Abstract
In the epistemology of disagreement literature, many authors use certain cases of disagreement in order to lend support to either conciliationism or non-conciliationism. Richard Feldman and David Christensen, among others, are advocates of the view that lessons from simple idealized cases of disagreement shed light on complex cases of disagreement. In this chapter I analyze some of these simple cases in order to demonstrate that while they do lend support for conciliationism, the lessons do not necessarily carry over to more complex cases of disagreement. This is important because cases of disagreement between inquirers are better understood as complex, not simple.
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Notes
- 1.
At least one prominent advocate of conciliationism, Adam Elga, acknowledges that simple cases and complex cases should be treated differently based on the fact that epistemic peerhood is more likely to obtain in the former than the latter. See Elga 2007.
- 2.
Thanks to John Roman for extensive comments on this chapter, and in particular for his suggestion about the connection between location of belief on the web and the complexity of the case.
- 3.
Note that this is distinct from the coherence theory of truth. Throughout this project I assume a correspondence theory of truth. Thus, my claim that coherence is a partly a function of rationality is compatible with a set of beliefs being coherent but false. See Young (2015).
- 4.
- 5.
The sense I’m using truth-tracking is such that for an agent S to have a truth-tracking record T about proposition P (and propositions relevantly similar to P) there must be agreement among relevant experts about what it would like for there to be confirmation or decisive evidence for P. Thanks to anonymous referee for prompting me to be clearer about the sort of truth-tracking I have in view.
- 6.
It may need to be that for this case to really be simple it needs to be stipulated that both parties have an equally good track-record when it comes to basic sense perception (i.e. like cases) and are aware of each others’ record. However, I will not delve into such details further since the literature almost universally treats this as a simple idealized case of disagreement.
- 7.
Verification is one point of difference between simple and certain complex cases that Christensen recognizes in his later work on disagreement (2014).
- 8.
Thanks to Paul Silva for helping me to clarify this point.
- 9.
Elsewhere, in a later article Christensen acknowledges that there are a lot of differences between simple and complex cases, but according to him such differences further support conciliationism in complex cases. This is because one will not be able to use personal information in complex cases (e.g. your opponent is biased) to demote them as a peer (2014, 147). But this makes it all the more puzzling why Christensen is still insistent that there are important lessons to be learned about disagreement from examining the simple cases.
- 10.
Elsewhere Christensen writes that “[t]he hope is that by understanding the rational response to disagreement in the simple cases, we’ll get some insight into what the rational response is in the more complex ones involving the public controversies among groups that give the issue much of its urgency” (Christensen 2014, 143). He goes on to argue that in public controversies where a group of people disagree that conciliatory principles are even more forceful because one will not be able to use personal information (e.g. your opponent is biased) as easily when it comes to a group of people.
- 11.
- 12.
There, of course, medical cases where confirmation is possible (e.g. how a patient responds to different treatments).
- 13.
Thanks to Lloyd Humberstone for bring this point to my attention.
- 14.
This example is modified from Christensen (2007, 195–197).
- 15.
This could also probably be explicated using safety conditions for knowledge.
- 16.
I will say more about this later in the chapter.
- 17.
Bergmann claims that even if an agent is aware of all of the evidence, while her peer’s opposing view might be internally rational, the intuitive force behind the example lends support to the claim that she remains justified to trust her own insight or intuition despite the disagreement.
- 18.
It’s perhaps a bit odd to speak of Christianity as true or false since it represents numerous claims. For the purposes of argument take Christianity here to refer to the truth of the Apostle’s and Nicene Creeds.
- 19.
To be fair, Bergmann is not explicit about how far reaching his argument is (i.e. whether it is intended to apply to the simple cases given by Christensen and Feldman). Still, Bergmann is likely to think there are other cases like his moral example, where remaining steadfast is rational. What I want to know is what the epistemically relevant similarities are between those cases.
- 20.
An anonymous referee observes that for this to be true then certain versions of moral realism are false. For instance, Robert Audi has it that moral properties can be perceived.
- 21.
I assume that there are political facts too, though I recognize that some philosophers deny that this is the case.
- 22.
Fogelin (1985) argues for a position even stronger than Holley’s. He believes that for the very conditions of argument to be possible there must be a lot of shared background assumptions between the two opponents in question. When two opponents disagree with one another but lack many shared background assumptions the framework for argument doesn’t even exist. Fogelin calls these types of disagreement ‘deep’.
- 23.
Including religious belief in the centre is (probably) a move away from Quine, since it is not clear he thought religious beliefs were meaningful. But that is not important to my purposes. I am using Quine’s concept of a web of beliefs, but I do not claim to explicate it exactly as he would.
- 24.
Thanks to John Pittard for bringing this type of objection to my attention.
- 25.
Of course, what constitutes unrelated here will not be uncontroversial.
- 26.
Thanks to Nick Griffin for bringing this response to my attention.
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Lougheed, K. (2020). An Analysis of Ideal Cases of Disagreement. In: The Epistemic Benefits of Disagreement. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 51. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34503-7_2
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