Conciliationism is the family of views that rationality requires agents to reduce confidence or suspend belief in p when acknowledged epistemic peers (i.e. agents who are (approximately) equally well-informed and intellectually capable) disagree about p. While Conciliationism is prima facie plausible, some have argued that Conciliationism is not an adequate theory of peer disagreement because it is self-undermining. Responses to this challenge can be put into two mutually exclusive and exhaustive groups: the Solution Responses which deny Conciliationism is self-undermining and (...) attempt to provide arguments which demonstrate this; and the Skeptical Responses which accept that Conciliationism is self-undermining but attempt to mitigate this result by arguing this is either impermanent and/or not very worrisome. I argue that, by Conciliationism’s own lights, both kinds of responses (almost certainly) fail to save Conciliationism from being self-undermining. Thus, Conciliationism is (almost certainly) permanently self-undermining. This result is significant because it demonstrates that Conciliationism is likely hopeless: there is likely nothing that can save Conciliationism from this challenge. I further argue that Conciliationism, like any view, should be abandoned if it is (almost certainly) hopeless. (shrink)

There is much to admire in John Pittard’s recent book on the epistemology of disagreement. But here we develop one concern about the role that rational insight plays in his project. Pittard develops and defends a view on which a party to peer disagreement can show substantial partiality to his own view, so long as he enjoys even moderate rational insight into the truth of his view or the cogency of his reasoning for his view. Pittard argues that this may (...) happen in ordinary cases of religious disagreement—cases in which it’s a live skeptical possibility that one is misdescribing his insight, or not having insight at all—and therefore one need not be strongly conciliatory even in the face of peer disagreement. Yet Pittard agrees that one should be strongly conciliatory in cases of disagreement involving, e.g., visual perception and dim rational insight, since the sort of fallible, corrigible evidence involved in such cases may be counterbalanced by symmetrical evidence on the part of one’s disagreeing peer. We worry that there’s an inconsistency here. If it’s unreasonable to show partiality to one’s visual experience (or dim rational insight) in cases like “Horse Race” and “Restaurant Check,” it’s likewise unreasonable to show partiality in religious disagreements to one’s moderate rational insight, fallible and corrigible as it is. (shrink)

What is the rational response to disagreement with an epistemic peer? Some say the steadfast response of holding on to your own belief can be rational; others argue that some degree of conciliation is always rationally required. I argue that only an epistemological externalist about rationality—someone who holds that the rationality of a belief is partly constituted by factors outside a subject’s cognitive perspective—can defend the steadfast view. Or at least that this is so in the kinds of idealized cases (...) of peer disagreement that take center stage in the current debate about disagreement. The argument has three steps. First, I show how rationality internalism motivates conciliationism: in view of the mutually recognized internal epistemic symmetry between peers, it would be arbitrary for either peer to hold on to her own belief. Second, I strengthen this line of thought by considering various proposed ‘symmetry breakers’ that appear to introduce a relevant asymmetry between peers, which could be used to defend the rationality of a steadfast response. I argue that none of these alleged symmetry breakers can help internalists. Third, I show how externalism does have the resources to defend steadfastness and expose how extant defenses of steadfastness implicitly rely on externalist intuitions. (shrink)

While the epistemic significance of disagreement has been a popular topic in epistemology for at least a decade, little attention has been paid to logical disagreement. This monograph is meant as a remedy. The text starts with an extensive literature review of the epistemology of (peer) disagreement and sets the stage for an epistemological study of logical disagreement. The guiding thread for the rest of the work is then three distinct readings of the ambiguous term ‘logical disagreement’. Chapters 1 and (...) 2 focus on the Ad Hoc Reading according to which logical disagreements occur when two subjects take incompatible doxastic attitudes toward a specific proposition in or about logic. Chapter 2 presents a new counterexample to the widely discussed Uniqueness Thesis. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the Theory Choice Reading of ‘logical disagreement’. According to this interpretation, logical disagreements occur at the level of entire logical theories rather than individual entailment-claims. Chapter 4 concerns a key question from the philosophy of logic, viz., how we have epistemic justification for claims about logical consequence. In Chapters 5 and 6 we turn to the Akrasia Reading. On this reading, logical disagreements occur when there is a mismatch between the deductive strength of one’s background logic and the logical theory one prefers (officially). Chapter 6 introduces logical akrasia by analogy to epistemic akrasia and presents a novel dilemma. Chapter 7 revisits the epistemology of peer disagreement and argues that the epistemic significance of central principles from the literature are at best deflated in the context of logical disagreement. The chapter also develops a simple formal model of deep disagreement in Default Logic, relating this to our general discussion of logical disagreement. The monograph ends in an epilogue with some reflections on the potential epistemic significance of convergence in logical theorizing. (shrink)

