This paper explores the application of hinge epistemology to deep disagreement. Hinge epistemology holds that there is a class of commitments—hinge commitments—which play a fundamental role in the structure of belief and rational evaluation: they are the most basic general ‘presuppositions’ of our world views which make it possible for us to evaluate certain beliefs or doubts as rational. Deep disagreements seem to crucially involve disagreements over such fundamental commitments. In this paper, I consider pessimism about deep disagreement, the thesis (...) that such disagreements are rationally irresolvable, and ask whether the Wittgensteinian account of deep disagreement—according to which such disagreements are disagreements over hinge commitments—provides adequate support for pessimism. I argue that the answer to this question depends on what hinge commitments are and what our epistemic relation to them is supposed to be. I argue for two core claims. First, that non-epistemic theories of hinge commitments provide adequate support for pessimism. Nevertheless, such theories have highly implausible consequences in the context of deep disagreement. Secondly, at least one epistemic theory of hinge commitments, the entitlement theory, permits optimism about such disagreements. As such, while hinge epistemology is mainly pessimistic about deep disagreement, it doesn’t have to be. (shrink)

This paper explores the application of hinge epistemology to deep disagreement. Hinge epistemology holds that there is a class of commitments—hinge commitments—which play a fundamental role in the structure of belief and rational evaluation: they are the most basic general ‘presuppositions’ of our world views which make it possible for us to evaluate certain beliefs or doubts as rational. Deep disagreements seem to crucially involve disagreements over such fundamental commitments. In this paper, I consider pessimism about deep disagreement, the thesis (...) that such disagreements are rationally irresolvable, and ask whether the Wittgensteinian account of deep disagreement—according to which such disagreements are disagreements over hinge commitments—provides adequate support for pessimism. I argue that the answer to this question depends on what hinge commitments are and what our epistemic relation to them is supposed to be. I argue for two core claims. First, that non-epistemic theories of hinge commitments provide adequate support for pessimism. Nevertheless, such theories have highly implausible consequences in the context of deep disagreement. Secondly, at least one epistemic theory of hinge commitments, the entitlement theory, permits optimism about such disagreements. As such, while hinge epistemology is mainly pessimistic about deep disagreement, it doesn’t have to be. (shrink)

I present an argument against the thesis of Uniqueness and in favour of Permissivism. Counterexamples to Uniqueness are provided, based on ‘Safespot’ propositions – i.e. a proposition that is guaranteed to be true provided the subject adopts a certain attitude towards it. The argument relies on a plausible principle: (roughly stated) If S knows that her believing p would be a true belief, then it is rationally permitted for S to believe p. One motivation for denying this principle – viz. (...) opposition to ‘epistemic consequentialism’ – is briefly discussed. The principle is extended to cover degrees of belief and compared with a couple of other well-known constraints on rational degrees of belief. (shrink)

Deep disagreements concern our most basic and fundamental commitments. Such disagreements seem to be problematic because they appear to manifest epistemic incommensurability in our epistemic systems, and thereby lead to epistemic relativism. This problem is confronted via consideration of a Wittgensteinian hinge epistemology. On the face of it, this proposal exacerbates the problem of deep disagreements by granting that our most fundamental commitments are essentially arationally held. It is argued, however, that a hinge epistemology, properly understood, does not licence epistemic (...) incommensurability or epistemic relativism at all. On the contrary, such an epistemology in fact shows us how to rationally respond to deep disagreements. It is claimed that if we can resist these consequences even from the perspective of a hinge epistemology, then we should be very suspicious of the idea that deep disagreements in general are as epistemologically problematic as has been widely supposed. (shrink)

Can one enter into an argument with one’s intellectual equals in good faith if one regards the matter in hand as already settled? Adopting such an attitude looks very much like taking a dogmatic stance, in that one is closing one’s mind to counterarguments in advance. Dogmatism is, of course, an intellectual vice. Moreover, such dogmatism seems morally problematic, in that one is failing to treat one’s adversary with due respect. While there is clearly something correct about this line of (...) thinking—dogmatism, like all intellectual vice, is obviously to be avoided—it is also maintained that, properly understood, there need be nothing intellectually viceful about engaging in an argument where one regards the subject matter as settled. Related to this point, it is contended that someone who possesses the intellectual virtue of intellectual humility may well engage in arguments in just this fashion. The upshot is that one can consistently and properly argue with both conviction and intellectual humility. (shrink)

