My aim in this paper is to propose a way to resolve a supposed dilemma currently troubling the debate about rational belief formation in cases of peer disagreement. In section 1, I will introduce the general debate in question as well as the kind of view figuring in the supposed dilemma. In section 2, I will describe how the supposed dilemma arises. In section 3, I will consider the replies that have hitherto been offered and explain in how far these (...) replies should be regarded as unsatisfying. Finally, in sections 4 and 5, I will propose and defend a new reply to the supposed dilemma. This reply consists in rejecting the intuitively appealing view that one should be conciliatory in the relevant kind of case, and in endorsing a more careful position, which respects the intuitions behind conciliationism and which, in contrast to the latter, does not give rise to the kind of dilemma in question. View HTML Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.ON THE SUPPOSED DILEMMA OF CONCILIATIONISMVolume 13, Issue 3Stefan ReiningDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2015.47Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. ON THE SUPPOSED DILEMMA OF CONCILIATIONISMVolume 13, Issue 3Stefan ReiningDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2015.47Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. ON THE SUPPOSED DILEMMA OF CONCILIATIONISMVolume 13, Issue 3Stefan ReiningDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2015.47Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

While many philosophers have agreed that evidence of disagreement is a kind of higher-order evidence, this has not yet resulted in formally precise higher-order approaches to the problem of disagreement. In this paper, we outline a simple formal framework for determining the epistemic significance of a body of higher-order evidence, and use this framework to motivate a novel interpretation of the popular “equal weight view” of peer disagreement—we call it the Variably Equal Weight View (VEW). We show that VEW differs (...) from the standard Split the Difference (SD) interpretation of the equal weight view in almost all cases of peer disagreement, and use our formal framework to explain why SD has seemed attractive but is in fact misguided. A desirable feature of VEW, we argue, is that it gives rise to plausible instances of synergy—an effect whereby the parties to a disagreement should become more (or less) confident in the disputed proposition than any of them were prior to disagreement. Lastly, we show how VEW may be generalized to cases of non-peer disagreement. (shrink)

Epistemic rationality seems to permit a more steadfast response to disagreements over our fundamental convictions than it does for our ordinary beliefs. Why is this? This essay explores three answers to this question: web-of-belief conservatism, moral encroachment, and hinge theories, and argues that hinge theories do a better job than the alternatives at vindicating the intuition that there is a rationally permissible asymmetry in our responses to disagreements over ordinary beliefs and fundamental convictions. The essay also shows how hinge theorists (...) can explain the existence of moral hinge propositions, which enables them to account for the rational permissibility of being steadfast in response to disagreements over fundamental moral convictions. (shrink)

A good account of the agnostic attitude of Suspending Judgement should explain how it can be rendered more or less rational/justified according to the state of one's evidence – and one's relation to that evidence. I argue that the attitude of suspending judgement whether p constitutively involves having a belief; roughly, a belief that one cannot yet tell whether or not p. I show that a theory of suspending that treats it as a sui generis attitude, wholly distinct from belief, (...) struggles to account for how suspension of judgement can be rendered more or less rational (or irrational) by one's evidence. I also criticise the related idea that suspension essentially requires an 'Inquiring Attitude'. I show how a belief-based theory, in contrast, neatly accounts for the rational and epistemic features of suspending and so neatly accounts for why an agnostic has a genuine neutral opinion concerning the question whether p, as opposed to simply having no opinion. (shrink)

Instability occurs when the very fact of choosing one particular possible option rather than another affects the expected values of those possible options. In decision theory: An act is stable iff given that it is actually performed, its expected utility is maximal. When there is no stable choice available, the resulting instability can seem to pose a dilemma of practical rationality. A structurally very similar kind of instability, which occurs in cases of anti-expertise, can likewise seem to create dilemmas of (...) epistemic rationality. One possible line of response to such cases of instability, suggested by both Jeffrey (1983) and Sorensen (1987), is to insist that a rational agent can simply refuse to accept that such instability applies to herself in the first place. According to this line of thought it can be rational for a subject to discount even very strong empirical evidence that the anti-expertise condition obtains. I present a new variety of anti-expertise condition where no particular empirical stage-setting is required, since the subject can deduce a priori that an anti-expertise condition obtains. This kind of anti-expertise case is therefore not amenable to the line of response that Jeffrey and Sorensen recommend. (shrink)

Is there a sense in which we exercise direct volitional control over our beliefs? Most agree that there is not, but discussions tend to focus on control in forming a belief. The focus here is on sustaining a belief over time in the face of ‘epistemic temptation’ to abandon it. It is argued that we do have a capacity for ‘doxastic self-control’ over time that is partly volitional in nature, and that its exercise is rationally permissible.