We are fallible creatures, prone to making all sorts of mistakes. So, we should be open to evidence of error. But what constitutes such evidence? And what is it to rationally accommodate it? I approach these questions by considering an evolutionary debunking argument according to which (a) we have good, scientific, reason to think our moral beliefs are mistaken, and (b) rationally accommodating this requires revising our confidence in, or altogether abandoning the suspect beliefs. I present a dilemma for such (...) debunkers, which shows that either we have no reason to worry about our moral beliefs, or we do but we can self-correct. Either way, moral skepticism doesn’t follow. That the evolutionary debunking argument fails is important; also important, however, is what its failure reveals about rational belief revision. Specifically, it suggests that getting evidence of error is a non-trivial endeavor and that we cannot learn that we are likely to be mistaken about some matter from a neutral stance on that matter. (shrink)

Conciliatory theories of disagreement require that one lower one’s confidence in a belief in the face of disagreement from an epistemic peer. One question about which people might disagree is who should qualify as an epistemic peer and who should not. But when putative epistemic peers disagree about epistemic peerhood itself, then Conciliationism makes contradictory demands and paradoxes arise.

Collective deliberation is fuelled by disagreements and its epistemic value depends, inter alia, on how the participants respond to each other in disagreements. I use this accountability thesis to argue that deliberation may be valued not just instrumentally but also for its procedural features. The instrumental epistemic value of deliberation depends on whether it leads to more or less accurate beliefs among the participants. The procedural epistemic value of deliberation hinges on the relationships of mutual accountability that characterize appropriately conducted (...) deliberation. I will argue that it only comes into view from the second-person standpoint. I shall explain what the second-person standpoint in the epistemic context entails and how it compares to Stephen Darwall’s interpretation of the second-person standpoint in ethics. (shrink)

A popular argument is that peer disagreement about controversial moral topics undermines justified moral belief in a way that peer disagreement about non-moral topics does not undermine justified non-moral belief. Call this argument the argument for moral skepticism from peer disagreement. Jason Decker and Daniel Groll have recently made a companions in guilt response to this argument. Decker and Groll argue that if peer disagreement undermines justified moral belief, then peer disagreement undermines much non-moral justified belief; if the argument for (...) moral skepticism from peer disagreement succeeds, then a kind of non-moral skepticism holds too. And we should not hold that the status of such non-moral beliefs are undermined by peer disagreement. In this paper, I shows that Decker and Groll’s companions in guilt argument fails. I then draw out the implications of my argument for the epistemology of disagreement and the epistemology of moral disagreement more generally. For instance, I then argue that peer disagreement about morality does not undermine all justified moral belief but that peer disagreement about morality does preclude most moral beliefs from being justified and constituting knowledge in a way that peer disagreement about non-moral topics does not preclude most non-moral beliefs from being justified and constituting knowledge. (shrink)

I argue that the skeptical force of a disagreement is mitigated to the extent that it is fundamental, where a fundamental disagreement is one that is driven by differences in epistemic starting points. My argument has three steps. First, I argue that proponents of conciliatory policies have good reason to affirm a view that I call “instrumentalism,” a view that commends treating our doxastic inclinations like instrumental readouts. Second, I show that instrumentalism supplies a basis for demanding conciliatory requirements in (...) superficial disagreements but not in fundamental disagreements. Third, I argue that the frequently invoked “independence” principle, which arguably would require significant conciliation in fundamental disputes, is unmotivated in light of the explanatory power of instrumentalism. The most plausible conciliatory view, then, is a weak conciliationism that features instrumentalism rather than independence as the central principle, and that therefore gives us a principled basis for thinking that fundamental disagreements should occasion less doxastic revision than shallow disagreements. (shrink)

Religious conversion gives rise to disagreement with one’s former self and with family and friends. Because religious conversion is personally and epistemically transformative, it is difficult to judge whether a former epistemic peer is still one’s epistemic peer post-conversion, just like it is hard for the convert to assess whether she is now in a better epistemic position than prior to her conversion. Through Augustine’s De Utilitate Credendi (The Usefulness of Belief) I show that reasoned argument should play a crucial (...) role in assessing the evidential value of religious conversions, both for the person who converts and for her (former) peers. (shrink)

