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Epistemic Disagreement and Practical Disagreement

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It is often thought that the correct metaphysics and epistemology of reasons will be broadly unified across different kinds of reason: reasons for belief, and reasons for action. This approach is sometimes thought to be undermined by the contrasting natures of belief and of action: whereas belief appears to have the ‘constitutive aim’ of truth (or knowledge), action does not appear to have any such constitutive aim. I develop this disanalogy into a novel challenge to metanormative approaches by thinking about disagreement. The constitutive aim of belief can play a role in adjudicating epistemic disagreements for which there is no analogue in practical disagreements. Consequently, we have more reason, all else being equal, to expect convergence in epistemic judgment than in practical judgment. This represents a prima facie challenge to the metanormative theorist because the extent of (suitably specified) disagreement in an area of thought is of prima facie significance for the metaphysics of that area of thought.

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Notes

  1. ‘Metanormativity’ is, admittedly, a broad church. Those who explicitly self-identify as ‘metanormativists’ include Chrisman (2010), and especially Enoch (2011a), Ch. 4. Many more views might reasonably be thought to fall under this classification, including (e.g.) Scanlon (1998), Gibbard (2003), Wedgwood (2002), Parfit (2011), Skorupski (2011).

  2. This is expressed in the context of scepticism about ‘companions in guilt’ arguments between morality and epistemology (such as that undertaken in Cuneo 2007) in Lillehammer Lillehammer and Hallvard (2007), and p. 170. FitzPatrick (2009), p. 757. See also Darwall (2003), pp. 483–488, Tersman (2006), p. 96.

  3. I have claimed that disagreement often has its source in failings of procedural rationality. But it might be claimed that disagreements also often have their source in failings of substantive rationality (that is, in failure to respond to the reasons that one has). See Fn. 7.

  4. Some philosophers are optimistic that informed and procedurally rational disputants would converge in a substantial proportion of their practical judgments (e.g. Brink 1989, pp. 197–210; Parfit 2011, p. 543, and see also Jackson 1998, Ch. 5). But there is good reason to be sceptical of this e.g. Mackie (1977), p. 37, Enoch (2011a), p. 191. I discuss this further in ‘Objections and Replies’ below.

  5. Elga (2007), (Sec. 12–13) claims that disputants about the cluster of issues related to the permissibility of abortion typically lack sufficient shared normative criteria for convergence. See Kornblith (2010) for the view (in response to Elga) that whereas disputants may share criteria in these cases, criteria are not shared in cases of ‘inter-cultural’ practical disagreements.

  6. Arguments from disagreement to metaphysical conclusions take a number of forms, e.g.: (1) abductive arguments against moral realism, and for moral constructivism (e.g. Harman 1996, 2000); (2) arguments from judgment dependent theories of moral truth to moral error theories (see e.g. Tersman 2004, Ch. 4); (3) arguments from conceptual requirements on convergence to moral error theories (see e.g. Lillehammer 2004).

  7. For the most thorough discussion of, and rejection of, arguments from disagreement to metaphysical anti-realist conclusions, see Enoch (2009, 2011a) Ch. 8. One of the most obvious reasons for rejecting any arguments of this form concerns the use of ‘rationality’ (Ibid., pp. 210–211). I have claimed that disagreements amongst procedurally rational and well-informed agents pose a prima facie challenge to claims to moral knowledge, and to straightforwardly realistic accounts of practical normativity. But it might be objected that it is only disagreements amongst substantially rational agents that have this consequence. And it might be thought that substantially rational agents would share normative criteria (or at least that we have no compelling reason to think otherwise). My response is concessive. If well-informed and substantially rational agents were to disagree, this would be sufficient for rejecting claims to moral knowledge, and to straightforwardly realistic accounts of practical normativity. By contrast, I have merely claimed that disagreement amongst well-informed and procedurally rational agents poses a prima facie challenge to claims to moral knowledge, and to straightforwardly realistic accounts of practical normativity. This may satisfy Enoch (see Ibid., p. 213, Fn. 72).

  8. I shan’t claim that sharing this criterion is sufficient for adjudicating all epistemic disputes. My claim—defended further below and in dealing with objections and replies—is merely that it is of some help.

