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Disagreement and Belief Dependence: Why Numbers Matter

In David Phiroze Christensen & Jennifer Lackey (eds.), The Epistemology of Disagreement: New Essays. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 243-268 (2013)

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  1. No Hope for Conciliationism.Jonathan Dixon - forthcoming - Synthese.
    Conciliationism is the family of views that rationality requires agents to reduce confidence or suspend belief in p when acknowledged epistemic peers (i.e. agents who are (approximately) equally well-informed and intellectually capable) disagree about p. While Conciliationism is prima facie plausible, some have argued that Conciliationism is not an adequate theory of peer disagreement because it is self-undermining. Responses to this challenge can be put into two mutually exclusive and exhaustive groups: the Solution Responses which deny Conciliationism is self-undermining and (...)
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  • Echo chambers and epistemic bubbles.C. Thi Nguyen - 2020 - Episteme 17 (2):141-161.
    Recent conversation has blurred two very different social epistemic phenomena: echo chambers and epistemic bubbles. Members of epistemic bubbles merely lack exposure to relevant information and arguments. Members of echo chambers, on the other hand, have been brought to systematically distrust all outside sources. In epistemic bubbles, other voices are not heard; in echo chambers, other voices are actively undermined. It is crucial to keep these phenomena distinct. First, echo chambers can explain the post-truth phenomena in a way that epistemic (...)
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  • (Mis)Understanding scientific disagreement: Success versus pursuit-worthiness in theory choice.Eli I. Lichtenstein - 2021 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 85:166-175.
    Scientists often diverge widely when choosing between research programs. This can seem to be rooted in disagreements about which of several theories, competing to address shared questions or phenomena, is currently the most epistemically or explanatorily valuable—i.e. most successful. But many such cases are actually more directly rooted in differing judgments of pursuit-worthiness, concerning which theory will be best down the line, or which addresses the most significant data or questions. Using case studies from 16th-century astronomy and 20th-century geology and (...)
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  • Worldview disagreement and subjective epistemic obligations.Daryl Ooi - 2022 - Synthese 200 (2):1-23.
    In this paper, I provide an account of subjective epistemic obligations. In instances of peer disagreement, one possesses at least two types of obligations: objective epistemic obligations and subjective epistemic obligations. While objective epistemic obligations, such as conciliationism and remaining steadfast, have been much discussed in the literature, subjective epistemic obligations have received little attention. I develop an account of subjective epistemic obligations in the context of worldview disagreements. In recent literature, the notion of worldview disagreement has been receiving increasing (...)
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  • Scientific Disagreements, Fast Science and Higher-Order Evidence.Daniel C. Friedman & Dunja Šešelja - 2023 - Philosophy of Science 90 (4):937-957.
    Scientific disagreements are an important catalyst for scientific progress. But what happens when scientists disagree amidst times of crisis, when we need quick yet reliable policy guidance? In this paper we provide a normative account for how scientists facing disagreement in the context of ‘fast science’ should respond, and how policy makers should evaluate such disagreement. Starting from an argumentative, pragma-dialectic account of scientific controversies, we argue for the importance of ‘higher-order evidence’ (HOE) and we specify desiderata for scientifically relevant (...)
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  • Epistemic Peer Disagreement.Filippo Ferrari & Nikolaj J. L. L. Pedersen - 2019 - In M. Fricker, N. J. L. L. Pedersen, D. Henderson & P. J. Graham (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Social Epistemology. Routledge.
    We offer a critical survey of the most discussed accounts of epistemic peer disagreement that are found in the recent literature. We also sketch an alternative approach in line with a pluralist understanding of epistemic rationality.
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  • The Argument from Common Consent.Jonathan Matheson - 2021 - In Colin Ruloff & Peter Horban (eds.), Contemporary Arguments in Natural Theology: God and Rational Belief. Bloomsbury Publishing.
