Circular Proof

There's an interesting article on Slashdot today about a false fact that appeared on Wikipedia and appropriately flagged. However, the false statement had, by this time, been copied from Wikipedia, so when the flag was made asking for proof, it was easy to find because a large number of other information outlets had copied the fact from Wikipedia.

First of all, I hope this doesn't become an argument against Wikipedia. This can happen anywhere, using any source that is generally viewed as being reliable. The fact that it happened on Wikipedia doesn't mean Wikipedia is doing something wrong; this is a problem that could occur to any reliable information depot.

It's interesting, though, that this comes up, because it's the definition of circular reasoning. A party asserts p; a second party similarly asserts p based on the authority of the first party, and then the first party "proves" p based on the authority of the second party. See the problem? This is a really good example of why I am not an internalist (as the term relates to epistemology).

This gaffe is interesting to me because it brings up all the fun questions I remember from my epistemology class in college: when are we justified in believing a proposition. Clearly, source citation isn't right all the time, although my intuition tells me that it's still a means to attain justification, at least for a posteriori knowledge. Alvin Goldman said that the sources are reliable (although how we establish that, I'm not sure) and therefore that one is justified in deriving a belief from said sources.

This is a case where two sources are deriving epistemic authority from each other. Clearly, that's a problem, but how does one realize when it's occurring?

Damn, I love epistemology.