The axiological account of deep disagreements is described and defended. This proposal understands this notion in terms of the existential importance of the topic of disagreement. It is argued that this account provides a straightforward explanation for the main features of deep disagreements. This proposal is then compared to the contemporary popular view that deep disagreements are essentially hinge disagreements – i.e. disagreements concerning clashes of one’s hinge commitments, in the sense described by the later Wittgenstein. It is claimed that (...) hinge disagreements are only plausibly deep disagreements insofar as there can be a specific class of hinge commitments that are axiological in nature, thereby lending further support to the axiological account of deep disagreement. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that one strong motivation for adopting a conciliatory stance with regard to the epistemology of peer disagreement is that the non-conciliatory alternatives are incompatible with the demands of intellectual character, and incompatible with the virtue of intellectual humility in particular. It is argued that this is a mistake, at least once we properly understand what intellectual humility involves. Given some of the inherent problems facing conciliatory proposals, it is maintained that non-conciliatory approaches to epistemic peer disagreement (...) are thus on much stronger dialectical ground than many suppose, including some defenders of this line. In particular, non-conciliatory proposals can resist the idea that epistemic peer disagreement directly weakens one’s epistemic justification, as conciliatory views maintain. This means that the epistemic justification that our beliefs in this regard enjoy, and thus our knowledge, is more secure than conciliatory approaches to epistemic peer disagreement would suggest. (shrink)

Literature in the epistemology of disagreement has focused on peer disagreement: disagreement between those with shared evidence and equal cognitive abilities. Additional literature focuses on the perspective of amateurs who disagree with experts. However, the appropriate epistemic reaction from superiors who disagree with inferiors remains underexplored. Prima facie, this may seem an uninteresting set of affairs. If A is B’s superior, and A has good reason to believe she is B’s superior, A appears free to dismiss B’s disagreement. However, a (...) closer look will show otherwise. I first distinguish competent from incompetent inferiors and then argue that disagreement from the former often gives superiors reason to adjust credence and reevaluate belief. In other words, epistemic inferiority alone is insufficient grounds for dismissing opinion. More nuanced difficulties arise with incompetent inferiors. When superiors disagree with incompetents, this might provide evidence to bolster belief credence; however, agreement from incompetents can defeat justification. In either instance, inferior opinion carries epistemic weight. Yet, this fails to cover all ground; at times, superiors learn nothing from inferior disagreement. I finish by exploring these uninformative disagreements, how to distinguish them from the informative cases, and the proper epistemic reactions thereof. (shrink)

It is argued that two plausible goals of the educational enterprise are (i) to develop the intellectual character, and thus the intellectual virtues, of the student, and (ii) to develop the student's intellectual self-confidence, such that they are able to have conviction in what they believe. On the face of it, however, these two educational goals seem to be in tension with one another, at least insofar as intellectual humility is a genuine intellectual virtue. This is because intellectual humility seems (...) to require that one does not have conviction in one's beliefs. It is argued that this tension can be avoided so long as we have the right account of intellectual humility in play. This enables us to understand what educating for intellectual humility might involve, and how it might co-exist with the educational development of a student's intellectual self-confidence. (shrink)

‘Conciliationism’ is the view that disagreement with qualified disputants gives us a powerful reason for doubting our disputed views, a reason that will often be sufficient to defeat what would otherwise be strong evidential justification for our position. Conciliationism is disputed by many qualified philosophers, a fact that has led many to conclude that conciliationism is self-defeating. After examining one prominent response to this challenge and finding it wanting, I develop a fresh approach to the problem. I identify two levels (...) at which one may show epistemic deference—the level of one's credences and the level of one's reasoning—and show that in disagreements over conciliationism, deference at one level results in non-deference at the other. A commitment to epistemic deference therefore does not provide a rational reason to reduce confidence when conciliationism itself is disputed. After presenting the case for ‘resolute conciliationism’, I address two objections. (shrink)