Religious disagreement is an emerging topic of interest in social epistemology. Little is known about how philosophers react to religious disagreements in a professional context, or how they think one should respond to disagreement. This paper presents results of an empirical study on religious disagreement among philosophers. Results indicate that personal religious beliefs, philosophical training, and recent changes in religious outlook have a significant impact on philosophers' assessments of religious disagreement. They regard peer disagreement about religion as common, and most (...) surveyed participants assume one should accord weight to the other's opinion. Theists and agnostics are less likely to assume they are in a better epistemic position than their interlocutors about religious questions compared with atheists, but this pattern only holds for participants who are not philosophers of religion. Continental philosophers think religious beliefs are more like preferences than analytic philosophers, who regard religious beliefs as fact-like. (shrink)

Conciliationism is a view—well, a family of views—in the epistemology of disagreement. The idea, simply put, is that, in a wide range of cases where you find yourself in disagreement with another reasoner about the truth of some proposition, you are rationally obliged to adjust your credence in the direction of hers. Conciliationism enjoys a fair bit of prima facie plausibility. Most versions of it, however, suffer from a common (and rather obvious) problem: self-incrimination. Although there is some recognition in (...) the recent literature on disagreement that there is a problem in this vicinity, it, more often than not, is completely ignored. When it is not completely ignored, both the conciliationists and their critics tend to frame the problem incorrectly. As a result, they end up focusing most of their attention on pseudo-problems rather than the genuine worry. Furthermore, even when they have hit on the genuine worry, conciliationists have tended to give surprising and implausible responses to it. Even by their own lights, conciliationists aren’t justified in believing their conciliationist theses. In this paper, I argue that it’s time to come clean. Time to look for a view on the epistemic significance of disagreement that we can actually be justified in believing. (shrink)

For many of the moral beliefs we hold, we know that other people hold moral beliefs that contradict them. If you think that moral beliefs can be correct or incorrect, what difference should your awareness of others’ disagreement make to your conviction that you, and not those who think otherwise, have the correct belief? Are there circumstances in which an awareness of others’ disagreement should lead you to suspend a moral belief? If so, what are they, and why? This paper (...) argues that three principles, taken together, give us a good answer to these questions; that they license a form of provisional moral self-trust; and that they reveal an interestingly distinctive form of pragmatic encroachment in relation to the epistemic standards governing moral belief. (shrink)

This paper argues that suspension of judgement is the appropriate response to disagreement about ultimate moral principles, and outlines the implications of such a response. It begins with an argument influenced by Sextus and Sidgwick for the rationality of suspension, and then illustrates fundamental disagreement with the case of promising. Replies are offered to the arguments against the rationality of suspension offered by Robert Audi in his discussion of moral perception. It is noted in particular that such rationality does not (...) depend on the assumption that epistemic peerhood is widespread. The limited nature of ethical agreement is illustrated, along with the limited implications of disagreement if a less adversarial and more constructive ethical methodology is adopted. (shrink)

How much should your confidence in your beliefs be shaken when you learn that others – perhaps ‘epistemic peers’ who seem as well-qualified as you are – hold beliefs contrary to yours? This article describes motivations that push different philosophers towards opposite answers to this question. It identifies a key theoretical principle that divides current writers on the epistemology of disagreement. It then examines arguments bearing on that principle, and on the wider issue. It ends by describing some outstanding questions (...) that thinking about this issue raises. (shrink)

We often get evidence concerning the reliability of our own thinking about some particular matter. This “higher-order evidence” can come from the disagreement of others, or from information about our being subject to the effects of drugs, fatigue, emotional ties, implicit biases, etc. This paper examines some pros and cons of two fairly general models for accommodating higher-order evidence. The one that currently seems most promising also turns out to have the consequence that epistemic akrasia should occur more frequently than (...) is sometimes supposed. But it also helps us see why this might not be a bad thing. (shrink)

