenomenon of conversation. Goldberg is principally concerned with the constraints and norms generated by the actual performance of certain linguistic acts, such as assertions, statements, testimonies, reports, and similar acts that involve “saying something”, and to which the speaker and listener are committed (p. 2). Among other issues, an Epistemology of Conversation should concern itself with at least five aspects of conversation: xviii a. b. c. d. e. W. J. SILVA FILHO ET AL. a relevant epistemic motive for the conversation may be epistemic disagreement about a target proposition between epistemic peers; in cases of legitimate disagreement, a conversation between peers who share a common (or approximate) epistemic goal is a cooperative means or method5 for an investigation of the truth or other epistemic good; some of the epistemic requirements for the participants in a conversation are linguistic abilities, while others are epistemic virtues; epistemic moderation is an appropriate measure of the epistemic agent’s own intellectual abilities and limitations, and is a decisive element for participants in a conversation to avoid vices such as arrogance and humiliation, which hinder the formation of reliable beliefs and; regardless of the outcome of a conversation between peers based on a disagreement, any outcome (knowledge, understanding, changing, or maintaining the individual’s epistemic position, or even concluding with the assertion that p; the denial that p; or reaching a suspension of judgement), will be a good achievement, which can only be attained through conversation, rather than other means. We will address points (A) and (C) in more detail. The Act of Conversation ----------> AU: Year does not match reference. Please reconcile. Donald Davidson (1992, pp. 109–110) asks: “How many speakers or interpreters of a language must there be for there to be one speaker of that language?” We note that Davidson asks himself about the existence of the speaker (which makes the person an agent of language) rather than about the existence of the language (which turns a series of sounds and graphics into a language). Properly considering this question means altering any inquiry into the nature of language and the conditions of meaning: rather than inquiring into the abstract concept of a language or the general conditions for the use of that language, Davidson observes an empirical phenomenon and tries to understand what people are doing when they perform significant actions (assuming that this is the case). When we do this, when we observe the behaviour of someone who performs a significant action, our first observation is that they do this by going up to someone. It is no coincidence that Davidson chose as an epigraph of his essay this eloquent passage from Philosophical Investigations “meaning something is like going towards someone” (Wittgenstein, 1953/2000, § 457). This is the point: someone expresses something meaningful to someone else in order for the Commentary xix other person to understand, to interpret what they say; the other person interprets the first person’s phrases and statements because they understand that the speaker’s aim is to be understood. Language’s normative and social traits are revealed in this apparently trivial fact. From this perspective, the notion of “significance” and thus of events that involve “saying something about something” should be understood as an inter-rational phenomenon that takes place within the sphere of linguistic interactions between people. For R. Moran (2018, p. 35), these are social acts, consisting of assuming, or refusing to assume, moral and epistemic responsibilities towards other people, while the ability to do this in speech constitutes the basic ability of any speaker. Declarative acts, acts of “saying something” (acts of affirming, asserting, declaring, reporting, asking, telling about the world) are performative acts that we do for other people, with other people and in tension with them. Strictly speaking, a statement is an assertive linguistic act which consists of a speaker uttering a meaningful phrase in relation to which they commit themselves to the value of truth. If José utters the phrase, “It is raining,” addressed to a listener and committed to the truth of what he says, he is declaring that it is raining. As John Searle (1979, p. 12) writes, statements commit the speaker to ----------> AU: No the fact that their speech expresses the truth of a proposition. The criteria reference for to evaluate the phrase is its “word-world” fit, where the state expressed is John Searle the “truth that p”, in other words, it is through this declared phrase that citation. Please add to the speaker tells their interlocutor that they believe that p and that p is the reference list. case, is the truth.6 As discussed here, this is fundamental to conversation. This problem, however, is not exclusive to the philosophy of language. More recently, and specifically in social epistemology, there has been a wealth of studies about the epistemology of politics and the epistemology of democracy that address the formation and distribution of beliefs within the political sphere, particularly the epistemic formation of deliberation, a central pillar of liberal democracies. This is because one of the necessary features of the democratic way of life appears to be connected to the fact that political agents cannot renounce the power of words or the open, indeterminate, back-and-forth dispute for reason in the arena of dialogue—for conversation based on arguments. The