Noise reduction in the community of philosophical inquiry

In a community of philosophical inquiry (CPI), as the term is used in the Philosophy for Children (P4C) tradition, people with diverse experiences, beliefs, and values discuss a philosophical question of common interest and are prompted by a facilitator to challenge and build on one another’s ideas, share relevant experiences, consider emotional responses, imagine new possibilities, and self-correct their understanding, including their value commitments. One goal of the CPI is to produce better judgements, and this goal is threatened by the presence of noise: unwanted variability in judgements that would, ideally, be identical. We argue that although noise is likely to emerge in the CPI because it is a context where participants share intuitive judgements with one another in the context of deliberation, facilitators can and should, nevertheless, take steps to reduce it.