Abstract
Conciliatory theories of disagreement require that one lower one’s confidence in a belief in the face of disagreement from an epistemic peer. One question about which people might disagree is who should qualify as an epistemic peer and who should not. But when putative epistemic peers disagree about epistemic peerhood itself, then Conciliationism makes contradictory demands and paradoxes arise.
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Notes
The term “epistemic peer” is due to Gutting (1982).
Cf.Kelly (2005): “Let us say that two individuals are epistemic peers with respect to some question if and only if they satisfy the following two conditions: (i) they are equals with respect to their familiarity with the evidence and arguments which bear on that question, and (ii) they are equals with respect to general epistemic virtues such as intelligence, thoughtfulness, and freedom from bias.” (pp. 174–175).
In addition to Gelfert’s informative analysis of epistemic peerhood, see Konigsberg (2013) for a consideration of whether the definition of epistemic peerhood remains constant across domains.
The specifics here will depend on the individual Conciliatory theory and the degrees of confidence that we hold in our beliefs. These specifics are irrelevant for the arguments that I give in this paper.
Belief (5) could be put more precisely but more awkwardly as “I believe that Richard is my epistemic peer with respect to Francis is my epistemic peer with respect to p.” For reasons of economy, I abbreviate this by simply saying that Richard is my epistemic peer with respect to “peerhood assessment”. Here are two interesting questions related to assessments of epistemic peer relationships which I will not explore in this paper: First, is Richard is my epistemic peer simpliciter with respect to my epistemic peer relationships, or is his peer status contingent upon the content of the underlying \(p\)? That is, if Richard is capable of judging who my epistemic peers are with respect to, say, auto repair, is he capable of judging who my epistemic peers are in all domains? Second: How much does Richard have to know about \(p\) to be able to judge my epistemic peer relationships with respect to \(p\)? Can Richard judge who my epistemic peers are with respect to the disagreement debate if Richard does not know any epistemology?
I thank two anonymous reviewers for suggesting this approach to me.
Christensen gives a detailed analysis of higher-order evidence in his 2010.
I happen to be doubtful of the higher-order evidence approach. I’m especially doubtful of the idea that my own psychological response to some first-order evidence \(E\) about \(p\) could count as additional evidence about \(p\); that is, evidence above and beyond \(E\). Cf.Kelly (2010), p. 129.
I thank an anonymous reviewer for several helpful comments along these lines.
The problem of regress is even more acute if it is the case that once I qualify someone as an epistemic peer with respect to some peerhood assessment, I perforce qualify him as an epistemic peer with respect to all my peerhood assessments (see n. 6), or if, as I will discuss in Sect. 4, epistemic peerhood satisfies a closure principle.
This example is due to Feldman (2007).
Bruce Brower raised this question to me.
To put it explicitly, I regard Jimmy as my epistemic peer on both \(p\) and peerhood assessment. It would be unusual—but by no means impossible—to regard someone as a peer on, say, a theoretical moral matter but not as a peer on assessing peerhood.
The nice term “epistemic modesty” is due to Christensen (2013).
Pittard (manuscript) argues that although Elga’s defense of Conciliationism fails, we can remain resolute about our theory, and thus avoid the danger of self-defeat, by distinguishing conciliation at the epistemic level of credence from conciliation at the level of reasoning.
References
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Acknowledgments
I am indebted to Bruce Brower, who, in the autumn of 2013, led the Tulane seminar on disagreement in which these ideas first took shape, and who weighed in on earlier drafts of this paper. I also thank Nathan Biebel and Jesse Hill for their thoughtful criticisms, and three anonymous reviewers, each of whom provided helpful comments which improved this work. I also wish to acknowledge, with gratitude, financial support provided by the Edward Marshall Ballard Memorial Fund and Tulane’s School of Liberal Arts.
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Mulligan, T. Disagreement, peerhood, and three paradoxes of Conciliationism. Synthese 192, 67–78 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-014-0553-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-014-0553-8