Steel Daniel, Fazelpour Sina, Crewe Bianca, Gillette Kinley
W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics, University of British Columbia, 6356 Agricultural Road, Vancouver, BC V62 1Z2 Canada.
Department of Philosophy, University of British Columbia, 1866 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1 Canada.
Synthese. 2021;198(2):1287-1307. doi: 10.1007/s11229-019-02108-w. Epub 2019 Feb 15.
We suggest that philosophical accounts of epistemic effects of diversity have given insufficient attention to the relationship between demographic diversity and information elaboration (IE), the process whereby knowledge dispersed in a group is elicited and examined. We propose an analysis of IE that clarifies hypotheses proposed in the empirical literature and their relationship to philosophical accounts of diversity effects. Philosophical accounts have largely overlooked the possibility that demographic diversity may improve group performance by enhancing IE, and sometimes fail to explore the relationship between diversity and IE altogether. We claim these omissions are significant from both a practical and theoretical perspective. Moreover, we explain how the overlooked explanations suggest that epistemic benefits of diversity can depend on epistemically unjust social dynamics.
我们认为，关于多样性认知效应的哲学论述，对人口统计学多样性与信息细化（IE）之间的关系关注不足。信息细化是指群体中分散的知识被引出并审视的过程。我们提出了一种对信息细化的分析，以阐明实证文献中提出的假设及其与多样性效应哲学论述的关系。哲学论述在很大程度上忽略了人口统计学多样性可能通过增强信息细化来提高群体绩效的可能性，有时甚至完全没有探讨多样性与信息细化之间的关系。我们认为，这些疏漏从实践和理论角度来看都很重要。此外，我们解释了被忽视的解释如何表明，多样性的认知益处可能取决于认知上不公正的社会动态。
