Abstract
There has been considerable philosophical debate in recent years over a thesis called epistemic permissivism. According to the permissivist, it is possible for two agents to have the exact same total body of evidence and yet differ in their belief attitudes towards some proposition, without either being irrational. However, I argue, not enough attention has been paid to the distinction between different ways in which permissivism might be true. In this paper, I present a taxonomy of forms of epistemic permissivism framed as the upshot of different ways one might respond to a basic argument against the view from Roger White. I then introduce a new type of permissive view which the contemporary debate has completely ignored and which is made available when we reject a widespread and largely unexamined background commitment to static rational norms connecting beliefs and evidence in favor of dynamic norms governing processes of consideration. I show how the dynamic strategy of rejecting static norms on belief opens the door to a new kind of permissivism which is both independently attractive and especially well-placed to answer worries that have been raised against traditional permissivist views.
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Notes
In particular, they suggest that uniqueness precludes both being an internalist about rationality and an externalist about evidence, and being an externalist about rationality and an internalist about evidence.
See, for example, Christensen (2007) on “rational ideals”.
I owe an appreciation of this point to an anonymous referee.
One may be wondering, at this point, whether the sort of considerations just sketched make room for permissive philosophical disagreements. There is some reason to think that the extent to which they do is comparatively limited. This is because for people who are active participants in an academic dispute—it won’t be the case that the agents differ because one of them rationally hasn’t considered the issue, or hasn’t considered it deeply. That comes with the job, so to speak. And those are the main ways in which agents can, on the view described, end up permissibly disagreeing on the same evidence.
On the dynamic view, the disagreement of others might have bearing in at least two ways—first, on whether one reconsiders a question, and as potential evidence during the consideration itself. Plausibly, learning someone, particularly someone who has similar or better evidence, or considered a question as carefully as you did, disagrees with you is a reason to reconsider. And plausibly, the testimony of experts as well as of equals has some evidential force. But this leads us into contentious territory—the overall dynamic permissivist approach is strictly compatible with many different views about the evidential bearing of the beliefs of others.
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Podgorski, A. Dynamic permissivism. Philos Stud 173, 1923–1939 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-015-0585-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-015-0585-z