This paper discusses responses to Disagreement, Deference, and Rational Commitment from Bogardus and Burton, Thurow, and Kvanvig. Each of these responses objects to the rationalist account of “partisan justification” defended in the book. After explaining partisan justification and its significance, I first take up Bogardus and Burton’s argument for a more restrictive account of partisan justification which says that partisan justification requires certainty. I argue that this account yields implausible discontinuities in the verdicts given to nearly identical cases. Next, I (...) consider Thurow’s suggestion that perceptual evidence can provide partisan justification without supporting rational insight. I explain why insight plays a crucial role in cases where perceptual beliefs enjoy partisan justification. Finally, I address Kvanvig’s objection that my account of partisan justification applies only to highly reflective agents. I argue that a subject’s actual reflectiveness does not bear on the sense of justification principally at issue in the disagreement literature. (shrink)

This paper summarizes Disagreement, Deference, and Religious Commitment. The book’s central question is whether confident (ir)religious commitment can be rationally maintained in the face of systematic religious disagreement. Part i develops an account of the epistemic significance of disagreement and considers the implications of this account for religious belief. This part argues against the commitment of “strong conciliationists” to a rigorous form of epistemic impartiality, a commitment that underlies the strongest argument for disagreement-motivated religious skepticism. Part ii considers the implications (...) for religious commitment if the impartiality constraint favored by strong conciliationists is correct. It is argued that the commitment to epistemic impartiality does not clearly support religious skepticism. However, such a commitment does induce a thoroughgoing normative uncertainty that arguably prevents one from rationally pursuing a religious (or explicitly irreligious) way of life. (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)

Alex Worsnip has recently argued against conciliatory views that say that the degree of doxastic revision required in light of disagreement is a function of one’s antecedent reliability estimates for oneself and one’s disputant. According to Worsnip, the degree of doxastic revision is also sensitive to the resilience of these estimates; in particular, when one has positive “net resilience,” meaning that one is more confident in one’s estimate of one’s own reliability than in one’s estimate of the disputant’s reliability, less (...) doxastic revision is required. I show that Worsnip’s Resilience Account, however intuitive it may be, sometimes issues prescriptions that are clearly irrational. I then argue that Worsnip’s criticisms of “extreme conciliationism” are mistaken. The discussion brings out several important lessons for the epistemology of disagreement: first, while positive net resilience does not affect the degree of conciliation required in one-shot disagreements, over multiple disagreements it may diminish or magnify the required degree of conciliation; second, a common way of framing the disagreement debate is misguided; and third, the focus of the disagreement debate should not be on whether reliability estimates should determine the degree of conciliation, but on what reasons may legitimately ground reliability estimates. (shrink)

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)

The standard image of how consensus can be achieved is by pooling evidence and reducing if not eliminating disagreements. But rather than just pooling substantive evidence on a certain question, why not also take into account the formal, testimonial evidence provided by the fact that a majority of the group adopt a particular answer? Shouldn't we be reinforced by the discovery that we are on that majority side, and undermined by the discovery that we are not? Shouldn't this be so, (...) in particular, when Condorcet's jury theorem applies? It turns out not. There are serious problems attending any strategy of majoritarian deference. (shrink)

The recent literature on the epistemology of disagreement focuses on the rational response question: how are you rationally required to respond to a doxastic disagreement with someone, especially with someone you take to be your epistemic peer? A doxastic disagreement with someone also confronts you with a slightly different question. This question, call it the epistemic trust question, is: how much should you trust our own epistemic faculties relative to the epistemic faculties of others? Answering the epistemic trust question is (...) important for the epistemology of disagreement because it sheds light on the rational response question. My main aim in this paper is to argue—against recent attempts to show otherwise—that epistemic self-trust does not provide a reason for remaining steadfast in doxastic disagreements with others. (shrink)

