Abstract
The epistemology of disagreement standardly divides conciliationist views from steadfast views. But both sorts of views are subject to counterexample—indeed, both sorts of views are subject to the same counterexample. After presenting this counterexample, I explore how the epistemology of disagreement should be reconceptualized in light of it.
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Notes
Paraphrased from Orwell (1946).
Peer disagreement is important in its own right, and is also liable to bear on other sorts of disagreement—disagreements with those an agent views as epistemic superiors (but whose opinions should not simply be adopted) and those an agent views as epistemic inferiors (but whose opinions should not simply be ignored). Of course, there’s no guarantee that epistemic standing falls in a total order, so it’s also possible that an agent could disagree with someone he views as epistemically incomparable to himself.
And sometimes even vary within a paper. More on this sort of confusion shortly.
See Kelly (2010).
See Lackey (2008).
See White (2009).
See Weatherson (Unpublished manuscript).
See Christensen (2007).
See Elga (2010).
It is not entirely clear what type of epistemic peerage is presupposed by some cases of peer disagreement. For example, the status of disagreements about mathematics will depend on whether or not agents can have evidence that is relevant to mathematics. For a case of mathematical disagreement, see Christensen (2009). For a treatment of the evidential status of mathematics, see Garber (1983).
For example, here is a case from Kelly (2010):
You and I, two equally attentive and well-sighted individuals, stand side-by-side at the finish line of a horse race. The race is extremely close. At time t0, just as the first horses cross the finish line, it looks to me as though Horse A has won the race in virtue of finishing slightly ahead of Horse B; on the other hand, it looks to you as though Horse B has won in virtue of finishing slightly ahead of Horse A. At time 1, an instant later, we discover that we disagree about which horse has won the race. How, if at all, should we revise our original judgments on the basis of this new information?
Kelly frames this case as one in which
despite being peers...you and I arrive at different views about the question on the basis of our common evidence
but this frame is inaccurate. When two people have different visual experiences, they thereby have different evidence. The disagreement is thus not predicated on common evidence, and the case Kelly describes is therefore not an instance of peer disagreement as Kelly defines it.
Whether or not there is a doxastic state in the middle will depend on the peers’ initial doxastic states.
Change could, of course, be required for other reasons.
For an overview of such counterexamples and the refinements and qualifications they occasioned, see Christensen (2011).
Epistemic peerage is often domain-relative. But Bob and Rob are so similar that they’re peers regarding everything.
In particular, cases in which it is arbitrarily hard to mistakenly believe that the light is off can be arbitrarily similar to the case in which it is impossible to mistakenly believe that the light is off.
This argument would support credence \(\frac{1}{2}\) that the light is off, not credence \(\frac{6}{11}\).
For an alternative, more technical explanation of this sort of problem see Urbach and Howson (1993).
The interchangeability of Bob’s and Rob’s visual experiences may plausibly be thought of as giving equal weight to their experiences. If the equal weight view is interpreted charitably, it should be understood as mandating this interchangeability. For more, see Elga (2007).
For Example:
Question: Is this woman pregnant?
Possible Answers: Yes, No
Question: What is the temperature of this water?
Possible answers: \(32\,^{\circ } {\mathrm {F}}, 33\,^{\circ } {\mathrm {F}}, \ldots 212\,^{\circ } {\mathrm {F}}\)
Question: Is the lighthouse light on or off? Possible Answers: On, Off
Specifically, they should be independent of each other conditional on any answer to the question.
Note that while Interchangeability requires correspondence of conditional probabilities, it does not require correspondence of unconditional probabilities—\(\hbox {Pr}(O_{Ai})\) need not equal \(\hbox {Pr}(O_{Bi})\). The interchangeability constraint is therefore weaker than the famous exchangeability constraint for prior probabilities about Markov processes. For more, see Jeffrey (2004).
Such evidential significance is one of the central subjects of Christensen (2007).
For the seminal agreement theorem, see Aumann (1976). The assumptions underlying that result are extremely strong, however, and thus the result is somewhat delicate. See Lederman (2015) for a more accurate characterization of Aumann’s result than Aumann provides. But generalizations of Aumann’s result apply more comfortably. See Geanakoplos and Polemarchakis (1982) for more.
See White (2005).
See Lasonen-Aarnio (2013) for an analysis of the constraints imposed by such views.
These being disagreements produced by a divergence in stochastic processes.
For helpful feedback, I am thankful to Adam Elga, John Hawthorne, Alan Hájek, and Thomas Kelly.
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Isaacs, Y. A patchwork epistemology of disagreement?. Philos Stud 176, 1873–1885 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-018-1100-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-018-1100-0