ability to participate in a civil conversation refers to a basic ability in the democratic game: to replace all power and violence with the power of speech, to be able to debate in front of a human audience and to see one’s rival, one’s opponent, as an equal. In the wake of the wave that has engulfed politics within consolidated democratic states in different parts of the world, and with the rise to power of far-right politicians and parties through the legitimate means of the popular vote, certain topics have xx W. J. SILVA FILHO ET AL. begun to dominate the epistemological agenda. These include themes such as “polarization,” “silencing,” “the erosion of knowledge diffusion,” of the epistemic pathologies that hamper the transmission and sharing of knowledge (Broncano-Berrocal & Carter, 2021; Edenberg & Hannon, 2021; Hannon & Ridder, 2021; Johnson, 2018; Tanesini & Lynch, 2021). Conversation and Disagreement Broadly speaking, Goldberg (2020) considers conversation to involve two aspects: the interpersonal and the epistemic. In relation to the interpersonal aspect, he understands conversation to be a rational and cooperative act; when someone performs certain linguistic acts, such as to state, report or affirm, this generates rational expectations and demands in the interlocutor. In terms of the epistemic aspect, he considers such acts to involve an exchange of the speaker’s representations and beliefs about what the world is like. For Goldberg, this epistemic aspect is directly associated with the notion of testimony (Goldberg, 2010), that is, how we acquire knowledge through other people’s words. Without going into Goldberg’s arguments in detail, we will concentrate on an aspect that appears to be central to any Epistemology of Conversation, namely, the epistemic value of testimony. After all, a conversation should essentially be a means of exchanging beliefs and knowledge, which are transmitted through the participants’ testimony. However, here we are not arguing that the main reference point of an Epistemology of Conversation is an abstract structure of the linguistic and epistemic interactions between agents in a conversation. We are suggesting that there is another aspect for consideration. We are referring here to the epistemic motivations that make two or more people begin or join a conversation and, more importantly, the reasons for them to remain in a conversation, since the epistemic demands of a conversation are high. This can be summarized into a question: why converse? It is clear that we are not talking here about trivial conversations, but rather ones that involve the speaker’s fundamental beliefs about the world. It is the case that, in the dynamic of our social lives, these beliefs about the world may be constant and reasonably challenged. This is the setting for epistemic disagreements.7 In rational disagreements the agents maintain divergent positions about a target proposition and earn the legitimate right to challenge their interlocutor’s beliefs. In cases such as these, if, through the principle of charity, the interlocutors are considered equally rational and have access to the same (or approximately the same) evidence, it seems to us that the interlocutors themselves also are entitled to challenge our beliefs. Further, in relation to their interlocutors, all the participants make a commitment to equally examine their own and their interlocutors’ beliefs in the initial search for Commentary xxi truth or for another epistemic good— such as knowledge or understanding. Disagreement, if it is legitimate, means that someone (or both) is wrong. Given that the common goal should be the truth or another epistemic objective, the participants in the conversation should not discount these possibilities. In this disagreement, people who have beliefs may (and in certain situations should) become involved in an effort to present the reasons for their belief. In more general terms, we would call a situation in which an individual as an epistemic agent is rationally authorized to disagree with another individual (given the same or similar evidence and a rational assessment of the issue) a “context of disagreements.” In this context, an individual may remain true to their own initial perspective and feel authorized to have a high degree of confidence in their belief. However, what interests us are those situations in which this confidence may, to some extent, be shaken by the word of the other person. And this might happen to any of the various participants in the conversation. We have used the term “conversation” here in its epistemic sense because we suggest that one significant motivation for evaluating epistemic attitudes does not arise from the sceptical challenges of the Cartesian model (which places under suspicion our ability to know the exterior world), but rather from dialogic disagreement between subjects who consider themselves to be epistemic peers. “Conversation” is also a broad and imprecise term, meaning an interpersonal exchange about a topic of disagreement. We could call a dialectic conversation a special case motivated by a difference of opinions about relevant issues that may not be solved through empirical data and logical proof (if we disagree with an observation about the climate, we can simply open a window; if we disagree about a mathematical proof, we can perform another calculation). In this type of dialectic disagreement, the participants pose questions and demand reasons, since they do not agree about proposition p (or not p), or in order to make decision y (or