Can computer simulation results be evidence for hypotheses about real-world systems and phenomena? If so, what sort of evidence? Can we gain genuinely new knowledge of the world via simulation? I argue that evidence from computer simulation is aptly characterized as higher-order evidence: it is evidence that other evidence regarding a hypothesis about the world has been collected. Insofar as particular epistemic agents do not have this other evidence, it is possible that they will gain genuinely new knowledge of the (...) world via simulation. I illustrate with examples inspired by uses of simulation in meteorology and astrophysics. (shrink)

Helen Beebee (2018) defends a view of the aims of philosophy she calls ‘equilibrism’. Equilibrism denies that philosophy aims at knowledge and maintains that the collective aim of philosophy is ‘to find what equilibria there are that can withstand examination’ (Beebee 2018, p. 3). In this note, I probe equilibrism by focusing on how disagreement challenges our doxastic commitment to our own philosophical theories. Call this the Commitment Challenge. I argue that the Commitment Challenge comes in three varieties and that (...) endorsing equilibrism provides us with an answer to one of them only. (shrink)

In this paper we present the results of a simulation study of credence developments in groups of communicating Bayesian agents, as they update their beliefs about a given proposition p. Based on the empirical literature, one would assume that these groups of rational agents would converge on a view over time, or at least that they would not polarize. This paper presents and discusses surprising evidence that this is not true. Our simulation study shows that these groups of Bayesian agents (...) show group polarization behavior under a broad range of circumstances. This is, we think, an unexpected result, that raises deeper questions about whether the kind of polarization in question is irrational. If one accepts Bayesian agency as the hallmark of epistemic rationality, then one should infer that the polarization we find is also rational. On the other hand, if we are inclined to think that there is something epistemically irrational about group polarization, then something must be off in the model employed in our simulation study. We discuss several possible interfering factors, including how epistemic trust is defined in the model. Ultimately, we propose that the notion of Bayesian agency is missing something in general, namely the ability to respond to higher-order evidence. (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)

In this paper I take up the question of the nature of the doxastic attitudes we entertain while inquiring into some matter. Relying on a distinction between two stages of open inquiry, I urge to acknowledge the existence of a distinctive attitude of cognitive inclination towards a proposition qua answer to the question one is inquiring into. I call this attitude “hypothesis”. Hypothesis, I argue, is a sui generis doxastic attitude which differs, both functionally and normatively, from suspended judgement, full (...) belief, credences, and acceptance. In closing, I point to the epistemological significance of hypothesis. More specifically, I contend that holding an attitude of hypothesis enables us to respond rationally to peer disagreement, and I suggest that such an attitude offers a suitable articulation of the view, originally put forward by Philip Kitcher, that cognitive diversity in inquiry has epistemic benefits. (shrink)

This is the second paper in a two-part series introducing logics for reasoning about the dynamics of knowledge and beliefs. Part I introduced different logical systems that can be used to reason about the knowledge and beliefs of a group of agents. In this second paper, I show how to adapt these logical systems to reason about the knowledge and beliefs of a group of agents during the course of a social interaction or rational inquiry. Inference, communication and observation are (...) typical examples of informative events, which have been subjected to a logical analysis. The main goal of this article is to introduce the key conceptual and technical issues that drive much of the research in this area. (shrink)

Aesthetic subjectivism takes the truth of aesthetic judgments to be relative to the individual making that judgment. Despite widespread suspicion, however, this does not mean that one cannot be wrong about such judgments. Accordingly, this does not mean that one cannot gain higher-order evidence of error and fallibility that bears on the rationality of the aesthetic judgment in question. In this paper, we explain and explore these issues in some detail.

