Conciliatory views, higher-order disagreements, and defeasible logic

Conciliatory views of disagreement say, roughly, that it’s rational for you to become less confident in your take on an issue in case you find out that an epistemic peer’s take on it is the opposite. Their intuitive appeal notwithstanding, there are well-known worries about the behavior of conciliatory views in scenarios involving higher-order disagreements, which include disagreements over these views themselves and disagreements over the peer status of alleged epistemic peers. This paper does two things. First, it explains how the core idea behind conciliatory views can be expressed in a defeasible logic framework. The result is a formal model that’s particularly useful for thinking about the behavior of conciliatory views in cases involving higher-order disagreements. And second, the paper uses this model to resolve three paradoxes associated with disagreements over epistemic peerhood

The Epistemology of Disagreement: Why Not Bayesianism?

Disagreement is a ubiquitous feature of human life, and philosophers have dutifully attended to it. One important question related to disagreement is epistemological: How does a rational person change her beliefs (if at all) in light of disagreement from others? The typical methodology for answering this question is to endorse a steadfast or conciliatory disagreement norm (and not both) on a priori grounds and selected intuitive cases. In this paper, I argue that this methodology is misguided. Instead, a thoroughgoingly Bayesian strategy is what's needed. Such a strategy provides conciliatory norms in appropriate cases and steadfast norms in appropriate cases. I argue, further, that the few extant efforts to address disagreement in the Bayesian spirit are laudable but uncompelling. A modelling, rather than a functional, approach gets us the right norms and is highly general, allowing the epistemologist to deal with (1) multiple epistemic interlocutors, (2) epistemic superiors and inferiors (i.e. not just epistemic peers), and (3) dependence between interlocutors

Disagreement and Deep Disagreement: Should you trust yourself?

What, on realising disagreement, is an agent justified in believing when it comes to the substance of that disagreement? What significance ought we to afford disagreement in the practices by which we came to hold the beliefs over which we disagree? What do we do when the disagreement reaches down to the norms that determine the kinds of things we see as reasons for belief? In this thesis I employ the methodological lens of ‘peer disagreement’ to develop a response to these questions that I call the ‘Higher-Order Trust’ approach to disagreement. There are two important aspects to this position: First, I suggest that a satisfactory theory of disagreement must consider both ‘The Problem of Ordinary Disagreement’ – roughly, the question of how epistemic peers ought to respond when they disagree in so far as they hold conflicting beliefs – and ‘The Normative Problem of Deep Disagreement’ – roughly, the question of how peers ought to respond when a disagreement in beliefs is explained by the disputants following conflicting epistemic norms. Secondly, I suggest that the realisation of disagreement affords one higher-order evidence about the epistemic practices by which one came to hold the relevant beliefs. Thus, the question of how one ought to respond to the realisation of disagreement depends upon whether one has available some form of epistemic self-trust in the practices drawn into question. To understand the normative significance of disagreement, then, we first have to understand what it means to have epistemic self-trust. In this light, I suggest that there is a form of affective self-trust that can be available in cases of ordinary disagreement and realised deep disagreement between peers. When such trust is available, it may be rational to stay steadfast in the face of disagreement. Where it is not, one should respond in more conciliatory fashion

A Bayesian Solution to Hallsson's Puzzle

Politics is rife with motivated cognition. People do not dispassionately engage with the evidence when they form political beliefs; they interpret it selectively, generating justifications for their desired conclusions and reasons why contrary evidence should be ignored. Moreover, research shows that epistemic ability (e.g. intelligence and familiarity with evidence) is correlated with motivated cognition. Bjørn Hallsson has pointed out that this raises a puzzle for the epistemology of disagreement. On the one hand, we typically think that epistemic ability in an interlocutor gives us reason to downgrade our belief upon learning that we disagree. On the other hand, if our interlocutor is under the sway of motivated cognition, then we have reason to discount his opinion. In this paper, I argue that Hallsson's puzzle is solved by adopting a Bayesian approach to disagreement. If an interlocutor is under the sway of motivated cognition, his disagreement should not affect our beliefs--no matter his ability. Because we implicitly and to high accuracy know his beliefs before he reveals them to us, disagreement provides us with no new information on which to conditionalize. I advance a model which accommodates the motivated cognition dynamic and other key epistemic features of disagreement

Disagreement within contemporary analytic philosophy : a pragmatic perspective

In this thesis, I offer a new perspective on the extant disagreement within contemporary analytic philosophy - and, in particular, a perspective which is grounded in both the 2009 and 2020 PhilPapers Surveys of David Bourget and David Chalmers (2014; and forthcoming), as well as a tradition that is often disregarded by contemporary analytic philosophers: Pragmatism. I call it “a pragmatic perspective.” Using that perspective, I work through various aspects of the existing philosophical literatures on disagreement in order to evaluate the discipline’s own. On the one hand, I clarify and extend this literature - especially, as it applies to the discipline. But, several gaps are also found and addressed, including: what pragmatic commitments and policies contemporary analytic philosophers might need to make and enact in order to address their disagreement; how disagreement might affect the possession, transferability, and vindication of various collective epistemic/rational goods (for example, collective knowledge or rational consensus); and what consequences such philosophers might be forced to face - both inside and outside of their discipline - if they are unable to possess, transfer, and vindicate all that many epistemic/rational goods. Overall, my results are more grounded conclusions regarding both the nature and extent of the disagreement within the discipline, as well as a clearer understanding of why contemporary analytic philosophers might be right to worry about it and how they might be able to resolve it