Conciliationism holds that disagreement of apparent epistemic peers often substantially undermines rational confidence in our opinions. Uniqueness principles say that there is at most one maximally rational doxastic response to any given batch of total evidence. The two views are often thought to be tightly connected. This paper distinguishes two ways of motivating conciliationism, and two ways that conciliationism may be undermined by permissive accounts of rationality. It shows how conciliationism can flourish under certain strongly permissive accounts of rationality. This (...) occurs when the motivation for conciliationism does not come from taking disagreement as evidence of one's own rational failings. However, divorcing the motive for conciliating from worries about rationality does not remove a feature of conciliationism that some find troubling: that conciliationism can lead to cases of “rational toxicity,” in which the most rational response to one's evidence involves violating some rational ideal. (shrink)

How much should your confidence in your beliefs be shaken when you learn that others – perhaps 'epistemic peers' who seem as well-qualified as you are – hold beliefs contrary to yours? This article describes motivations that push different philosophers towards opposite answers to this question. It identifies a key theoretical principle that divides current writers on the epistemology of disagreement. It then examines arguments bearing on that principle, and on the wider issue. It ends by describing some outstanding questions (...) that thinking about this issue raises. (shrink)

Religious disagreements are widespread. Some philosophers have argued that religious disagreements call for religious skepticism, or a revision of one’s religious beliefs. In order to figure out the epistemic significance of religious disagreements, two questions need to be answered. First, what kind of disagreements are religious disagreements? Second, how should one respond to such disagreements? In this paper, I argue that many religious disagreements are cases of unconfirmed superiority disagreements, where parties have good reason to think they are not epistemic (...) peers, yet they lack good reason to determine who is superior. Such disagreements have been left relatively unexplored. I then argue that in cases of unconfirmed superiority disagreements, disputants can remain relatively steadfast in holding to their beliefs. Hence, we can remain relatively steadfast in our beliefs in such cases of religious disagreements. (shrink)

A new strategy in philosophy of law appeals to explanatory gap arguments to attack legal positivism. We argue that the strategy faces a dilemma, which derives from there being two available readings of the constraint it places on legal grounding. To this end, we elaborate the most promising ways of spelling out the epistemic constraints governing law-determination, and show that each of the arguments based on them has problems. Throughout the paper, we evaluate a number of explanatory requirements, ultimately with (...) a view to shedding light on the explanatory nature of both grounding in general, and legal grounding in particular. (shrink)

Do the facts of evolution generate an epistemic challenge to moral realism? Some think so, and many “evolutionary debunking arguments” have been discussed in the recent literature. But they are all murky right where it counts most: exactly which epistemic principle is meant to take us from evolutionary considerations to the skeptical conclusion? Here, I will identify several distinct species of evolutionary debunking argument in the literature, each one of which relies on a distinct epistemic principle. Drawing on recent work (...) in epistemology, I will show that most of these initially plausible principles are false, spoiling the arguments that rely on them. And we will see that each argument threatens only one popular view of moral psychology: a “Representationalist” view on which our moral judgments rely crucially on a mental intermediary—e.g. a sentiment, gut reaction, or affect-laden intuition—delivered by our evolved moral faculty. In the end, only one evolutionary debunking argument remains a menace: an “ Argument from Symmetry ” that I will introduce to the literature. But we will see that it should worry only all naturalists, pressuring them into a trilemma: give up moral realism, accept a rationalism that is incongruous with naturalism, or give up naturalism. Non-naturalists are free and clear. (shrink)

Some philosophers believe that, when epistemic peers disagree, each has an obligation to accord the other’s assessment equal weight as her own. Other philosophers worry that this Equal-Weight View is vulnerable to straightforward counterexamples, and that it requires an unacceptable degree of spinelessness with respect to our most treasured philosophical, political, and religious beliefs. I think that both of these allegations are false. To show this, I carefully state the Equal-Weight View, motivate it, describe apparent counterexamples to it, and then (...) explain away the apparent counterexamples. Finally, I adapt those explanations to cases of religious disagreement. In the end, we reach the surprising conclusion that—even if the Equal-Weight View is true—in very many cases of religious disagreement between apparent epistemic peers, the parties to the disagreement need not be conciliatory. And what goes for religious beliefs goes for political and philosophical beliefs as well. This strongly suggests that the View does not demand an unacceptable degree of spinelessness. (shrink)