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)

People frequently report that, at times, their thought has a vocal character. Thinking commonly appears to be accompanied or constituted by silently ‘talking’ to oneself in inner speech. In this paper, we explore the specifically epistemic role of inner speech in conscious reasoning. A plausible position—but one I argue is ultimately wrong—is that inner speech plays asolelyfacilitative role that is exhausted by (i) serving as the vehicle of representation for conscious reasoning, and/or (ii) allowing one to focus on certain types (...) of objects or relations, e.g., causal relations, abstracta, counterfactuals, etc., or to consciously entertain structured propositional contents that it would be hard (or impossible) to focus on or entertain with representations in other (e.g., imagistic) formats. According to this position, inner speech doesn't figure as a justificatory element in our reasoning or as the partial epistemic basis of our conclusions—it merely facilitates reasoning through (i) and/or (ii). In contrast to the view that inner speech is amerefacilitator, I establish that (outside of potentially playing roles (i) and/or (ii)) the language we use itself serves as a crucial source of information in reasoning. In other words, we reason from propositions about the language we use in inner speech as opposed to exclusively reasoning from the semantic contents of the speech. My conclusion follows from how we use language as a cognitive tool to keep track of information, e.g., the contents of premises, lemmas, previous reasoning results, etc., in reasoning. (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.

Norman forms the belief that the president is in New York by way of a clairvoyance faculty he doesn’t know he has. Many agree that his belief is unjustified but disagree about why it is unjustified. I argue that the lack of justification cannot be explained by a higher-level evidence requirement on justification, but it can be explained by a no-defeater requirement. I then explain how you can use cognitive faculties you don’t know you have. Lastly, I use lessons from (...) the foregoing to compare Norman’s belief, formed by clairvoyance, with Sally’s theistic belief, formed by a sensus divinitatis. (shrink)

Conceptual limitations restrict our epistemic options. One cannot believe, disbelieve, or doubt what one cannot grasp. I show how, even granting an epistemic ought-implies-can principle, such restrictions might lead to epistemic dilemmas: situations where each of one’s options violates some epistemic requirement. An alternative reaction would be to take epistemic norms to be sensitive to one’s options in ways that ensure dilemmas never arise. I propose, on behalf of the dilemmist, that we treat puzzlement as a kind of epistemic residue, (...) roughly analogous with guilt, appropriate only when one has violated an epistemic requirement. Sometimes, in bumping up against the limits of one’s concepts, it is appropriate to be puzzled no matter what one believes. Puzzlement can thus play the same role in an epistemic dilemmist’s theory that guilt plays in the theories of many moral dilemmists. (shrink)

Taking the inspiration from some points made by Scott Sturgeon and Albert Casullo, I articulate a view according to which an important difference between undermining and overriding defeaters is that the former require the subject to engage in some higher-order epistemic thinking, while the latter don’t. With the help of some examples, I argue that underminers push the cognizer to reflect on the way she formed a belief by challenging the epistemic worthiness of either the source of justification or the (...) specific justificatory process. By contrast, overriders needn’t pose any such challenge. I also consider some problems for the proposed view, and I put forward some possible solutions. Finally, I provide some details on how undermining defeat works in different cases. (shrink)

According to a widely shared generic conception of inferential justification—‘the standard conception’—an agent is inferentially justified in believing that p only if she has antecedently justified beliefs in all the non-redundant premises of a good argument for p. This conception tends to serve as the starting-point in contemporary debates about the nature and scope of inferential justification: as neutral common ground between various competing, more specific, conceptions. But it’s a deeply problematic starting-point. This paper explores three questions that haven’t been (...) given the attention they deserve, that complicate the application of the standard conception to cases, and that reveal it to be underspecified at the core—in ways that aren’t resolved but inherited by more specific (extant) versions of it. The goal isn’t to answer the questions, but to articulate them, explain what turns on them, and invite a critical re-examination of the standard conception. (shrink)

Experimental philosophers often seem to ignore or downplay the significance of demographic variation in philosophically relevant judgments. This article confirms this impression, discusses why demographic research is overlooked in experimental philosophy, and argues that variation is philosophically significant.

