Conciliationism as Epistemic Concession in Religious Peer Disagreement

For over a decade now epistemologists have been thinking about the peer disagreement problem of whether a person is reasonable in not lowering her confidence in her belief P when she comes to accept that she has an epistemic peer on P who disbelieves P. However, epistemologists have overlooked a key realistic way how epistemic peers can, or even have to, differ epistemically—a way that reveals the inadequacy of both conformist and non-conformist views on peer disagreement by uncovering how the causes of peer disagreement bear on the debate’s core philosophical issue. Part of our argument for this thesis will involve giving a thorough yet entirely informal presentation of mathematical theorems in economics by Robert Aumann (Ann Stat 4(6):1236–1239,1976) and Polemarchakis and Geneakoplos (J Econ Theory 26:363–390,1982) which represent a formally precise description of how two rational agents must deal with disagreement under certain epistemically interesting circumstances.

The epistemology of disagreement studies the epistemically relevant aspects of the interaction between parties who hold diverging opinions about a given subject matter. The central question that the epistemology of disagreement purports to answer is how the involved parties should resolve an instance of disagreement. Answers to this central question largely depend on the epistemic position of each party before disagreement occurs. Two parties are equally positioned from an epistemic standpoint – namely, they are epistemic peers – to the extent that they have roughly equal access to the evidence and comparable intellectual resources. When one party is epistemically better positioned than the other – that is, when one is an epistemic superior – it is widely agreed that this party should retain their belief while the other party – the epistemic inferior – should revise their opinion in the direction of what the epistemic superior believes. Addressing the central question is a complex task when the disagreeing parties are epistemic peers. Three main answers can be distinguished. Conciliatory answers mandate that both parties revise – i.e. lower their confidence in – their beliefs upon the occurrence of peer disagreement. Steadfast answers allow both parties to retain their respective beliefs, thereby committing them to demote the epistemic position of the interlocutor. The third group of answers suggests that the solution to peer disagreement depends on whether either party is highly justified in holding their belief. If either party is highly justified, then it is rational that this party retains its view. If neither party is highly justified, both should revise. The epistemology of disagreement addresses further important questions such as: whether the occurrence of disagreement opens the doors to scepticism and/or relativism; what the consequences of epistemic disagreement on intellectual character are; what laypeople should do when experts disagree with each other; and whether disagreement among groups can be treated in the same way as disagreement among individuals.

In this paper, I defend a new solution to the problem of peer disagreement, the question as to how you should respond when you learn that your ‘epistemic peer’ disagrees with you about some issue (tomorrow’s weather, the permissibility of abortion, the existence of universals). I consider four (familiar) test cases that together impugn every extant full-blown theory about peer disagreement. I present my own solution, show that it delivers the intuitive verdict in the test cases and address some objections.

There is a controversy, within social epistemology, over how to handle disagreement among epistemic peers. Call this the problem of peer disagreement. There is a solution, i.e. the equal-weight view, which says that disagreement among epistemic peers is a reason for each peer to lower the credence they place in their respective positions. However, this solution is susceptible to a serious challenge. Call it the merely modal peers challenge. Throughout parts of modal space, which resemble the actual world almost completely, there are hordes of epistemic peers, who disagree with almost any arbitrarily chosen belief had by residents of the actual world. Further, the mere modality of these peers is not itself an epistemic difference-maker. Thus, on the equal-weight view, we should significantly lower the credence we place in most of our beliefs. Surely, this is seriously mistaken. Thus, there are serious considerations that cut against the equal-weight view.

Richard Feldman has argued that in cases of religious disagreement between epistemic peers who have shared all relevant evidence, epistemic rationality requires suspense of judgment. I argue that Feldman’s postulation of completely shared evidence is unrealistic for the kinds of disputes he is considering, since different starting points will typically produce different assessments of what the evidence is and how it should be weighed. Feldman argues that there cannot be equally reasonable starting points, but his extension of the postulate of completely shared evidence to evidence for starting points involves an illicit assimilation of ordinary cases of evidence assessment to cases in which substantial agreement about background assumptions is lacking. I also clarify why even if Feldman were correct about what epistemic norms require, his conclusion would not show that we should actually suspend judgment about religious or anti-religious truth claims.