x). We encounter this dialectic in all areas of ordinary human life, from the vegetable market to the courts of justice. What is important is that, even in the simplest daily activity, a dialectic challenge creates demands and expectations that force the agent to evaluate both the credentials that justify their own beliefs and those that justify the beliefs of their interlocutor. This evaluation tests the reasons that the individual presents in the epistemic public domain, which are in conflict with the opposite reasons (presented by their interlocutors, opponents or by the person him or herself). Conversation and Intellectual Virtues To talk about “epistemic virtues” involves addressing the epistemic agent’s skills and character in terms of how they acquire and handle xxii W. J. SILVA FILHO ET AL. epistemic goods, such as the truth, knowledge and understanding. In this way, knowledge should no longer be analysed in terms of mental state or representation but begin to be interpreted as a form of successful agent performance. For Ernest Sosa (2007), there is knowledge when the person’s performance is apt, that is, it is the result of the person’s competence, in other words, of their virtues. In many ways, being a rational agent not only means being able to have doxastic attitudes (such as believing, knowing, and desiring) but also being able to reevaluate these doxastic attitudes (and emotions and desires) and acting according to her best beliefs. As Stuart Hampshire (1965, p. 80) writes, a rational subject is an “author responsible for their beliefs.” When, in conversational contexts, someone says, “I believe that p,” “I think that p,” “I desire y,” this belief, thought or desire belongs to that person; the person is the agent (author) of the propositional attitude and has a “special responsibility” that nobody else has. The belief, thought or desire are an expression of her relationships with the world and with other people, rather than a “mere succession of representations” (Moran, 2001, p. 32). When epistemologists concern themselves with “knowledge,” they traditionally dedicate themselves to three tasks: (a) explaining or analysing the notion of “knowledge” itself, (b) arguing in what sense a belief is rationally justified, and (c) responding to sceptical arguments about whether or not we are capable of possessing knowledge. However, in addition to these three tasks, one problem appears to us to be even more fundamental and is closely related to other disciplines, such as ethics and moral psychology: invariably, when we talk about “knowledge” or “what a person knows,” we are evaluating their attitudes and cognitive achievements, in the same way that we praise or criticise a neighbour’s cognitive performance and how they form their beliefs and strategies to defend their opinions when challenged by their interlocutors. This is central to the notion of intellectual virtue (Sosa, 2007). We can talk about epistemic evaluation when we consider how people form and maintain their beliefs. Christopher Hookway (2003, p. 198), for example, states that the main focus of epistemic evaluation is investigative and deliberative activities, where people are intentionally involved in the complex work of trying to discover something, understand something, find the answer to a question or reach the truth. In daily life, the laboratory or the political arena, investigations are guided by goals (such as understanding, or the truth, or the elimination of doubt) and may be undertaken satisfactorily and competently, or unsatisfactorily and incompetently. It is very important for those who investigate to investigate well and effectively, subjecting her investigative work to some degree of control and assuming responsibility for the good and bad management of that work. Epistemic evaluation not only refers to an evaluation of the agent’s current cognitive Commentary xxiii state (for example, her current beliefs) but also to an evaluation of the performances of an agent who is seeking to allay doubts, resolve problems, find the truth. At certain times it is crucial not to be indifferent to or unconscious of how we should conduct our investigations about the quality of our cognitive achievements. And, in fact, in our exchanges with other people, we are praised for our cognitive successes and criticised for our failures—and this even happens when we are not fully conscious of each step or aspect of the investigation or the methods we use to form these beliefs (Hookway, 2003, p. 184). A good investigator is also a reliable informant. Virtues, dispositions, and skills play an important role for someone to become a good investigator and a reliable informant. Intellectual virtues not only include the skills and competencies required to capture the available information, through perception, memory, or rational inference, but also constitute the skills and competencies required to conduct the search for cognitive goods and to evaluate one’s own performance and achievements (Hookway, 2003, p. 194). In addition to the intellectual virtues needed to seek out and achieve epistemic goods, in order to join a conversation, the agent must also have the intellectual virtues required to interact with their interlocutors, including those who have beliefs different from their own. This means they should have the virtues required to deal with disagreements and with conducting a conversation as a means to achieving epistemic goods inaccessible through other means. To this end, a virtuous epistemic agent should avoid epistemic vices, such as