Fundamental disagreements and the limits of instrumentalism (original) (raw)
Related papers
In this paper, I will discuss the relevance of epistemology of disagreement to political disagreement. The two major positions in the epistemology of disagreement literature are the steadfast and the conciliationist approaches: while the conciliationist says that disagreement with one's epistemic equals should compel one to epistemically " split the difference " with those peers, the steadfast approach claims that one can maintain one's antecedent position even in the face of such peer disagreement. Martin Ebeling (Ebeling 2017) applies a conciliationist approach to democratic deliberations, arguing that deliberative participants ought to pursue full epistemic concliation when disagreeing with their peers on political questions. I argue that this epistemic " splitting the difference " could make participants vulnerable to certain cognitive biases. We might avoid these biases by paying more attention to the deliberative environment in which disagreement takes place.
The Philosophical Quarterly, 2015
Note: This is a pre-refereed version of the paper that is forthcoming in The Philosophical Quarterly. Please cite the final version (which contains substantial changes). Abstract: "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 conciliatory commitment to epistemic deference therefore does not provide a rational reason to reduce confidence in conciliationism when it is disputed. After presenting the positive case for "resolute conciliationism," I address two objections.
The Epistemology of Disagreement
Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2021
Article Summary. The epistemology of disagreement studies the epistemically relevant aspects of the interaction between parties who hold diverging opinions about a given subject matter. The central question that the epistemology of disagreement purports to answer is how the involved parties should resolve an instance of disagreement. Answers to this central question largely depend on the epistemic position of each party before disagreement occurs. Two parties are equally positioned from an epistemic standpoint-namely, they are epistemic peers-to the extent that they have roughly equal access to the evidence and comparable intellectual resources. When one party is epistemically better positioned than the other-that is, when one is an epistemic superior-it is widely agreed that this party should retain their belief while the other party-the epistemic inferior-should revise their opinion in the direction of what the epistemic superior believes. Addressing the central question is a complex task when the disagreeing parties are epistemic peers. Three main answers can be distinguished. Conciliatory answers mandate that both parties revise-i.e. lower their confidence in-their beliefs upon the occurrence of peer disagreement. Steadfast answers allow both parties to retain their respective beliefs, thereby committing them to demote the epistemic position of the interlocutor. The third group of answers suggests that the solution to peer disagreement depends on whether either party is highly justified in holding their belief. If either party is highly justified, then it is rational that this party retains its view. If neither party is highly justified, both should revise. The epistemology of disagreement addresses further important questions such as: whether the occurrence of disagreement opens the doors to skepticism and/or relativism; what the consequences of epistemic disagreement on intellectual character are; what laypeople should do when experts disagree with each other; and whether disagreement among groups can be treated in the same way as disagreement among individuals.
The Surprising Truth About Disagreement
Acta Analytica, 2020
Conciliationism—the thesis that when epistemic peers discover that they disagree about a proposition, both should reduce their confidence—faces a major objection: it seems to require us to significantly reduce our confidence in our central moral and political commitments. In this paper, I develop a typology of disagreement cases and a diagnosis of the source and force of the pressure to conciliate. Building on Vavova’s work, I argue that ordinary and extreme disagreements are surprising, and for this reason, they carry information about the likelihood of error. But deep disagreement is not surprising at all, and token deep disagreements do not put pressure on us to conciliate. However, a pattern of deep disagreements points to a different concern: not the problem of disagreement but the problem of irrelevant influences. Deep disagreement constitutes some pressure to examine the foundations from which we reason, rather than to conciliate on our central moral and political claims.
Disagreement and Epistemic Improvement
Synthese, 2021
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 party is to improve the epistemic properties of one's doxastic attitude or, alternatively, hold steadfast.
Neither East nor West: A reasoning-first approach to disagreement between epistemic peers
ProQuest, 2021
It seems like an obviously true claim that people can reasonably disagree. But we should wonder whether it is rational for people to continue to believe what they believe knowing that what they believe is controversial. Under normal circumstances, this question can often be satisfactorily answered by appeal to the opposing agents’ respective reasoning capabilities or their differing evidence. Disagreements between peers, however, are distinctive of the usual variety of reasonable disagreements because the controversy cannot be adequately explained by appeal to their total shared evidence or stronger or weaker reasoning capabilities. Such cases, though they may be infrequent, nevertheless reveal an intriguing multi-faceted puzzle. If, as evidentialists claim, evidence is the only relevant justificatory consideration for beliefs, then peers ought to at least reduce their initial confidence if not give equal weight to the opposing view when they become aware of their peer’s opposition. But simple counterexamples reveal that modifying one's initial belief merely based on the awareness of peer disagreement is not always the rational option. These counter-examples, however, do not help explain how best to respond in other instances when it appears that awareness of peer disagreement has justificatory significance. This project attempts to solve this puzzle by first critically examining how we think about evidence. I conclude that there are actually two senses of evidence: A metaphysical and an epistemic. Distinguishing these senses of evidence reveals that in cases of genuine reasonable peer disagreement, doxastic and propositional justification come apart such that doxastic justification sometimes does not imply propositional justification. When doxastic justification does not imply propositional justification in cases of reasonable peer disagreement, we can see how epistemic pluralism can be rational without falling prey to certain epistemic spinelessness.
The Procedural Epistemic Value of Deliberation
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.
Conciliatory Views of Disagreement and Higher-Order Evidence
Conciliatory views of disagreement maintain that discovering a particular type of disagreement requires that one make doxastic conciliation. In this paper I give a more formal characterization of such a view. After explaining and motivating this view as the correct view regarding the epistemic significance of disagreement, I proceed to defend it from several objections concerning higher-order evidence (evidence about the character of one’s evidence) made by Thomas Kelly (2005).
Epistemic Peerhood and the Epistemology of Disagreement
Philosophical Studies 164/2 (2013): 561-77
In disagreements about trivial matters, it often seems appropriate for disputing parties to adopt a ‘middle ground’ view about the disputed matter. But in disputes about more substantial controversies (e.g. in ethics, religion, or politics) this sort of doxastic conduct can seem viciously acquiescent. How should we distinguish between the two kinds of cases, and thereby account for our divergent intuitions about how we ought to respond to them? One possibility is to say that ceding ground in a trivial dispute is appropriate because the disputing parties are usually epistemic peers within the relevant domain, whereas in a more substantial disagreement the disputing parties rarely, if ever, qualify as epistemic peers, and so ‘sticking to one’s guns’ is usually the appropriate doxastic response. My aim in this paper is to explain why this way of drawing the desired distinction is ultimately problematic, even if it seems promising at first blush.