Mark Alfano on Trusting Wisely in Social and Digital Networks

PERITIA invites you to the lecture “Trusting wisely in social and digital networks” by Philosopher Mark Alfano (Macquarie University) on 2 June, 17:00 (CEST). The event is hosted by our partner Institut Nicod (France). Registration is free and open to all.

Placing our trust in the word of others is essential in modern life, and arguably all of human existence. We are and always have been a hyper-social species. But trust is not an unmitigated good: it makes us vulnerable to being let down or even betrayed. The ideal would be to trust wisely. But what does it mean to trust wisely? And how can we assess whether the people we trust are themselves trusting wisely? In this talk, Mark Alfano explores these questions using philosophical reflection, social network analysis, and empirical psychology.

Host

Gloria Origgi (Institut Nicod) will present and moderate the lecture and a Q&A session with participants via Zoom webinar. The event is part of a series of PERITIA lectures and continues the work done in the previous Institut Nicod workshops on Social Indicators of Trust.

Speaker

Mark Alfano is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy of Macquarie University (Australia). He uses tools and methods from philosophy, psychology, and computer science to explore topics in social epistemology, moral psychology, and digital humanities. He studies how people become and remain virtuous, how values become integrated into people’s lives, and how these virtues and values are (or fail to be) manifested in their perception, thoughts, feelings, deliberations, and actions. One of the guiding themes of his work is that normative philosophy without psychological content is empty, but scientific investigation without philosophical insight is blind.

Mark received a doctorate from the Philosophy Program of the City University of New York Graduate Center (CUNY GC) in 2011. He has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study and the Princeton University Center for Human Values, as well as assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Oregon, associate professor of ethics & philosophy of technology at Delft University of Technology, and professorial fellow at Australian Catholic University.