arrogance, a closed-mind and dogmatism (Tanesini & Lynch, 2021). For a conversation to take place, all forms of epistemic injustice are excluded: the participants should not be subject to injustice arising from any kind of prejudice or to modes of silencing. CONVERSATION AND POLARIZATION In recent years, the word “polarization” has featured heavily in relation to politics. This refers to antagonistic positions and to the impossibility of using public and dialogic methods to address them. If, on the one hand, political disagreements are not only frequent but necessary for life in democratic society, on the other, the impossibility of establishing dialogue between opposing political agents may lead to the downfall of democracy itself. In fact, polarization constitutes a pathology of disagreement and, as such, expresses epistemic vices such as arrogance and dogmatism. Epistemic arrogance involves overestimating one’s own epistemic capacities and treating opponents as agents devoid of rationality and good reason. Dogmatism is a position that sustains a belief without publically defensible reasons and is indifferent to relevant criticism. xxiv W. J. SILVA FILHO ET AL. In complex societies, in the face of extremely serious problems, such as those related to public health and the environment, polarization may have devastating consequences and prevent society, as a body of cooperative agents, from finding solutions guided by better reason and publically reliable means. Polarization means the end of the public arena of legitimate disagreement and may lead to political and epistemic violence, such as the assumption of power by undemocratic means, including public persuasion through “disinformation” and physical violence. Conversation, on the other hand, is a cooperative task: it expects people to be able to form, rationally and consciously, the best reasons for believing that p or for believing that not-p or to suspend judgement. The fact is that, given a disagreement, we cannot, in advance, establish what the best outcome will be of a conversation in which the participants continue to seek an epistemic good. Certain other questions should be posed: regardless of what one should do when one becomes aware of a disagreement, what does the awareness of this disagreement (in a sceptical and dialectic setting) epistemically promote in the person? The answer to this question is simple. It is possible that an individual may not be able to find the truth or come up with a theory that definitively supplants rival theories. This is a normal and frequent result of our investigations in the various areas of human experience. However, epistemically virtuous people who engage in open and indeterminate conversations about humanly relevant issues can achieve another epistemic good: they could become more tolerant, rational, and sensitive to a problem. This person will have the necessary conditions to conduct investigations and perform nondogmatic epistemic feats; above all, they may become someone who avoids dogmatism and moral and intellectual vices; they may avoid insensitivity to the reasonableness of diversity of opinion. Even though conflict is not welcome, or is inappropriate, its arrival cannot simply be avoided or rejected (Silva Filho & Rocha, 2018; Dazzani et al., 2020). If someone joins a conversation because of a disagreement, one option is to assume a rational, charitable, contingent, and investigative position. This is not a description of how people are, but rather an expectation, a demand. What is really noticeable is that, if the performance meets the requirements of a conversation, any outcome that avoids dogmatism will be valuable (epistemically valuable, morally valuable, humanely valuable). Regardless of the outcome of a conversation between peers about a disagreement, any outcome (be that an affirmation that p, a refutation that p or the suspension of judgement), knowledge, understanding, change or preservation of the individual’s epistemic attitude is a good achievement that can only be reached through conversation. Commentary xxv ----------> AU: In the description of the four sections above, this section is titled “Conversation and Polarization.” Please reconcile. THE UNIVERSITY, THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL, AND THE ART OF CONVERSATION The university brings together the most outstanding researchers, scientists, and technologists, added to a collection of laboratories, groups and research centres focused on the production and diffusion of knowledge and to training in different areas. For this reason, the university should assume the role of guaranteeing the public epistemic arena and defending the value of conversation. One way to do this is by committing itself to training students as epistemically virtuous public intellectuals. This is one way to tackle the current anti-scientific, tribal, and polarized culture. Generally, when we talk of a “public intellectual,” we think of an epistemologist or a political scientist who presents eloquent theories about the State and society. Here, however, we understand this “intellectual” to be everybody involved in the acquisition, production, and transmission of knowledge. This clearly involves social scientists, but also psychologists, doctors, engineers, educators, public administrators, and law students, among others. The university plays a role in training people to acquire the ability to defend the public epistemic arena and, through this, to defend science, for example. There is an elementary reason why we should trust in science: science works with knowledge. Although related, knowledge and truth are distinct, since something that scientists assert today could, perfectly legitimately, be contested and reviewed by colleagues in the following week or decade. What is indeed important is that, in order to be classified as science, knowledge has to be open to challenge, or falsifiable—otherwise it is simply opinion. Truth plays an important role in knowledge since this is the ultimate goal of an investigation. However, what really matters is that scientists seek to apply rigorous resources, ones that are widely tested, publically verifiable, and argumentatively examined in the light of experiments and theoretical reviews. The process of producing beliefs in science is more reliable because it easily moves away from error, even without definitive guarantees. This applies equally to the natural sciences and the social sciences. The university should teach its students to practice science and show that science is reliable, because its findings are publically exposed and every step can be reviewed, contested, and corrected by peers from its community. At heart, what science tells us is: we do not have the right to believe something because we want to. A young student is someone who has not yet mastered research techniques, has not yet gained access to the most relevant information (they don’t yet know which sources are reliable) and their work has not yet been endorsed by more experienced researchers and professionals. Even a more xxvi W. J. SILVA FILHO ET AL. experienced researcher needs to follow protocols and fulfil demands, which they are not entitled to break or ignore. What do we expect from these people? We praise professors, students and researchers who are competent in the application of information, techniques and methods, and whose work produces good results. But we also praise them because of values beyond their technical competence. As we know, at least in the field of science, the truth is not the only thing that matters—it does matter, but not on its own. That someone has the ability to critically revise a theory or a procedure, that they seek innovative solutions to old problems, have the ability to reflect on their own work, are prepared to face criticisms of their work, see in the other an epistemic peer, all of this does not necessarily involve the truth, but other epistemic goals, such as curiosity, keeping an open-mind, being tolerant and well-informed, striving to form a broad overview of what is known, and so forth. For this reason, we also praise members of our university community, because they know how to establish dialogue, how to defend their positions with arguments, how to keep an open mind, how to change their own opinions. And we feel disappointed when they are not prepared to do so. We also praise people who are privileged enough to enter university when they demonstrate sensitivity to human questions, when they position themselves against all forms of violence, and physical and epistemic injustice. Once university graduates attain their posts through academic, scientific, and administrative merit, and once their proposals are informed by scientific and technical information and evidence, these people become reliable. The university should also train people who believe that information should circulate freely in society, reaching nonspecialists and nonacademics. For this reason, the university should recognize that professional journalism is reliable. Clearly, we all know that journalism is run by private organizations that also have economic interests. Although we may be irritated by journalists who express opinions that contradict our worldview, we need to recognize that (good) professional journalism has rules to ensure its credibility: checking sources, comparing divergent opinions, listening to two sides of a conflict, creating reliable narratives, and sticking to the facts. All these protocols provide the constraints that make journalism much more reliable than a family or friends WhatsApp group. Further, the degree of reliability of news from a newspaper increases in line with the actions of its readers who, by comparing several sources and reflecting on their consistency, can (or cannot) reinforce the plausibility of the information provided. It is no coincidence that, in the midst of the uncertainties of the COVID-19 pandemic, an increasing number of people are seeking the endorsement of professional journalism to position themselves in relation Commentary xxvii to opinions transmitted by the “prophets” of our time on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. CONCLUSION A scenario exists that is almost exclusively specific to university life. We are driven by the supposition that our work is focused on the most elevated epistemic goals— pursued not only by each of us individually, but also by society—and that our task is a cognitively collective enterprise that involves the mind and an infinite number of performances by other people. Further, we accept from the outset that the people with whom we live are, at least in principle, as epistemically competent as we are, capable of observing, thinking, and achieving epistemic performances with us. In most cases, we secure our jobs because of our skills and achievements. When we start working at university, our goals are public, and we have access to the same techniques and instruments, methodological resources, and sources of information. In other words, it is a necessary condition for us to live in the midst of epistemic peers. But