What the rational thing to do in the face of disagreement by an epistemic peer is has been much discussed recently. Those who think that a peer’s disagreement is itself evidence against one’s belief, as many do, are committed to a special form of epistemic dependence. If such disagreement is really evidence, it seems reasonable to take it into account and to adjust one’s belief accordingly. But then it seems that the belief one ends up with depends, in part, on (...) what someone else believes, even if one does not know why that someone believes what he does. While the practical impossibility of finding actual cases of peer disagreement has been often noted, its conceptual possibility has gone unquestioned. Here we challenge this consensus and argue, first, that, strictly speaking, peer disagreement is impossible and, second, that cases of – all-too-common – near-peer disagreement present no special puzzle and require nothing more than adhering to standard principles of sensible epistemic conduct. In particular, we argue that in such cases there is no good reason to adopt the widely accepted principle that evidence of evidence is evidence. If so, even if one takes a near-peer’s disagreement as a reason for reexamining one’s belief, one is not epistemically dependent in the sense one would be if that disagreement were evidence concerning the matter in question. (shrink)

According to moral intuitionism, at least some moral seeming states are justification-conferring. The primary defense of this view currently comes from advocates of the standard account, who take the justification-conferring power of a moral seeming to be determined by its phenomenological credentials alone. However, the standard account is vulnerable to a problem. In brief, the standard account implies that moral knowledge is seriously undermined by those commonplace moral disagreements in which both agents have equally good phenomenological credentials supporting their disputed (...) moral beliefs. However, it is implausible to think that commonplace disagreement seriously undermines moral knowledge, and thus it is implausible to think that the standard account of moral intuitionism is true. (shrink)

In any domain of inductive reasoning, we must take care to distinguish between (i) which hypothesis my evidence supports, and (ii) the level of confidence I should have in the hypothesis, given my evidence. This distinction can help resolve the problem of peer demotion, a central point of contention in the epistemology of peer disagreement. It is true that disagreement does not provide evidence that I am right and you are wrong. But it need not, in order to lead to (...) peer demotion: instead, significant disagreement can erode my confidence in the initial peer assessment to a point where I can no longer rationally sustain the belief that we are equally reliable. One consequence of this solution is that the line dividing the Equal Weight view from its competitors emerges as an artifact of a mistakenly one-dimensional picture of the epistemic significance of peer disagreement. (shrink)

Non-skeptical robust realists about normativity, mathematics, or any other domain of non- causal truths are committed to a correlation between their beliefs and non- causal, mind-independent facts. Hartry Field and others have argued that if realists cannot explain this striking correlation, that is a strong reason to reject their theory. Some consider this argument, known as the Benacerraf–Field argument, as the strongest challenge to robust realism about mathematics, normativity, and even logic. In this article I offer two closely related accounts (...) for the type of explanation needed in order to address Field's challenge. I then argue that both accounts imply that the striking correlation to which robust realists are committed is explainable, thereby discharging Field's challenge. Finally, I respond to some objections and end with a few unresolved worries. (shrink)

Sometimes we disagree because of fundamental differences in what we treat as reasons for belief. Such are ‘deep disagreements'. Amongst the questions we might ask about deep disagreement is the epistemic normative one: how ought one to respond to disagreement, when that disagreement is deep. This paper addresses that question. According to the position developed, how one ought to respond to deep disagreement depends upon two things: (i) Whether one remains, in the context of disagreement, permitted to trust oneself in (...) following one's epistemic norms and in relation to that (ii) whether one has the shared stock of social-epistemic experiences with followers of one's rival's norms such that one could reasonably be expected to see their way of doing things as a genuine epistemic alternative to one's own. Section 1 introduces a model of deep disagreement such that deep disagreements occur when disputants disagree because they follow different epistemic norms. Section 2 surveys the possible theoretical stances to take towards the epistemic-normative question. Section 3 develops an account of what it is to follow an epistemic norm. Section 4 applies this conception of norm-following to the epistemic-normative question. Section 5 discusses two points of clarification. (shrink)

Conciliationism faces a challenge that has not been satisfactorily addressed. There are clear cases of epistemically significant merely possible disagreement, but there are also clear cases where merely possible disagreement is epistemically irrelevant. Conciliationists have not yet accounted for this asymmetry. In this paper, we propose that the asymmetry can be explained by positing a selection constraint on all cases of peer disagreement—whether actual or merely possible. If a peer’s opinion was not selected in accordance with the proposed constraint, then (...) it lacks epistemic significance. This allows us to distinguish the epistemically significant cases of merely possible disagreement from the insignificant ones. (shrink)