Philosophers of science have often favoured reductive approaches to how-possibly explanation. This article identifies three alternative conceptions making how-possibly explanation an interesting phenomenon in its own right. The first variety approaches “how possibly X?” by showing that X is not epistemically impossible. This can sometimes be achieved by removing misunderstandings concerning the implications of one’s current belief system but involves characteristically a modification of this belief system so that acceptance of X does not result in contradiction. The second variety offers (...) a potential how-explanation of X. It is usually followed by a range of further potential how-explanations of the same phenomenon. In recent literature the factual claims implied by the second variety have been downplayed whereas the heuristic role of mapping the space of conceptual possibilities has been emphasized. I will focus especially on this truth-bracketing sense of potentiality when looking closer at the second variety in the paper. The third variety has attracted less interest. It presents a partial how-explanation of X. Typically it aims to establish the existence of a mechanism by which X could be and was generated. The third conception stands out as the natural alternative for the advocate of ontic how-possibly explanations. This article transfers Salmon’s view that explanation-concepts can be broadly divided into epistemic, modal, and ontic to the context of how-possibly explanations. Moreover, it is argued that each of the three above-mentioned varieties of how-possibly explanation occurs in science. To recognize this may be especially relevant for philosophers. We are often misled by the promises of various why-explanation accounts, and seem to have forgotten nearly everything about the diversity of how-possibly explanations. (shrink)

This paper provides a defence of the thesis that responsible belief is permissible rather than obliged belief. On the Uniqueness Thesis (UT), our evidence is always such that there is a unique doxastic attitude that we are obliged to have given that evidence, whereas the Permissibility Thesis (PT) denies this. After distinguishing several varieties of UT and PT, we argue that the main arguments that have been levied against PT fail. Next, two arguments in favour of PT are provided. Finally, (...) two motivations for PT are put forward by showing that PT is entailed by two views that are quite popular among theorists working on doxastic responsibility. If the arguments in this paper are successful, we not only have good reasons to prefer PT over UT, but also good reasons to think that the gap between the ways in which we are meant to normatively assess belief and action may not be as wide as has been thought. (shrink)

Recently there has been a surge of interest in the intersection between epistemology and action theory, especially in principles linking rationality in thought and rationality in action. Recently there has also been a surge of interest in the epistemic significance of perceived peer disagreement: what, epistemically speaking, is the rational response in light of disagreement with someone whom one regards as an epistemic peer? The objective of this paper is to explore these two issues—separately, but also in connection with one (...) another. I turn first to the idea that the normative standing of our actions depends on the normative standing of our beliefs. I endorse this idea. More precisely, I endorse a principle according to which sufficiently high credence in success conditions for a given goal-directed action is a necessary condition on rational execution of that action. I then turn to the debate concerning the epistemic significance of perceived peer disagreement. The basic issue is whether such disagreement is always epistemically significant in the sense of serving as a defeater of the initial credences of the disagreeing parties. Conformists argue that this is so while non-conformists deny it. I present a new argument against a brand of non-conformism that I call “strong non-conformism”. The key premise is the principle that sufficiently high credence in success conditions for a given goal-directed action is a necessary condition on rational execution of that action. I argue that, given this principle, strong non-conformism fails to yield the verdict that the epistemic requirement on rational action is violated in a case where, intuitively, it is violated. This is because strong non-conformism has it that disagreement with a perceived peer does not act as a defeater in the relevant case. Conformism fares better. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that moral deference is prima facie obligatory in cases in which the testifier is a member of a marginalized social group that the receiver is not and testifies about their marginalized experience. We distinguish between two types of deference: epistemic deference, which refers to believing p in virtue of trusting the testifier, and actional deference, which involves acting appropriately in response to the testimony given. The prima facie duty we propose applies to both epistemic and (...) actional deference, though defeaters may quash either or both obligations. Even if one fails to epistemically defer to the marginalized testifier, we argue that they may still be ethically obligated to act in accordance with their testimony. (shrink)