An objection that has been raised to the conciliatory stance on the epistemic significance of peer disagreement known as the Equal Weight View is that it is self-defeating, self-undermining, or self-refuting. The proponent of that view claims that equal weight should be given to all the parties to a peer dispute. Hence, if one of his epistemic peers defends the opposite view, he is required to give equal weight to the two rival views, thereby undermining his confidence in the correctness (...) of the Equal Weight View. It seems that the same objection could be leveled against those who claim to suspend judgment in the face of pervasive unresolvable disagreements, as do the Pyrrhonian skeptics. In this paper, I explore the kind of response to the objection that could be offered from a neo-Pyrrhonian perspective, with the aim of better understanding the intriguing character of Pyrrhonian skepticism. (shrink)

No-platforming—the refusal to allow those who espouse views seen as inflammatory the opportunity to speak in certain forums—is very controversial. Proponents typically cite the possibility of harms to disadvantaged groups and, sometimes, epistemically paternalistic considerations. Opponents invoke the value of free speech and respect for intellectual autonomy in favor of more open speech, arguing that the harms that might arise from bad speech are best addressed by rebuttal, not silencing. In this article, I argue that there is a powerful consideration (...) in favor of no-platforming some speakers: allowing them a platform generates genuine higher-order evidence in favor of their claims. When that higher-order evidence would be misleading, we may reasonably believe it should not be generated. (shrink)

This paper is about epistemic dilemmas, i.e., cases in which one is doomed to have a doxastic attitude that is rationally impermissible no matter what. My aim is to develop and defend a position according to which there can be genuine rational indeterminacy; that is, it can be indeterminate which principles of rationality one should satisfy and thus indeterminate which doxastic attitudes one is permitted or required to have. I am going to argue that this view can resolve epistemic dilemmas (...) in a systematic way while also enjoying some important advantages over its rivals. (shrink)

This paper is about an anti-expertise paradox that arises because of self-referential sentences like: = I do not believe that is true. The first aim is to motivate, develop, and defend a novel view of epistemic rationality according to which there can be genuine rational indeterminacy, i.e., it can be indeterminate which doxastic states an agent is rationally permitted or required to have. The second aim is to show how this view can provide a solution to this paradox while also (...) avoiding the problems that plague its rivals. (shrink)

Recent years have seen the rise of fittingness-first views, which take fittingness to be the most basic normative feature, in terms of which other normative features can be explained. This paper poses a serious difficulty for the fittingness-first approach by showing that existing fittingness-first accounts cannot plausibly accommodate an important class of reasons: reasons not to believe a proposition. There are two kinds of reasons not to believe a proposition: considerations that are counterevidence; and considerations that count against believing the (...) proposition without indicating that it is false. I will argue that the fittingness- first accounts have trouble accommodating reasons of the latter kind. (*published with open access). (shrink)

Recent authors have drawn attention to a new kind of defeating evidence commonly referred to as higher-order evidence. Such evidence works by inducing doubts that one’s doxastic state is the result of a flawed process – for instance, a process brought about by a reason-distorting drug. I argue that accommodating defeat by higher-order evidence requires a two-tiered theory of justification, and that the phenomenon gives rise to a puzzle. The puzzle is that at least in some situations involving higher-order defeaters (...) the correct epistemic rules issue conflicting recommendations. For instance, a subject ought to believe p, but she ought also to suspend judgment in p. I discuss three responses. The first resists the puzzle by arguing that there is only one correct epistemic rule, an Über-rule. The second accepts that there are genuine epistemic dilemmas. The third appeals to a hierarchy or ordering of correct epistemic rules. I spell out problems for all of these responses. I conclude that the right lesson to draw from the puzzle is that a state can be epistemically rational or justified even if one has what looks to be strong evidence to think that it is not. As such, the considerations put forth constitute a non question-begging argument for a kind of externalism. (shrink)

I formulate a resilient paradox about epistemic rationality, discuss and reject various solutions, and sketch a way out. The paradox exemplifies a tension between a wide range of views of epistemic justification, on the one hand, and enkratic requirements on rationality, on the other. According to the enkratic requirements, certain mismatched doxastic states are irrational, such as believing p, while believing that it is irrational for one to believe p. I focus on an evidentialist view of justification on which a (...) doxastic state regarding a proposition p is epistemically rational or justified just in case it tracks the degree to which one’s evidence supports p. If it is possible to have certain kinds of misleading evidence, then evidentialism and the enkratic requirements come into conflict. Yet, both have been defended as platitudinous. After discussing and rejecting three solutions, I sketch an account that rejects the enkratic requirements, while nevertheless explaining our sense that epistemic akrasia is a distinct kind of epistemic failure. Central to the account is distinguishing between two evaluative perspectives, one having to do with the relevant kind of success, the other having to do with manifesting good dispositions. The problem with akratic subjects, I argue, is that they manifest dispositions to fail to correctly respond to a special class of conclusive and conspicuous reasons. (shrink)