    In this paper, I will explain and motivate the common consent argument for theism. According to the common consent argument it is rational for you to believe that God exists because you know so many other people believe that God exists. Having motivated the argument, I will explain and motivate several pressing objections to the argument and evaluate their probative force. The paper will serve as both an accessible introduction to this argument as well as a resource for continued research (...)
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  • The transmission of knowledge and justification.Stephen Wright - 2016 - Synthese 193 (1):293-311.
    This paper explains how the notion of justification transmission can be used to ground a notion of knowledge transmission. It then explains how transmission theories can characterise schoolteacher cases, which have prominently been presented as counterexamples to transmission theories.
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  • Circular testimony.Stephen Wright - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (8):2029-2048.
    According to internalist theories of testimony, beliefs based on what others say are justified by the reasons a listener uses in forming her belief. I identify a distinctive type of testimonial situation, which I call circular testimony and argue that a certain type of circular testimony establishes the incompleteness of internalist theories of testimony.
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  • Peer disagreement and the Dunning-Kruger effect.Eric Wiland - 2016 - Episteme 14 (4):481-498.
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  • Unknown Peers.Marc Andree Weber - 2023 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 31 (3):382-401.
    Unknown peers create a problem for those epistemologists who argue that we should be conciliatory in cases of peer disagreement. The standard interpretation of ‘being conciliatory’ has it that we should revise our opinions concerning a specific subject matter whenever we encounter someone who is as competent and well informed as we are concerning this subject matter (and thus is our peer) and holds a different opinion. As a consequence, peers whom we have never encountered and who are hence unknown (...)
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  • Disagreement and epistemic improvement.Fernando Broncano-Berrocal & Mona Simion - 2021 - Synthese 199 (5-6):14641-14665.
    This paper proposes a methodological turn for the epistemology of disagreement, away from focusing on highly idealized cases of peer disagreement and towards an increased focus on disagreement simpliciter. We propose and develop a normative framework for evaluating all cases of disagreement as to whether something is the case independently of their composition—i.e., independently of whether they are between peers or not. The upshot will be a norm of disagreement on which what one should do when faced with a disagreeing (...)
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  • The epistemology of moral disagreement.Richard Rowland - 2017 - Philosophy Compass 12 (2):1-16.
    This article is about the implications of a conciliatory view about the epistemology of peer disagreement for our moral beliefs. Many have endorsed a conciliatory view about the epistemology of peer disagreement according to which if we find ourselves in a disagreement about some matter with another whom we should judge to be our epistemic peer on that matter, we must revise our judgment about that matter. This article focuses on three issues about the implications of conciliationism for our moral (...)
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  • A pragmatic argument against equal weighting.Ittay Nissan-Rozen & Levi Spectre - 2019 - Synthese 196 (10):4211-4227.
    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 (...)
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  • Cognitive islands and runaway echo chambers: problems for epistemic dependence on experts.C. Thi Nguyen - 2020 - Synthese 197 (7):2803-2821.
    I propose to study one problem for epistemic dependence on experts: how to locate experts on what I will call cognitive islands. Cognitive islands are those domains for knowledge in which expertise is required to evaluate other experts. They exist under two conditions: first, that there is no test for expertise available to the inexpert; and second, that the domain is not linked to another domain with such a test. Cognitive islands are the places where we have the fewest resources (...)
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  • Defeaters and Disqualifiers.Daniel Muñoz - 2019 - Mind 128 (511):887-906.
    Justification depends on context: even if E on its own justifies H, still it might fail to justify in the context of D. This sort of effect, epistemologists think, is due to defeaters, which undermine or rebut a would-be justifier. I argue that there is another fundamental sort of contextual feature, disqualification, which doesn't involve rebuttal or undercutting, and which cannot be reduced to any notion of screening-off. A disqualifier makes some would-be justifier otiose, as direct testimony sometimes does to (...)
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  • Epistemic Obligations of the Laity.Boyd Millar - 2023 - Episteme 20 (2):232-246.