Traditional procedures for rational updating fail when it comes to self-locating opinions, such as your credences about where you are and what time it is. This paper develops an updating procedure for rational agents with self-locating beliefs. In short, I argue that rational updating can be factored into two steps. The first step uses information you recall from your previous self to form a hypothetical credence distribution, and the second step changes this hypothetical distribution to reflect information you have genuinely (...) learned as time has passed. While the second step resembles traditional procedures of updating by conditionalization, the first is best understood by analogy to traditional models of how agents transmit self-locating opinions through ordinary interpersonal communication. (shrink)

Recent philosophy has paid considerable attention to the way our biases are liable to encroach upon our cognitive lives, diminishing our capacity to know and unjustly denigrating the knowledge of others. The extent of the bias, and the range of domains to which it applies, has struck some as so great as to license talk of a new form of skepticism. I argue that these depressing consequences are real and, in some ways, even more intractable than has previously been recognized. (...) For the difficulties we face in this domain are fueled not only by implicit biases but by various other sorts of entrenched cognitive attitudes we bear toward others, whether or not we judge them to be our peers. Inasmuch as the epistemic standing of this broader set of attitudes is itself quite dubious, the problem of epistemic injustice turns out to be just one special case—albeit of a particularly nasty kind—from a broader domain of cases where the collaborative character of knowledge clashes with tendencies that make collaboration difficult. This makes the threat of skepticism all the greater, and at the same time makes it harder to see what path of escape there might be. (shrink)

While it seems hard to deny the epistemic significance of a disagreement with our acknowledged epistemic peers, there are certain disagreements, such as philosophical disagreements, which appear to be permissibly sustainable. These two claims, each independently plausible, are jointly puzzling. This paper argues for a solution to this puzzle. The main tenets of the solution are two. First, the peers ought to engage in a deliberative activity of discovering more about their epistemic position vis-à-vis the issue at stake. Secondly, the (...) peers are permitted to do so while entertaining a sui generis doxastic attitude of hypothesis. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the phenomenon of forming one’s judgement about epistemic matters, such as whether one has some reason not to believe false propositions, on the basis of the opinion of somebody one takes to be an expert about them. The paper pursues three aims. First, it argues that some cases of expert deference about epistemic matters are suspicious. Secondly, it provides an explanation of such a suspiciousness. Thirdly, it draws the metaepistemological implications of the proposed explanation.

The paper argues that the view to the effect that one should suspend judgment in the face of a disagreement with a recognised epistemic peer results in a puzzle when applied to disagreements in which one party is agnostic. The puzzle is this: either the agnostic party retains her suspension of judgment, or she suspends it. The former option is discarded by proponents of the agnostic response; the latter leads the agnostic response to undermine itself.

Earlenbaugh and Molyneux’s argument against considering intuitions as evidence has an uncharitable consequence — a substantial part of philosophical practice is not justified. A possible solution to this problem is to defend that philosophy must be descriptive metaphysics. But if this statement is rejected, one can only argue (a) that experts’ intuition does constitute evidence, and (b) that philosophical practice is justified by the overall growth of philosophical knowledge it generates.

Conciliatory views on disagreement claim that one should “split the difference” between the epistemic peers’ opinions. Nevertheless, when they apply to the disagreement on conciliatory positions themselves, they give incoherent instructions. A semi-conciliatory position is one that accepts that the peers’ opinions are part of the whole body of evidence relevant in these situations. If one adopts this kind of view, all cases that seems to favor conciliatory views can be explained, and without compromising with the anti–intuitive consequences conciliatory positions (...) have. In particular, a semi-conciliatory view is not condemned to give incoherent instructions when applied to disagreement about it. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to explore the connection between expressivism and disagreement. More in particular, the aim is to defend that one of the desiderata that can be derived from the study of disagreement, the explanation of ‘crossed disagreements’, can only be accommodated within a semantic theory that respects, at the meta-semantic level, certain expressivistic restrictions. We will compare contemporary dynamic expressivism with three different varieties of contextualist strategies to accommodate the specificities of evaluative language –indexical contextualism – (...) truth-conditional pragmatics –, pragmatic strategies using implicatures, and presuppositional accounts. Our conclusion will be that certain assumptions of expressivism are necessary in order to provide a semantic account of evaluative uses of language that can allow us to detect and prevent crossed disagreements. (shrink)