What sort of doxastic response is rational to learning that one disagrees with an epistemic peer who has evaluated the same evidence? I argue that even weak general recommendations run the risk of being incompatible with a pair of real epistemic phenomena, what I call evidential attenuation and evidential amplification. I focus on a popular and intuitive view of disagreement, the equal weight view. I take it to state that in cases of peer disagreement, a subject ought to end up (...) equally confident that her own opinion is correct as that the opinion of her peer is. I say why we should regard the equal weight view as a synchronic constraint on (prior) credence functions. I then spell out a trilemma for the view: it violates what are intuitively correct updates (also leading to violations of conditionalisation), it poses implausible restrictions on prior credence functions, or it is non-substantive. The sorts of reasons why the equal weight view fails apply to other views as well: there is no blanket answer to the question of how a subject should adjust her opinions in cases of peer disagreement. (shrink)

Some philosophers argue that non-presentist A-theories problematically imply that we cannot know that this moment is present. The problem is usually presented as arising from the combination of the A-theoretic ideology of a privileged presentness and a non-presentist ontology. The goal of this essay is to show that the epistemic problem can be rephrased as a pessimistic induction. By doing so, I will show that the epistemic problem, in fact, stems from the A-theoretic ideology alone. Hence, once it is properly (...) presented, the epistemic problem presents a serious threat to all A-theories. (shrink)

Fifteen years ago, Sharon Street and Richard Joyce advanced evolutionary debunking arguments against moral realism, which purported to show that the evolutionary history of our moral beliefs makes moral realism untenable. These arguments have since given rise to a flurry of objections; the epistemic principles Street and Joyce relied upon, in particular, have come in for a number of serious challenges. My goal in this paper is to develop a new account of evolutionary debunking which avoids the pitfalls Street and (...) Joyce encountered and responds to the most pressing objections they faced. I begin by presenting a striking thought experiment to serve as an analogy for the evolution of morality; I then show why calibrationist views of higher-order evidence are crucial to the evolutionary debunking project; I outline a new rationale for why finding out that morality was selected to promote cooperation suggests that our moral judgments are unreliable; and I explain why evolutionary debunking arguments do not depend on our having a dedicated faculty for moral cognition. All things considered, I argue, evolutionary debunking arguments against moral realism are on relatively secure footing – provided, at least, that we accept a calibrationist account of higher-order evidence. (shrink)

Conciliatory views of disagreement say, roughly, that it’s rational for you to become less confident in your take on an issue in case you find out that an epistemic peer’s take on it is the opposite. Their intuitive appeal notwithstanding, there are well-known worries about the behavior of conciliatory views in scenarios involving higher-order disagreements, which include disagreements over these views themselves and disagreements over the peer status of alleged epistemic peers. This paper does two things. First, it explains how (...) the core idea behind conciliatory views can be expressed in a defeasible logic framework. The result is a formal model that’s particularly useful for thinking about the behavior of conciliatory views in cases involving higher-order disagreements. And second, the paper uses this model to resolve three paradoxes associated with disagreements over epistemic peerhood. (shrink)

Several moral objectivists try to explain the reliability of moral beliefs by appealing to a third factor, a substantive moral claim that explains, first, why we have the moral beliefs that we have and, second, why these beliefs are true. Folke Tersman has recently suggested that moral disagreement constrains the epistemic legitimacy of third-factor explanations. Apart from constraining third-factor explanations, Tersman’s challenge could support the view that the epistemic significance of debunking explanations depends on the epistemic significance of disagreement. This (...) paper aims to show that disagreement does not constrain the epistemic legitimacy of third-factor explanations in metaethics, and it suggests a way forward in addressing the view that debunking depends on disagreement. First, Tersman’s constraints are impossible to violate, given the assumption that the justification relation exhibits monotonicity. Second, some disagreements are irrelevant, given that they cannot be about beliefs whose reliability the objectivist seeks to defend. Third, actual disagreement about moral beliefs is implausible, given recent ethnographic findings. In light of this discussion, the paper shows that the prospects of the disagreement view depend on which moral beliefs objectivists need to defend and the criteria we use to assess epistemically relevant moral disagreement. (shrink)