Logical disagreement : an epistemological study

While the epistemic significance of disagreement has been a popular topic in epistemology for at least a decade, little attention has been paid to logical disagreement. This monograph is meant as a remedy. The text starts with an extensive literature review of the epistemology of (peer) disagreement and sets the stage for an epistemological study of logical disagreement. The guiding thread for the rest of the work is then three distinct readings of the ambiguous term ‘logical disagreement’. Chapters 1 and 2 focus on the Ad Hoc Reading according to which logical disagreements occur when two subjects take incompatible doxastic attitudes toward a specific proposition in or about logic. Chapter 2 presents a new counterexample to the widely discussed Uniqueness Thesis. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the Theory Choice Reading of ‘logical disagreement’. According to this interpretation, logical disagreements occur at the level of entire logical theories rather than individual entailment-claims. Chapter 4 concerns a key question from the philosophy of logic, viz., how we have epistemic justification for claims about logical consequence. In Chapters 5 and 6 we turn to the Akrasia Reading. On this reading, logical disagreements occur when there is a mismatch between the deductive strength of one’s background logic and the logical theory one prefers (officially). Chapter 6 introduces logical akrasia by analogy to epistemic akrasia and presents a novel dilemma. Chapter 7 revisits the epistemology of peer disagreement and argues that the epistemic significance of central principles from the literature are at best deflated in the context of logical disagreement. The chapter also develops a simple formal model of deep disagreement in Default Logic, relating this to our general discussion of logical disagreement. The monograph ends in an epilogue with some reflections on the potential epistemic significance of convergence in logical theorizing

Defeasibility in Epistemology

This dissertation explores some ways in which logics for defeasible reasoning can be applied to questions in epistemology. It's naturally thought of as developing four applications: The first is concerned with simple epistemic rules, such as ``If you perceives that X, then you ought to believe that X'' and ``If you have outstanding testimony that X, then you ought to believe that X.'' Anyone who thinks that such rules have a place in our accounts of epistemic normativity must explain what happens in cases where they come into conflict —such as one where you perceive a red object and are told that it is blue. The literature has gone in two directions: The first suggests that rules have built-in unless-clauses specifying the circumstances under which they fail to apply; the second that rules do not specify what attitudes you ought to have, but only what counts in favor or against having those attitudes. I express these two different ideas in a defeasible logic framework and demonstrate that there's a clear sense in which they are equivalent. The second application uses a defeasible logic to solve an important puzzle about epistemic rationality, involving higher-order evidence, or, roughly, evidence about our capacities for evaluating evidence. My solution has some affinities with a certain popular view on epistemic dilemmas. The third application, then, is a characterization of this conflicting-ideals view in logical terms: I suggest that it should be thought of as an unconventional metaepistemological view, according to which epistemic requirements are not exceptionless, but defeasible and governed by a comparatively weak logic. Finally, the fourth application is in the burgeoning debate about the epistemic significance of disagreement. The intuitive conciliatory views say, roughly, that you ought to become less confident in your take on some question X, if you learn that an epistemic equal disagrees with you about X. I propose to think of conciliationism as a defeasible reasoning policy, develop a mathematically precise model of it, and use it to solve one of the most pressing problems for conciliatory views: Given that there are disagreements about these views themselves, they can self-defeat and issue inconsistent recommendations

Problems of Religious Luck, Ch. 5: "Scaling the ‘Brick Wall’: Measuring and Censuring Strongly Fideistic Religious Orientation"

This chapter sharpens the book’s criticism of exclusivist responsible to religious multiplicity, firstly through close critical attention to arguments which religious exclusivists provide, and secondly through the introduction of several new, formal arguments / dilemmas. Self-described ‘post-liberals’ like Paul Griffiths bid philosophers to accept exclusivist attitudes and beliefs as just one among other aspects of religious identity. They bid us to normalize the discourse Griffiths refers to as “polemical apologetics,” and to view its acceptance as the only viable form of pluralism. This reasoning may seem initially plausible, but on closer examination his and other’s defence of the reasonableness of exclusivist responses to religious multiplicity fall apart. Informed by our study of luck-leaning theological explanations of religious difference and the counter-inductive thinking they exemplify, I argue that exclusivist responses to religious multiplicity are best explained by personal and group bias, and that a discourse between exclusivist authors or sects is beyond the pale of reasonable disagreement. Our study of descriptive (psychological) and prescriptive (religious) fideism in the first sections of Chapter Five suggests that we turn back to formal features of doxastic methods (i.e., of how people process), features that may be straightforwardly tested for in studies utilizing scales of religious orientation. These formal features allow us to better recognize not only the multiplicity of models of faith that religious adherents adhere to, but also that the relationship between forms of fideism is scalar: there is a spectrum of views running from rationalism to fideism, and at the fideistic end from moderate to strong forms of religious fideism. I further explain why developing tests and markers for a high degree of fideistic orientation is important to all those who study religion. The second half of the chapter turns to criticism or censure of exclusivist attitudes to religious multiplicity, in contrast to apologetic defenses of exclusivism. While we have examined the close connections between fideism and fundamentalism, and again between fundamentalism and exclusivism in earlier chapters, a sharper focus reveals an important but little-recognized distinction reflected in the literature: the distinction between religion-specific (or particularist) and mutualist exclusivism. The mutualist doesn’t talk just about the right of adherents of one specific religion to assert exclusivism, but the adherents of any and all “home” religions. I argue that some previously unrecognized problems for the reasonableness of exclusivist responses to religious multiplicity are brought to light when we make the distinction between the two basic ways to understand the claim that exclusivists are making. I put particularist (Barth, Lindbeck, Plantinga) and mutualist (Griffiths, Gellman, Margalit, D’Costa) defenses of exclusivism on the horns of a dilemma, and argue that despite the popularity it presently enjoys among post-liberal theologians, a close examination reveals that the very conceptual coherence of mutualist exclusivism is in serious doubt