There has been a recent explosion of interest in the epistemology of disagreement. Much of the recent literature is concerned with a particular range of puzzle cases (discussed in the Cases section of my paper). Almost all of the papers that contribute to that recent literature make mention of questions about religious disagreement in ways that suggest that there are interesting connections between those puzzle cases and real life cases of religious disagreement. One important aim of my paper is to (...) cast doubt on that suggestion. More generally, the aim of my paper is to give a reasonably full account of the recent literature on the epistemology of disagreement, and then to give a serious discussion of some of the epistemological issues that are raised by real world religious disagreements. (shrink)

This essay defends a rational reconstruction of a genealogical debunking argument that begins with the premise “that's just what the economic elite want you to believe” and ends in the conclusion “you should lower your confidence in your belief.” The argument is genealogical because it includes a causal explanation of your beliefs; it is debunking because it claims that the contingencies uncovered by the genealogy undermine your beliefs. The essay begins by defending a plausible causal explanation of your belief in (...) terms of the wants of the elite. Then a number of recent objections to genealogical debunking arguments are considered. It is argued that the genealogy offered in the first part constitutes evidence that a testimony-based belief is not safe and therefore does not constitute knowledge if the economic elite wants you to believe it. (shrink)

The main issue in the epistemology of peer disagreement is whether known disagreement among those who are in symmetrical epistemic positions undermines the rationality of their maintaining their respective views. Douven and Kelp have argued convincingly that this problem is best understood as being about how to respond to peer disagreement repeatedly over time, and that this diachronic issue can be best approached through computer simulation. However, Douven and Kelp’s favored simulation framework cannot naturally handle Christensen’s famous Mental Math example. (...) As a remedy, I introduce an alternative simulation framework, Laputa, inspired by Alvin Goldman’s seminal work on veritistic social epistemology. I show that Christensen’s conciliatory response, reasonably reconstructed and supplemented, gives rise to an increase in epistemic value only if the peers continue to recheck their mental math; else the peers might as well be steadfast. On a meta-level, the study illustrates the power of Goldman’s approach when combined with simulation techniques for handling the computational issues involved. (shrink)

The main issue in the epistemology of peer disagreement is whether known disagreement among those who are in symmetrical epistemic positions undermines the rationality of their maintaining their respective views. Douven and Kelp have argued convincingly that this problem is best understood as being about how to respond to peer disagreement repeatedly over time, and that this diachronic issue can be best approached through computer simulation. However, Douven and Kelp’s favored simulation framework cannot naturally handle Christensen’s famous Mental Math example. (...) As a remedy, I introduce an alternative simulation framework, Laputa, inspired by Alvin Goldman’s seminal work on veritistic social epistemology. I show that Christensen’s conciliatory response, reasonably reconstructed and supplemented, gives rise to an increase in epistemic value only if the peers continue to recheck their mental math; else the peers might as well be steadfast. On a meta-level, the study illustrates the power of Goldman’s approach when combined with simulation techniques for handling the computational issues involved. (shrink)

In Bad Beliefs, Levy presents a picture of belief-forming processes according to which, on most matters of significance, we defer to reliable sources by relying extensively on cultural and social cues. Levy conceptualizes the kind of evidence provided by socio-cultural environments as higher-order evidence. But his notion of higher-order evidence seems to differ from those available in the epistemological literature on higher-order evidence, and this calls for a reflection on how exactly social and cultural cues are/count as/provide higher-order evidence. In (...) this paper, I draw on the three-tiered model of epistemic exchange that I have been developing recently, which highlights the centrality of relations of attention and trust in belief-forming processes, to explicate how social and cultural cues provide higher-order evidence. I also argue that Levy’s account fails to sufficiently address the issue of strategic actors who have incentives to pollute epistemic environments for their benefit, and more generally the power struggles, incentives, and competing interests that characterize human sociality. Levy’s attempted reduction of the political to the epistemic ultimately fails, but his account of social and cultural cues as higher-order evidence offers an insightful perspective on epistemic social structures. (shrink)