Throughout the history of western philosophy, the Socratic injunction to ‘follow the argument where it leads’ has exerted a powerful attraction. But what is it, exactly, to follow the argument where it leads? I explore this intellectual ideal and offer a modest proposal as to how we should understand it. On my proposal, following the argument where it leaves involves a kind of modalized reasonableness. I then consider the relationship between the ideal and common sense or ‘Moorean’ responses to revisionary (...) philosophical theorizing. (shrink)

This paper discusses a scenario borrowed from Williamson (2000) and repurposes it to argue for the possibility of conflict between two prima facie categorical norms of epistemic rationality: the norm to respect one’s evidence and the norm to be coherent. It is argued, pace Williamson, that in the conflict defining the scenario, the evidence norm overrides the coherence norm; that a rational agent with our evidence would lack evidence about some of their own credences; and that for agents whose evidence (...) is limited in this way, incoherence fails to entail irrationality. The above possibility claim has also been defended by Worsnip (2018), albeit on a quite different premise set and in conjunction with a coherence-centered account of epistemic rationality that issues predictions incompatible with those licensed by the evidence-centered account recommended here, as illustrated towards the end of the paper. (shrink)

Epistemologists often appeal to the idea that a normative theory must provide useful, usable, guidance to argue for one normative epistemology over another. I argue that this is a mistake. Guidance considerations have no role to play in theory choice in epistemology. I show how this has implications for debates about the possibility and scope of epistemic dilemmas, the legitimacy of idealisation in Bayesian epistemology, uniqueness versus permissivism, sharp versus mushy credences, and internalism versus externalism.

This article argues for the view that statements about normative reasons are context-sensitive. Specifically, they are sensitive to a contextual parameter specifying a relevant person's or group's body of information. The argument for normative reasons contextualism starts from the context-sensitivity of the normative “ought” and the further premise that reasons must be aligned with oughts. It is incoherent, I maintain, to suppose that someone normatively ought to φ but has most reason not to φ. So given that oughts depend on (...) context, a parallel view about normative reasons is needed. It is shown that the resulting view solves notorious puzzles involving apparently conflicting but equally plausible claims about reasons. These puzzles arise especially in cases where agents have limited information or false beliefs. In these cases, we feel torn between reasons claims that take into account the limitations of the agent's perspective and apparently conflicting claims that are made from a more objective point of view. The contextualist account developed here accommodates both objectivist and subjectivist intuitions. It shows that all of the claims in question can be true, provided that they are relativized to different values of the relevant information parameter. Also, contextualism yields a fruitful approach to the debate about having reasons and the alleged failure of the so-called “factoring account”. (shrink)

The authors argue in favor of the “nonconciliation” (or “steadfast”) position concerning the problem of peer disagreement. Throughout the paper they place heavy emphasis on matters of phenomenology—on how things seem epistemically with respect to the net import of one’s available evidence vis-à-vis the disputed claim p, and on how such phenomenology is affected by the awareness that an interlocutor whom one initially regards as an epistemic peer disagrees with oneself about p. Central to the argument is a nested goal/sub-goal (...) hierarchy that the authors claim is inherent to the structure of epistemically responsible belief-formation: pursuing true beliefs by pursuing beliefs that are objectively likely given one’s total available evidence; pursuing this sub-goal by pursuing beliefs that are likely true (given that evidence) relative to one’s own deep epistemic sensibility; and pursuing this sub-sub-goal by forming beliefs in accordance with one’s own all-in, ultima facie, epistemic seemings. (shrink)

There has been considerable puzzlement over how to respond to higher-order evidence. The existing dilemmas can be defused by adopting a ‘two-dimensional’ representation of doxastic attitudes which incorporates not only substantive uncertainty about which first-order state of affairs obtains but also the degree of conviction with which we hold the attitude. This makes it possible that in cases of higher-order evidence the evidence sometimes impacts primarily on our conviction, rather than our substantive uncertainty. I argue that such a two-dimensional representation (...) is naturally developed by making use of imprecise probabilities. (shrink)