The problem of disagreement is one of the most important issues that have been debated in epistemology in recent years, and in particular the peer disagreement. The main question of this problem is what kind of attitude we should rationally adopt when we realize that someone who is an epistemic peer to us does not think the same. There are four main responses to this question: conciliationism, steadfastness, total evidence view, and justificationist view. According to conciliationism, when there is a peer disagreement, the parties should give equal weight to each other's beliefs, lower their confidence in their own beliefs or suspend their judgments on the issue in question. According to the steadfastness view, when there is a peer disagreement, one can continue to maintain one's own belief, and this is rational. In the total evidence view, one's total evidence in disagreement with an epistemic peer; consists of his own belief, the belief of his peer, and the evidence on which their belief before the disagreement is based. For this reason, according to Kelly, who is the owner of this view, it may be reasonable to place more weight on one's own belief if the original evidence supports his belief more than that of the peer. According to the justificationist view, the degree of your prior justification for the proposition in disagreement determines your response to it; namely, if you have a high degree prior justification you can maintain your belief as in the steadfastness view, but if you do not have a high degree prior justification, you need to revise your belief as in the equal weight view. In this article, first I will briefly examine these four views and deal with the points where they fail to satisfy. Later, I will argue that resolution of the disagreement should be case-based. And finally, I will present the evidence-based argument in peer disagreement which is my own response to this problem and explain it with sample cases.

Religious disagreements are widespread. Some philosophers have argued that religious disagreements call for religious skepticism, or a revision of one’s religious beliefs. In order to figure out the epistemic significance of religious disagreements, two questions need to be answered. First, what kind of disagreements are religious disagreements? Second, how should one respond to such disagreements? In this paper, I argue that many religious disagreements are cases of unconfirmed superiority disagreements, where parties have good reason to think they are not epistemic peers, yet they lack good reason to determine who is superior. Such disagreements have been left relatively unexplored. I then argue that in cases of unconfirmed superiority disagreements, disputants can remain relatively steadfast in holding to their beliefs. Hence, we can remain relatively steadfast in our beliefs in such cases of religious disagreements.

The chapter proposes a novel understanding of the philosophical significance of peer disagreement in terms of a puzzling inconsistency. It is argued that peer disagreement is higher-order evidence that seems to require a revision of one’s original beliefs. On the other hand, in some peer disagreement cases taking place within systematic enquiries, both empirical and formal considerations seem to suggest that it is beneficial, both from the individual and the collective perspectives, not to revise one’s original views. It is shown that this inconsistency cannot be easily dissolved by disambiguating some of the key elements of the puzzle, such as the notions of epistemic rationality and epistemic peerhood.

BackgroundNeuroenhancement (NE), the use of psychoactive substances in order to enhance a healthy individual’s cognitive functioning from a proficient to an even higher level, is prevalent in student populations. According to the strength model of self-control, people fail to self-regulate and fall back on their dominant behavioral response when finite self-control resources are depleted. An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that ego-depletion will prevent students who are unfamiliar with NE from trying it.Findings130 undergraduates, who denied having tried NE before (43% female, mean age = 22.76 ± 4.15 years old), were randomly assigned to either an ego-depletion or a control condition. The dependent variable was taking an “energy-stick” (a legal nutritional supplement, containing low doses of caffeine, taurine and vitamin B), offered as a potential means of enhancing performance on the bogus concentration task that followed. Logistic regression analysis showed that ego-depleted participants were three times less likely to take the substance, OR = 0.37, p = .01.ConclusionThis experiment found that trying NE for the first time was more likely if an individual’s cognitive capacities were not depleted. This means that mental exhaustion is not predictive for NE in students for whom NE is not the dominant response. Trying NE for the first time is therefore more likely to occur as a thoughtful attempt at self-regulation than as an automatic behavioral response in stressful situations. We therefore recommend targeting interventions at this inter-individual difference. Students without previous reinforcing NE experience should be provided with information about the possible negative health outcomes of NE. Reconfiguring structural aspects in the academic environment (e.g. lessening workloads) might help to deter current users.