  9. Velleman (1996), p. 700. My presentation follows (in part) the discussed of Velleman in Wedgwood (2002), pp. 10–12.

  10. Not unless (a particular variety of) pragmatism about belief holds as a conceptual truth. I assume it does not.

  11. Compare Darwall (2003), p. 485.

  12. Wedgwood (2002), p. 267. See also Thomson (2008), p. 83.

  13. A point stressed by Velleman (1992), p. 12.

  14. It might be objected that reasons for belief can’t be explained solely in terms of the nature of belief for reasons familiar from David Enoch’s ‘Agency Schmagency’ and ‘Schmagency Revisited’ (Enoch 2006; Enoch 2011b). As applied to belief, the worry would take roughly the following form: one doesn’t have reason to believe what it’s correct for one to believe unless one has reason to be a believer (as opposed to a schmeliever) in the first place. I don’t attempt to provide a full response to Enoch’s worry here. I simply note that Enoch’s worry applies to reasons for holding any mental state (e.g. belief and choice). And any satisfactory response must also, I think, apply with equal generality. So, if a satisfactory response to Enoch’s worry can be found, then, provided that my (independent) argument (below) for a disanalogy in the correctness conditions of belief and choice is sound, there will be a subsequent disanalogy between reasons for belief and reasons for choice. I leave the provision of a full response to Enoch’s worry to another paper, or another author.

  15. Especially Wedgwood (2007), pp. 154–158. See also Kearns and Starr (2009).

  16. Thomson (2008), pp. 130–134. This formulation might be objected to if read from right-to-left. According to some philosophers one doesn’t have reason to believe a conclusion for which one has (sufficient) evidence unless one has some interest in so believing (see e.g. Leite 2007; Steglich-Petersen 2011). For counter-argument see Kelly (2003, 2007). In any case, it is highly likely that agents who disagree about a proposition do have an interest in it (if for no other reason than that they are disagreeing about it). For the more radical view that agents have reasons to believe conclusions that they don’t have evidence for the truth of, see Sect. 5.1 below.

  17. The significance of the open question argument for thinking about the disanalogy between reasons for belief and reasons for action is pursued in greater length in Heathwood (2009).

  18. Wedgwood (2003), p. 27. Compare Dworkin (2011), Ch. 8. According to Dworkin, there are no ‘conceptual' truths in, or about, morality. All first-order and meta-ethical moral judgments are themselves moral judgments–judgments whose justification rests on first-order moral theorising.

  19. Scanlon (1998), p. 36.

  20. A possibility discussed in e.g. Chang (1997).

  21. e.g. Wedgwood (2003), Thomson (2008) (e.g. p. 132), Shah (2008), Shah and Evans (2012).

  22. Velleman (1996), p. 719.

  23. Millar (2004), p. 68.

  24. Ibid.

  25. This point is nicely made by Millar: “an action may achieve the constitutive aim whilst being subject to criticism in all sorts of ways that are not explicable just in terms of the constitutive aim” (Millar 2004, p. 68).

  26. See, for example, Pettit (2001), p. 123.

  27. Example from Rosen, in Shah (2003).

  28. There are a number of arguments against the existence of pragmatic reasons for belief in the literature. For example, Thomson has argued that ‘pragmatic reasons for belief’ represent a category mistake: if there were pragmatic reasons for belief then one could believe whatever one wants to; but one can’t believe whatever one wants to; so there are not pragmatic reasons for belief. Thomson (2008), p. 138. Relatedly, Pamela Hieronymi has argued that pragmatism about belief explains the impossibility of ‘believing at will’ Hieronymi (2006). See also Shah and Velleman’s argument that the psychological phenomenon of the ‘transparency of belief’ is best explained by evidentialism. See Shah (2003), Shah and Velleman (2005).

  29. We must assume that he is a 'lover of the good' (as well as a believer of the truth). A theme discussed in Davidson (1986, 1995).

  30. Tersman (2004) rejects 3*. He argues that in order for interpretation to be possible, it is only necessary that agents share certain logical (i.e. decision-theoretic) and functional properties of their desires. It is not necessary that there is any overlap in the contents of their desires. Tersman (2006) extends this model explicitly to moral judgments.

  31. Tersman (2004), p. 258.

  32. For more on this point see e.g. Cuneo (2007), pp. 77–80, and Enoch (2011a), p. 241.

  33. Darwall (2003), pp. 483–488.

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    Christopher Cowie

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Cowie, C. Epistemic Disagreement and Practical Disagreement. Erkenn 79, 191–209 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-013-9485-9

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