According to a popular account, rationality is a kind of coherence of an agent’s mental states and, more specifically, a matter of fulfilling norms of coherence. For example, in order to be rational, an agent is required to intend to do what they judge they ought to and can do. This norm has been called ‘Enkrasia’. Another norm requires that, ceteris paribus, an agent retain their intention over time. This has been called ‘Persistence of Intention’. This paper argues that thus (...) understood norms of rationality may at times conflict. More specifically, Enkrasia and Persistence of Intention may place demands on the agent that are impossible to fulfil. In these cases, the framework of requirements does not provide us with norms that make us rational. A rival account, according to which rationality is a kind of responsiveness to one’s available reasons, can overcome the problem. (shrink)

Metacognitive mental states are mental states about mental states. For example, I may be uncertain whether my belief is correct. In social discourse, an interlocutor’s metacognitive certainty may constitute evidence about the reliability of their testimony. For example, if a speaker is certain that their belief is correct, then we may take this as evidence in favour of their belief, or its content. This paper argues that, if metacognitive certainty is genuine evidence, then it is disproportionate evidence for extreme beliefs. (...) In support of the argument, we report findings from five studies with different participant samples, designs, and measures. These studies show that, the more extreme an agent’s belief (positive or negative), the more certain they are about it, and vice versa. This relationship might contribute to moralism, virtue signalling, and polarisation, which in turn may be epistemically and morally problematic. Therefore, we caution against taking metacognitive certainty as genuine evidence. (shrink)

Humans typically display hindsight bias. They are more confident that the evidence available beforehand made some outcome probable when they know the outcome occurred than when they don't. There is broad consensus that hindsight bias is irrational, but this consensus is wrong. Hindsight bias is generally rationally permissible and sometimes rationally required. The fact that a given outcome occurred provides both evidence about what the total evidence available ex ante was, and also evidence about what that evidence supports. Even if (...) you in fact evaluate the ex ante evidence correctly, you should not be certain of this. Then, learning the outcome provides evidence that if you erred, you are more likely to have erred low rather than high in estimating the degree to which the ex ante evidence supported the hypothesis that that outcome would occur. (shrink)

Higher-order evidence is evidence about what is rational to think in light of your evidence. Many have argued that it is special – falling into its own evidential category, or leading to deviations from standard rational norms. But it is not. Given standard assumptions, almost all evidence is higher-order evidence.

This paper concerns would-be necessary connections between doxastic attitudes about the epistemic statuses of your doxastic attitudes, or ‘higher-order epistemic attitudes’, and the epistemic statuses of those doxastic attitudes. I will argue that, in some situations, it can be reasonable for a person to believe p and to suspend judgment about whether believing p is reasonable for her. This will set the stage for an account of the virtue of intellectual humility, on which humility is a matter of your higher-order (...) epistemic attitudes. Recent discussions in the epistemology of disagreement have assumed that the question of the proper response to disagreement about p concerns whether you ought to change your doxastic attitude towards p. My conclusion here suggests an alternative approach, on which the question of the proper response to disagreement about p concerns the proper doxastic attitude to adopt concerning the epistemic status of your doxastic attitude towards p.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.HIGHER-ORDER EPISTEMIC ATTITUDES AND INTELLECTUAL HUMILITYVolume 9, Issue 3Allan HazlettDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.11Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. HIGHER-ORDER EPISTEMIC ATTITUDES AND INTELLECTUAL HUMILITYVolume 9, Issue 3Allan HazlettDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.11Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. HIGHER-ORDER EPISTEMIC ATTITUDES AND INTELLECTUAL HUMILITYVolume 9, Issue 3Allan HazlettDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.11Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

The degree of doxastic revision required in response to evidence of disagreement is typically thought to be a function of our beliefs about (1) our interlocutor’s familiarity with the relevant evidence and arguments, and their intellectual capacities and virtues, relative to our own, or (2) the expected probability of our interlocutor being correct, conditional on our disagreeing. While these two factors are typically used interchangeably, I show that they have an inverse correlation in cases of disagreement about politically divisive propositions. (...) This presents us with a puzzle about the epistemic impact of disagreement in these cases. The most significant disagreements on (1) are the least significant disagreements on (2), and vice versa. I show that assessing the epistemic status of an interlocutor by reference to either (1) or (2) has uncomfortable consequences in these cases. I then argue that this puzzle cannot be escaped by claiming that we usually have dispute-independent reason to reject the significance of politically charged disagreement altogether. (shrink)