Dealing With Disagreement: Distinguishing Two Types of Epistemic Peers

Abstract

Epistemologists have recently debated how we should respond to apparent cases of rational disagreement. Is it possible for two people to disagree and have both people still be rational? Those involved in this debate make use of the idea of epistemic peers. Two people are epistemic peers if they share the same knowledge of a given topic and have similar epistemic virtues. My paper argues that we have different kinds of epistemic peers; close peers who think similarly to ourselves, and remote peers who think very differently. I argue that remote peers are genuine peers, but that we should respond to disagreement from remote peers differently than disagreement from close peers.