The debate on the epistemology of disagreement has so far focused almost exclusively on cases of disagreement between individual persons. Yet, many social epistemologists agree that at least certain kinds of groups are equally capable of having beliefs that are open to epistemic evaluation. If so, we should expect a comprehensive epistemology of disagreement to accommodate cases of disagreement between group agents, such as juries, governments, companies, and the like. However, this raises a number of fundamental questions concerning what it means for groups to be epistemic peers and to disagree with each other. In this paper, we explore what group peer disagreement amounts to given that we think of group belief in terms of List and Pettit’s (Econ Philos 18:89–110, 2002; Group agency: the possibility, design, and status of corporate agents, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011) ‘belief aggregation model’. We then discuss how the so-called ‘equal weight view’ of peer disagreement is best accommodated within this framework. The account that seems most promising to us says, roughly, that the parties to a group peer disagreement should adopt the belief that results from applying the most suitable belief aggregation function for the combined group on all members of the combined group. To motivate this view, we test it against various intuitive cases, derive some of its notable implications, and discuss how it relates to the equal weight view of individual peer disagreement.

The problem of multi‐peer disagreement concerns the reasonable response to a situation in which you believe P1 … Pn and disagree with a group of ‘epistemic peers’ of yours, who believe ∼P1 … ∼Pn, respectively. However, the problem of multi‐peer disagreement is a variant on the preface paradox; because of this the problem poses no challenge to the so‐called ‘steadfast view’ in the epistemology of disagreement, on which it is sometimes reasonable to believe P in the face of peer disagreement about P. After some terminology is defined (§1), Peter van Inwagen's challenge to the steadfast view will be presented (§2). The preface paradox will then be presented and diagnosed (§3), and it will be argued that van Inwagen's challenge relies on the same principle that generates the preface paradox (§4). The reasonable response to multi‐peer disagreement will be discussed (§5), and an objection addressed (§6).

This chapter developes a justificationist account of the significance of disagreement between epistemic peers. Whereas current views maintain that disagreement, by itself, either simply does or does not possess epistemic power, this chapter's account holds that its epistemic power, or lack thereof, is explainable in terms of the degree of justified confidence with which the belief in question is held. In this sense, the chapter rejects nonconformism—the absence of doxastic revision in the face of peer disagreement is never justified merely by virtue of the fact that the beliefs in question are either mine or are the product of correct reasoning—and conformism—substantial doxastic revision in the face of peer disagreement is never justified merely by virtue of equal weight being given to my own beliefs and to those held by my epistemic peers. Despite this, however, one advantage of my justificationist account is that it is able to explain why nonconformism provides the intuitively correct result in some cases, while conformism gives the intuitively correct result in other cases. A further advantage is that this chapter's justificationist account is generalizable in a way that neither of these rival views is.

Sidgwick writes that “if I find any of my judgments … in direct conflict with a judgment of some other mind, there must be error somewhere: and if I have no more reason to suspect error in the other mind than in my own, reflective comparison between the two judgments necessarily reduces me temporarily to a state of neutrality” (1981 [1907], 342). This seems to justify skepticism about ethical first principles. Sidgwick does not think it does. I argue that he is right: he can argue that an opponent who has not considered Sidgwick’s objections is not an epistemic peer. He can do so without violating the “independence” constraint often invoked in discussions of peer disagreement. One consequence is that Sidgwick is wrong to think of Kant as his epistemic peer, given his criticisms of Kant’s arguments for and applications of the Universal Law and Humanity formulations of the Categorical Imperative. This strategy might be extended to handle disagreements with those, unlike Kant, who do not give arguments for their first principles.

This paper concentrates on the issue of what happens to the confidence one has in the justification of one's belief when one discovers an epistemic peer with conflicting higher and/or lower order evidences. Certain symmetries surface during epistemic peer disagreement, which tend to make one less confident. The same happens in religious disagreements. Mostly externalist perspectives are considered. The epistemology of ordinary disagreements and that of religious ones behave similarly, such that principles used in the former can be seen to apply also in the latter.

Disagreement with epistemologists’ peer provides new evidence that significantly modifies their epistemic situation compared to their pre-disagreement situation. According to the total evidence view the body of total evidence determines what response is epistemically rational in the face of recognized peer disagreement. According to the justificationist view, what counts as epistemically rational responses in the face of recognized peer disagreement is determined by the subjects’ degree of justified confidence and, in some cases, certain kinds of information. The first criticism puts pressure on the commitment to treat as epistemically irrelevant one’s original evidence, once the disagreement with a peer comes to light. Non-conformist views seem to seriously downplay the epistemic significance of the presence of disagreement which is clearly a weakness of the view especially in those cases where both disputants regard each other as epistemic peers. Differences between views on peer disagreement may well reflect—or be traceable to—differences in terms of broader epistemological commitments.