    Very often when the vast majority of experts agree on some scientific issue, laypeople nonetheless regularly consume articles, videos, lectures, etc., the principal claims of which are inconsistent with the expert consensus. Moreover, it is standardly assumed that it is entirely appropriate, and perhaps even obligatory, for laypeople to consume such anti-consensus material. I maintain that this standard assumption gets things backwards. Each of us is particularly vulnerable to false claims when we are not experts on some topic – such (...)
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  • Why Mary Left Her Room.Michaela M. McSweeney - forthcoming - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
    I argue for an account of grasping, or understanding that, on which we grasp via a higher-order mental act of Husserlian fulfillment. Fulfillment is the act of matching up the objects of our phenomenally presentational experiences with those of our phenomenally representational thought. Grasping-by-fulfilling is importantly different from standard epistemic aims, in part because it is phenomenal rather than inferential. (I endorse Bourget’s 2017 arguments to that effect.) I show that grasping-by-fulfilling cannot be a species of propositional knowledge or belief, (...)
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  • Yes, We Can (Make It Up on Volume): Answers to Critics.Hélène Landemore - 2014 - Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 26 (1-2):184-237.
    ABSTRACTThe idea that the crowd could ever be intelligent is a counterintuitive one. Our modern, Western faith in experts and bureaucracies is rooted in the notion that political competence is the purview of the select few. Here, as in my book Democratic Reason, I defend the opposite view: that the diverse many are often smarter than a group of select elites because of the different cognitive tools, perspectives, heuristics, and knowledge they bring to political problem solving and prediction. In this (...)
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  • Moral Disagreement and Higher-Order Evidence.Klemens Kappel & Frederik J. Andersen - 2019 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 22 (5):1103-1120.
    This paper sketches a general account of how to respond in an epistemically rational way to moral disagreement. Roughly, the account states that when two parties, A and B, disagree as to whether p, A says p while B says not-p, this is higher-order evidence that A has made a cognitive error on the first-order level of reasoning in coming to believe that p. If such higher-order evidence is not defeated, then one rationally ought to reduce one’s confidence with respect (...)
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  • Dependent philosophical majorities and the skeptical argument from disagreement.Rasmus Jaksland - 2022 - Synthese 200 (1):1-24.
    According to the skeptical argument from disagreement, we are mandated to suspend judgement about a question if we discover that others disagree with us. Critics, however, have proposed that this skeptical argument fails if there are not equally many people on either side of the debate: numbers matter. The present paper explicates this as the argument that a group can be more likely to arrive at the correct view by majority rule than the members are on their own. Defenders of (...)
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  • Can Asserting that p Improve the Speaker's Epistemic Position (And Is That a Good Thing)?Sanford C. Goldberg - 2017 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 95 (1):157-170.
    In this paper I argue that there are cases in which a speaker S's observation of the fact that her assertion that p is accepted by another person enhances the strength of S's own epistemic position with respect to p, as compared to S's strength of epistemic position with respect to p prior to having made the assertion. I conclude by noting that the sorts of consideration that underwrite this possibility may go some distance towards explaining several aspects of our (...)
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  • Disagreement, Drugs, etc.: from Accuracy to Akrasia.David Christensen - 2016 - Episteme 13 (4):397-422.
    We often get evidence concerning the reliability of our own thinking about some particular matter. This “higher-order evidence” can come from the disagreement of others, or from information about our being subject to the effects of drugs, fatigue, emotional ties, implicit biases, etc. This paper examines some pros and cons of two fairly general models for accommodating higher-order evidence. The one that currently seems most promising also turns out to have the consequence that epistemic akrasia should occur more frequently than (...)
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  • Akratic (epistemic) modesty.David Christensen - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 178 (7):2191-2214.
    Abstract: Theories of epistemic rationality that take disagreement (or other higher-order evidence) seriously tend to be “modest” in a certain sense: they say that there are circumstances in which it is rational to doubt their correctness. Modest views have been criticized on the grounds that they undermine themselves—they’re self-defeating. The standard Self-Defeat Objections depend on principles forbidding epistemically akratic beliefs; but there are good reasons to doubt these principles—even New Rational Reflection, which was designed to allow for certain special cases (...)