Two theses are central to recent work on the epistemology of disagreement: Conciliationism:?In a revealed peer disagreement over P, each thinker should give at least some weight to her peer's attitude. Uniqueness:?For any given proposition and total body of evidence, the evidence fully justifies exactly one level of confidence in the proposition. 1This paper is the product of full and equal collaboration between its authors. Does Conciliationism commit one to Uniqueness? Thomas Kelly 2010 has argued that it does. After some (...) scene-setting (?1), in ?2 we explain and criticize Kelly's argument, thereby defeating his larger argument that Conciliationism deserves no dialectical special treatment. But we argue further that Conciliationists are committed to a disjunction, one of whose disjuncts is Uniqueness, that amounts to an ?extremely strong and unobvious position? (??3?4). If we are correct, theorists should not treat Conciliationism as a default position in debates about the epistemic significance of disagreement. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Most of what we believe comes to us from the word of others, but we do not always believe what we are told. We often reject thinkers' reports by attributing biases to them. We may call this debunking. In this essay, I consider how debunking might work and then examine whether, and how often, it can help to preserve rational belief in the face of disagreement.

We present a family of counter-examples to David Christensen's Independence Criterion, which is central to the epistemology of disagreement. Roughly, independence requires that, when you assess whether to revise your credence in P upon discovering that someone disagrees with you, you shouldn't rely on the reasoning that lead you to your initial credence in P. To do so would beg the question against your interlocutor. Our counter-examples involve questions where, in the course of your reasoning, you almost fall for an (...) easy-to-miss trick. We argue that you can use the step in your reasoning where you caught the trick as evidence that someone of your general competence level likely fell for it. Our cases show that it's permissible to use your reasoning about disputed matters to disregard an interlocutor's disagreement, so long as that reasoning is embedded in the right sort of explanation of why she finds the disputed conclusion plausible, even though it's false. (shrink)

In this essay I try to motivate and formulate the main epistemological questions to ask about the phenomenon of religious disagreement. I will not spend much time going over proposed answers to those questions. I address the relevance of the recent literature on the epistemology of disagreement. I start with some fiction and then, hopefully, proceed with something that has at least a passing acquaintance with truth.

Several philosophers have recently argued that disagreement with others undermines or precludes epistemic justification for our opinions about controversial issues. This amounts to a fascinating and disturbing kind of intellectual scepticism. A crucial piece of the sceptical argument, however, is that our opponents on such topics are epistemic peers. In this paper, I examine the reasons for why we might think that our opponents really are such peers, and I argue that those reasons are either too weak or too strong, (...) implying absurd conclusions. Thus, there is not a compelling case for disagreement-based intellectual scepticism. (shrink)

It is often suggested that when opinions differ among individuals in a group, the opinions should be aggregated to form a compromise. This paper compares two approaches to aggregating opinions, linear pooling and what I call opinion agglomeration. In evaluating both strategies, I propose a pragmatic criterion, No Regrets, entailing that an aggregation strategy should prevent groups from buying and selling bets on events at prices regretted by their members. I show that only opinion agglomeration is able to satisfy the (...) demand. I then proceed to give normative and empirical arguments in support of the pragmatic criterion for opinion aggregation, and that ultimately favor opinion agglomeration. (shrink)

What is the epistemological significance of deep disagreement? Part I explored the nature of deep disagreement, while Part II considers its epistemological significance. It focuses on two core problems: the incommensurability and the rational resolvability problems. We critically survey key responses to these challenges, before raising worries for a variety of responses to them, including skeptical, relativist, and absolutist responses to the incommensurability problem, and to certain steadfast and conciliatory responses to the rational resolvability problem. We then pivot to the (...) ethical and political dimensions of deep disagreement. We focus on whether an unwillingness to engage with positions one considers to be immoral or repugnant might be good, and conclude with some reflections on the moral risks of engagement. (shrink)

According to conciliatory views on the significance of disagreement, it’s rational for you to become less confident in your take on an issue in case your epistemic peer’s take on it is different. These views are intuitively appealing, but they also face a powerful objection: in scenarios that involve disagreements over their own correctness, conciliatory views appear to self-defeat and, thereby, issue inconsistent recommendations. This paper provides a response to this objection. Drawing on the work from defeasible logics paradigm and (...) abstract argumentation, it develops a formal model of conciliatory reasoning and explores its behavior in the troubling scenarios. The model suggests that the recommendations that conciliatory views issue in such scenarios are perfectly reasonable—even if outwardly they may look odd. (shrink)

