Beliefs, opinions, evidence and truth: guidance for information ethics in a business context

Why study this

In the age of fake news and ‘post-truth’, a crucial issue is the responsibility of businesspeople regarding the reliability of the information they spread. Indeed, intellectual dishonesty or even downright lies undermine the trust necessary for the economy to run smoothly. In some instances, a cavalier attitude towards information can even lead to disaster, like when leading US credit rating agencies not only severely underestimated the risk attached to financial products at the heart of the 2008 financial crisis, but also tried evading the liability attached to the exercise of their expertise. While it is unrealistic to expect absolute truth, or that errors never be made, it is desirable that businesses should do their best to control the value of the information they disseminate and be prepared to account for potential faults. Hence the notion of ‘epistemic responsibility’ explored in this paper.

Findings

• The researcher proposes a theoretical framework to define epistemic values and faults, based on the sender-recipient model (a sender produces information which is conveyed to a recipient).
• The epistemic value of a message is the assessment of the evidence or arguments produced to substantiate the information contained in the message.
• The researcher identified the eight following epistemic values to define the notion of epistemic fault:
  • ‘Required’ epistemic value: an objective assessment (e.g. a bank may require certified accounts from a company before granting a loan).
  • ‘Expected’ epistemic value: the subjective needs of the recipient (an inexperienced banker may be willing to accept non-certified accounts from a loan applicant).
  • ‘Estimated’ epistemic value: the sender's perception of the epistemic needs of the recipient.
  • ‘Effective’ epistemic value: the objective assessment of the value of the evidence (e.g. the quality of the accountant's work in supplying loan application documents).
  • ‘Declared’ epistemic value: as declared by the sender (a credit rating agency assures that its ratings are quality work).
  • ‘Attributed epistemic value: perceived reliability of the information, from the sender's point of view.
  • ‘Received’ epistemic value: the value actually received (lower than the effective value if the recipient reads only the conclusion of a report but overlooks the supporting evidence).
  • ‘Final’ epistemic value: the value subjectively perceived by the recipient. 
• When all eight of these values are aligned, they form the Norm of Epistemic Value Alignment (NEVA), the requirement that determines the conditions for the message to be asserted. 
• An epistemic fault is committed by the sender or the recipient when deviations from NEVA occur and are epistemically undesirable, avoidable, and can be consciously perceived. 
• Epistemic virtue is defined as a disposition to align different epistemic values, whereas epistemic vice is the disposition to misalign those values.