This paper defends the usefulness of the concept of philosophical progress and the common assumption that philosophy and science aim to make the same, or a comparable, kind of progress. It does so by responding to Yafeng Shan's (2022) arguments that the wealth of research on scientific progress is not applicable or useful to philosophy, and that philosophy doesn't need a concept of progress at all. It is ultimately argued that while Shan's arguments are not successful, they reveal the way (...) forward in developing accounts of philosophical progress. (shrink)

We present a minimal pragmatic restriction on the interpretation of the weights in the “Equal Weight View” regarding peer disagreement and show that the view cannot respect it. Based on this result we argue against the view. The restriction is the following one: if an agent, $$\hbox {i}$$ i, assigns an equal or higher weight to another agent, $$\hbox {j}$$ j,, he must be willing—in exchange for a positive and certain payment—to accept an offer to let a completely rational and (...) sympathetic $$\hbox {j}$$ j choose for him whether to accept a bet with positive expected utility. If $$\hbox {i}$$ i assigns a lower weight to $$\hbox {j}$$ j than to himself, he must not be willing to pay any positive price for letting $$\hbox {j}$$ j choose for him. Respecting the constraint entails, we show, that the impact of disagreement on one’s degree of belief is not independent of what the disagreement is discovered to be. (shrink)

We can infer moral conclusions from nonmoral evidence using a three-step procedure. First, we distinguish the processes generating belief so that their reliability in generating true belief is statistically predictable. Second, we assess the processes’ reliability, perhaps by observing how frequently they generate true nonmoral belief or logically inconsistent beliefs. Third, we adjust our credence in moral propositions in light of the truth ratios of the processes generating beliefs in them. This inferential route involves empirically discovering truths of the form (...) “Process P, which generates belief in moral proposition M, has truth ratio T", and using them to discover probabilities for moral propositions. The inferential route is noncircular, and progress along it is driven fundamentally by induction. (shrink)

Debates on moral enhancement focus legitimate attention on the questions of whether it is possible and/or what could count as a moral enhancement given deep ethical disagreement. I argue here that moral enhancements might not even be rational to consider—from the perspective of the agent. At issue is the assessment of whether the enhancement is truly reliable. Since we assess reliable belief forming processes by their outputs, whether they are true, an agent who is entertaining a putative moral enhancement faces (...) a trilemma. If she already believes the promised outputs of the enhancement, the enhancement is obsolete. If she does not believe the promised outputs, it would be irrational from her current perspective to undertake the “enhancement.” If she is uncertain, she has no reason for thinking that the enhancement truly augments her moral beliefs. On any option, the agent has no reason for taking a putative moral enhancement. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Ethical and political attitudes are not randomly distributed in a population. Attitudes of family members, for example, tend to be more similar than those of a random sample of the same size. In the fields of social psychology and political science, the historically standard explanation for these attitude distribution patterns was that social and political attitudes are a function of environmental factors like parental socialization and prevailing social norms. This received view is, however, complicated by more recent work in (...) behavioral genetics, which consistently and repeatedly demonstrates that certain ethical and political attitudes dealing with issues like censorship, abortion, capital punishment, and immigration policy have a significant heritability coefficient, to wit, a substantial percentage of attitude variance in a population can be attributed to genetic variance, independent of environmental factors. In this paper, I argue that the genetic influence on our ethical and political attitudes is mediated by what we can agree to be irrelevant and distorting factors that can lead moral reasoning astray. Further, I argue that we should significantly lower our credences in ethical and political attitudes that fall within the domains of belief that involve significant genetic influence. (shrink)