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  • Color relationalism and relativism.Alex Byrne & David R. Hilbert - 2017 - Topics in Cognitive Science 9 (1):172-192.
    This paper critically examines color relationalism and color relativism, two theories of color that are allegedly supported by variation in normal human color vision. We mostly discuss color relationalism, defended at length in Jonathan Cohen's The Red and the Real, and argue that the theory has insuperable problems.
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  • A Faithful Response to Disagreement.Lara Buchak - 2021 - The Philosophical Review 130 (2):191-226.
    In the peer disagreement debate, three intuitively attractive claims seem to conflict: there is disagreement among peers on many important matters; peer disagreement is a serious challenge to one’s own opinion; and yet one should be able to maintain one’s opinion on important matters. I show that contrary to initial appearances, we can accept all three of these claims. Disagreement significantly shifts the balance of the evidence; but with respect to certain kinds of claims, one should nonetheless retain one’s beliefs. (...)
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  • The Epistemology of Group Disagreement: An Introduction.Fernandfo Broncano-Berrocal & J. Adam Carter - 2020 - In Fernando Broncano-Berrocal & J. Adam Carter (eds.), The Epistemology of Group Disagreement. London: Routledge. pp. 1-8.
    This is an introduction to the volume The Epistemology of Group Disagreement (Routledge, forthcoming), (eds.) F. Broncano-Berrocal and J.A. Carter.
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  • Deliberation and Group Disagreement.Fernando Broncano-Berrocal & J. Adam Carter - 2020 - In Fernando Broncano-Berrocal & J. Adam Carter (eds.), The Epistemology of Group Disagreement. London: Routledge. pp. 9-45.
    Suppose an inquiring group wants to let a certain view stand as the group's view. But there’s a problem: the individuals in that group do not initially all agree with one another about what the correct view is. What should the group do, given that it wants to settle on a single answer, in the face of this kind of intragroup disagreement? Should the group members deliberate and exchange evidence and then take a vote? Or, given the well-known ways that (...)
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  • Resuscitating the Common Consent Argument for Theism.Matthew Braddock - 2023 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 93 (3):189-210.
    The common consent argument claims that widespread belief in God is good evidence for God’s existence. Though taken seriously throughout the history of philosophy, the argument died in the 1800s. Our philosophy of religion textbooks ignore it. In this paper, we hope to resuscitate it drawing upon the demographics of religious belief, the cognitive science of religion, and contemporary epistemology. We develop and defend two common consent arguments, which maintain that widespread belief in a High God is good evidence for (...)
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  • Conciliationism and merely possible disagreement.Zach Barnett & Han Li - 2016 - Synthese 193 (9):1-13.
    Conciliationism faces a challenge that has not been satisfactorily addressed. There are clear cases of epistemically significant merely possible disagreement, but there are also clear cases where merely possible disagreement is epistemically irrelevant. Conciliationists have not yet accounted for this asymmetry. In this paper, we propose that the asymmetry can be explained by positing a selection constraint on all cases of peer disagreement—whether actual or merely possible. If a peer’s opinion was not selected in accordance with the proposed constraint, then (...)
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  • Belief dependence: How do the numbers count?Zach Barnett - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (2):297-319.
    This paper is about how to aggregate outside opinion. If two experts are on one side of an issue, while three experts are on the other side, what should a non-expert believe? Certainly, the non-expert should take into account more than just the numbers. But which other factors are relevant, and why? According to the view developed here, one important factor is whether the experts should have been expected, in advance, to reach the same conclusion. When the agreement of two (...)
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  • Debunking Biased Thinkers.Nathan Ballantyne - 2015 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (1):141--162.
    ABSTRACT: Most of what we believe comes to us from the word of others, but we do not always believe what we are told. We often reject thinkers' reports by attributing biases to them. We may call this debunking. In this essay, I consider how debunking might work and then examine whether, and how often, it can help to preserve rational belief in the face of disagreement.