the fact is that these people are not always in agreement with us, and we frequently find ourselves in situations in which somebody demands explanations from us, better reasons and justifications, proof, and arguments. For this reason, our life at the university is marked by epistemic disagreements in practically all subjects. And the absence of such disagreements should cause us a certain amount of discomfort because it may mean that academic power is excessively concentrated in the hands of someone arrogant and oppressive. The public intellectual shaped by a university is somebody prepared to converse, to dialogue. They are trained to recognize that there are disagreements, and that this recognition is not trivial. Recognizing that the person we disagree with is an epistemic peer (is, at least ideally, as able and competent as we are in producing good epistemic achievements) is the central pillar of epistemic cooperation and one of the principles of democracy. In daily life, this type of recognition is rarer: in day-to-day situations when we enter into a disagreement, we almost always assume that our divergence is only a matter of viewpoint and taste; at other times we assume that our interlocutor is an opponent and must be less capable and rational than we are. In these cases, we doubt the competence, taste, honesty, and reasonableness of our opponent. But in epistemic disagreements between virtuous epistemic agents, our challenger must be someone who has good reason to believe things that are different from the things we believe. In epistemic disagreements, the individual should be in a position to recognize for themselves the place of reason, their peer and society and, xxviii W. J. SILVA FILHO ET AL. because of this, should be willing to carefully examine their peer’s positions and reasons and, consequently, to review their own. By doing this, they should evaluate the reliability of their processes and those of their peer, they should review the epistemic achievements of both, they should know how to present better arguments or renounce their own, they should be capable of reflecting on what both do. All of this involves a special type of epistemic competence that we call epistemic autonomy. At the end of this process, many different things may happen: either the person will change their opinion or they will reassert their initial position or they will restart the investigation. For public intellectuals, this is the art of conversation. Public intellectuals have no right to give up the conversation. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors acknowledge the support of the following institutions: Waldomiro J. Silva Filho would like to thank the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel, Brazil (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior—Brasil: CAPES-PRINT)— Funding code 001 (process no. 88887.568338/2020-00) and the National Council for Technological and Scientific Development (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico: CNPq) (process no. 311816/2019-3); Maria Virgínia Machado Dazzani acknowledges the financial support from CNPq Brazil Grant MCTIC/CNPq no. 28/2018/process 435602/2018-7 and CAPES-PRINT Funding Code 001 (process no. 88887.568332/2020-00); while Giuseppina Marsico extends her thanks to the International Visiting Professor Programme of the Federal University of Bahia (Universidade Federal da Bahia: UFBA). REFERENCES Battaly, H. (2014). Detecting epistemic vice in higher education policy. In B. Kotsee (Ed.). Education and the growth of knowledge: Perspectives from Social and virtue epistemology (pp. 124–144). 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Sustainable futures for higher education: Cultivating knowledge makers. Springer. Wittgenstein, L. (2000). Philosophical investigations. (G. E. M. Anscombe. Trans.) Blackwell. (Original work published 1953) NOTES 1. We take “epistemic web” to be the practices that produce and transmit knowledge that is socially recognized as reliable. 2. For more on this theme, see Nussbaum (2010). 3. What we call the “public epistemic arena” or the “epistemic space” (Elgin, 2013, p. 144) is the landscape of public experience in which people assume common epistemic commitments, goals and objectives when dealing with topics of public interest that go beyond private life, or individual and group interests. These commitments and objectives include taking available evidence into consideration and reaching the truth through intersubjective exchange. 4. This is not only a feature of far-right groups; movements on the left can also assume “epistemically tribal,” sectarian and dogmatic positions. However, we will not deal with this subject in this chapter. 5. We would like to thank Prof Breno R. Guimarães dos Santos for alerting us to the significance of the theme of “epistemic cooperation” based on his reading of Goldberg (2020). 6. For John Searle (1979, pp. 1–29), statements belong to one of the basic categories of illocutionary acts of speech. An illocutionary act is one performed by a speaker who utters a grammatical phrase with a meaning, aimed at succeeding in their intention to express a promise, order, request, and so forth. Through this act, the speaker also commits to expressing via the act of promising, ordering, requesting and so forth. In the specific case of statements or assertions (or assertive illocutionary acts), the speaker, as we have said, is committed to the truth of the uttered phrase. 7. There is abundant literature on this subject. See Frances (2014) for an overview.