This is the most comprehensive book ever published on philosophical methodology. A team of thirty-eight of the world's leading philosophers present original essays on various aspects of how philosophy should be and is done. The first part is devoted to broad traditions and approaches to philosophical methodology. The entries in the second part address topics in philosophical methodology, such as intuitions, conceptual analysis, and transcendental arguments. The third part of the book is devoted to essays about the interconnections between philosophy (...) and neighbouring fields, including those of mathematics, psychology, literature and film, and neuroscience. (shrink)

The author defends Conciliationism as a response to peer-disagreement in ethics against a prominent objection: if in cases of peer-disagreement we have to move our credences towards those of our dissenting peers, then we have to adopt scepticism in fields where disagreement between peers abounds. For this objection, the case of ethics is particularly worrisome. The author argues that the objection from scepticism is based on a highly idealised notion of an epistemic peer. In cases of disagreement about ethical issues, (...) it is often unknown to us what another person counts as her evidence, since one’s notions of what counts as evidence and what weight to attach to different forms of evidence are impacted by one’s global outlook. Being aware of what an agent considers as evidence requires familiarity with that agent’s global outlook. This introduces two constraints on epistemic peerhood in cases of disagreement about ethics: an epistemic constraint, and a factual constraint. (shrink)

Evolutionary debunking arguments purport to show that, if moral realism is true, all of our moral beliefs are unjustified. In this paper, I respond to two of the most enduring objections that have been raised against these arguments. The first objection claims that evolutionary debunking arguments are self-undermining, because they cannot be formulated without invoking epistemic principles, and epistemic principles are just as vulnerable to debunking as our moral beliefs. I argue that this objection suffers from several defects, the most (...) serious of which is that it has the unpalatable consequence that we should never revise our moral beliefs in response to evidence that our capacity for normative cognition is globally impaired. The second objection, which comes to us from Katia Vavova, claims that evolutionary debunking arguments are doomed to fail, because they attempt to show that our moral beliefs are unreliable without making any assumptions about the nature of morality, and this is impossible. I argue, to the contrary, that the etiological higher-order evidence cited by debunking arguments can give us good reason to think that our moral beliefs are unreliable, even if we make no assumptions about what morality is like. (shrink)

We have several intuitive paradigms of defeating evidence. For example, let E be the fact that Ernie tells me that the notorious pet Precious is a bird. This supports the premise F, that Precious can fly. However, Orna gives me *opposing* evidence. She says that Precious is a dog. Alternatively, defeating evidence might not oppose Ernie's testimony in that direct way. There might be other ways for it to weaken the support that Ernie's testimony gives me for believing F, without (...) the new evidence itself intuitively constituting reasons to believe one way or the other about Precious's flight ability. An example: Ursula tells me that Ernie has no idea what Precious's species is; he's just guessing. She may not herself want to or be in a position to weigh in about Precious's real species or flight ability. I call defeating evidence of this sort *undermining evidence. (shrink)

Many epistemologists argue that responses to disagreement should exhibit a certain kind of epistemic impartiality. “Strong conciliationists” claim that we ought to give equal weight to the views of those who, judged from a dispute-neutral perspective, appear to be our “epistemic peers” with respect to some disputed matter. Using a Bayesian framework, Chapter 8 considers whether there is a plausible epistemic impartiality principle that would require us to give up confident religious (or irreligious) belief in favor of religious skepticism. It (...) is argued that the strong conciliationist’s epistemic impartiality is untenable, at least in contexts like the religious domain where the primary questions under dispute cannot be cleanly separated from questions about what qualifications are needed to reliably assess those primary questions. The chapter recommends instead a rationalist view on which rational insight can sustain justified confidence even when impartial grounds are lacking. It closes by defending the “religious acceptability” of this rationalist epistemology. (shrink)

Does political decision-making require experts or can a democracy be trusted to make correct decisions? This question has a long-standing tradition in political philosophy, going back at least to Plato’s Republic. Critics of democracy tend to argue that democracy cannot be trusted in this way while advocates tend to argue that it can. Both camps agree that it is the epistemic quality of the outcomes of political decision-making processes that underpins the legitimacy of political institutions. In recent political philosophy, epistemic (...) democrats have embraced this instrumentalist way of thinking about democracy. In this chapter, I argue that the attempt to defend democracy on epistemic instrumentalist grounds is self-undermining. I also develop an alternative – procedural – epistemic defence of democracy. I show that there is a prima facie epistemic case for democracy when there is no procedure-independent epistemic authority on the issue to be decided. (shrink)