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  • Counterfactual Philosophers.Nathan Ballantyne - 2014 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 88 (2):368-387.
    I argue that reflection on philosophers who could have been working among us but aren’t can lead us to give up our philosophical beliefs.
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  • Intuition and Its Place in Ethics.Robert Audi - 2015 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (1):57--77.
    ABSTRACT ABSTRACT: This paper provides a multifaceted account of intuition. The paper integrates apparently disparate conceptions of intuition, shows how the notion has figured in epistemology as well as in intuitionistic ethics, and clarifies the relation between the intuitive and the self-evident. Ethical intuitionism is characterized in ways that, in phenomenology, epistemology, and ontology, represent an advance over the position of W. D. Ross while preserving its commonsense normative core and intuitionist character. This requires clarifying the sense in which intuitions (...)
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  • Is There a Problem With Cognitive Outsourcing?Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij - 2016 - Philosophical Issues 26 (1):7-24.
    To what extent can we rely on others for information without such reliance becoming epistemically problematic? In this paper, this question is addressed in terms of a specific form of reliance: cognitive outsourcing. Cognitive outsourcing involves handing over (outsourcing) one’s information collection and processing (the cognitive) to others. The specific question that will be asked about such outsourcing is if there is an epistemic problem about cognitive outsourcing as such. To ask if there is an epistemic problem with x for (...)
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  • Logical Disagreement.Frederik J. Andersen - 2024 - Dissertation, University of St. Andrews
    While the epistemic significance of disagreement has been a popular topic in epistemology for at least a decade, little attention has been paid to logical disagreement. This monograph is meant as a remedy. The text starts with an extensive literature review of the epistemology of (peer) disagreement and sets the stage for an epistemological study of logical disagreement. The guiding thread for the rest of the work is then three distinct readings of the ambiguous term ‘logical disagreement’. Chapters 1 and (...)
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  • Disagreement.Jonathan Matheson & Bryan Frances - 2018 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    This article examines the central epistemological issues tied to the recognition of disagreement.
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  • Learning from Scientific Disagreement.Bruno Borge & Nicolás Lo Guercio - 2021 - Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 36 (3):375-398.
    The article addresses the question of how should scientific peers revise their beliefs (if at all) upon recognized disagreement. After presenting the basics of peer disagreement in sections 1 and 2, we focus, in section 3, on a concrete case of scientific disagreement, to wit, the dispute over the evidential status of randomized control trials in medical practice. The examination of this case motivates the idea that some scientific disagreements permit a steadfast reaction. In section 4, we support this conclusion (...)
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  • بررسی دیدگاه راجر تریگ درباب التزام دینی و عقلانیت.فاطمه سعیدی & عبدالرسول کشفی - 2018 - دانشگاه امام صادق 15 (2):47-67.
    التزام دینی و ربط و نسبت آن با عقلانیت از مباحث مهم فلسفۀ دین است. راجر تریگ از اندیشمندان معاصری است که این مسئله را محور توجه خود قرار داده است. در این مقاله ما دیدگاه او در خصوص سرشت التزام و ربط و نسبت آن با باور، معنا، توجیه و عقلانیت را از نظر گذرانده‌ایم. او با تعریف خاصی که از التزام ارائه می‌دهد، آن را مبتنی بر دو مؤلفه می‌داند: یکی باور گزاره‌ای و دیگری تعهد شخصی بدان. از (...)
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  • Logical Disagreement and Aggregation.Diego Tajer - 2017 - Theoria : An International Journal for Theory, History and Fundations of Science 32 (1).
    In this paper, I explore the possibility of applying the methods and results of Judgement Aggregation to the problem of logical disagreement. I develop and evaluate different ways in which individuals who logically disagree can generate a collective logic. I prove a version of the discursive paradox, where the majority voting of a group of structural logicians can give rise to a substructural logic; then I develop a more general impossibility result. After this, I analyze different ways to avoid the (...)
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