Evidentialism as an account of theoretical rationality is a popular and well-defended position. However, recently, it's been argued that misleading higher-order evidence (HOE) – that is, evidence about one's evidence or about one's cognitive functioning – poses a problem for evidentialism. Roughly, the problem is that, in certain cases of misleading HOE, it appears evidentialism entails that it is rational to adopt a belief in an akratic conjunction – a proposition of the form “p, but my evidence doesn't support p” (...) – despite it being the case that believing an akratic conjunction appears to be clearly irrational. In this paper, I diffuse the problem for evidentialism using the distinction between propositional and doxastic rationality. I argue that, although it can be propositionally rational to believe an akratic conjunction (according to evidentialism), one cannot inferentially base an akratic belief in one's evidence, and, thus, one cannot doxastically rationally possess an akratic belief. In addition, I address the worry that my solution to the puzzle commits evidentialists to the possibility of epistemic circumstances in which a proposition, p, is propositionally rational to believe (namely, an akratic conjunction), yet one cannot, in principle, (doxastically) rationally believe p. As I demonstrate, cases of misleading HOE are not the only types of cases that force evidentialists to accept that propositional rationality does not entail the possibility of doxastic rationality. There are no new problems raised by misleading HOE that weren't already present in cases involving purely first-order evidence. (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.

It is commonly assumed that when we assign different credences to a proposition, a perfect compromise between our opinions simply ‘splits the difference’ between our credences. I introduce and defend an alternative account, namely that a perfect compromise maximizes the average of the expected epistemic values that we each assign to alternative credences in the disputed proposition. I compare the compromise strategy I introduce with the traditional strategy of compromising by splitting the difference, and I argue that my strategy is (...) a reasonable characterization of epistemic compromise. (shrink)

There can be good reasons to doubt the authority of a group of scientists. But those reasons do not include lack of unanimity among them. Indeed, holding science to a unanimity or near-unanimity standard has a pernicious effect on scientific deliberation, and on the transparency that is so crucial to the authority of science in a democracy. What authorizes a conclusion is the quality of the deliberation that produced it, which is enhanced by the presence of a non-dismissible minority. Scientists (...) can speak as one in more ways than one. We recommend a different sort of consensus that is partly substantive and partly procedural. It is a version of what Margaret Gilbert calls “joint acceptance” – we call it “deliberative acceptance.” It capitalizes on there being a persistent minority, and thereby encourages accurate reporting of the state of agreement and disagreement among deliberators. (shrink)

An important principle in the epistemology of disagreement is Independence, which states, “In evaluating the epistemic credentials of another’s expressed belief about P, in order to determine how (or whether) to modify my own belief about P, I should do so in a way that doesn’t rely on the reasoning behind my initial belief about P” (Christensen 2011, 1-2). I present a series of new counterexamples to both Independence and also a revised, more widely applicable, version of it. I then (...) formulate and endorse a third version of Independence that avoids those counterexamples. Lastly, I show how this third version of Independence reveals two new ways one may remain steadfast in the face of two real life disagreements: one about God’s existence and one about moral realism. (shrink)

Upon discovering that certain beliefs we hold are contingent on arbitrary features of our background, we often feel uneasy. I defend the proposal that if such cases of contingency anxiety involve defeaters, this is because of the epistemic significance of disagreement. I note two hurdles to our accepting this Disagreement Hypothesis. Firstly, some cases of contingency anxiety apparently involve no disagreement. Secondly, the proposal may seem to make our awareness of the influence of arbitrary background factors irrelevant in determining whether (...) to revise our beliefs. I show that each of these problems can be successfully accommodated by the Disagreement Hypothesis. (shrink)

Upon discovering that certain beliefs we hold are contingent on arbitrary features of our background, we often feel uneasy. I defend the proposal that if such cases of contingency anxiety involve defeaters, this is because of the epistemic significance of disagreement. I note two hurdles to our accepting this Disagreement Hypothesis. Firstly, some cases of contingency anxiety apparently involve no disagreement. Secondly, the proposal may seem to make our awareness of the influence of arbitrary background factors irrelevant in determining whether (...) to revise our beliefs. I show that each of these problems can be successfully accommodated by the Disagreement Hypothesis. (shrink)