Abstract
In recent years, epistemologists have devoted enormous attention to this question: what should happen when two epistemic peers disagree about the truth-value of some proposition? Some have argued that that in all such cases, both parties are rationally required to revise their position in some way. Others have maintained that, in at least some cases, neither party is rationally required to revise her position. In this paper, I examine a provocative and under-appreciated argument for the latter view due to Elgin (in: Feldman and Warfield (eds) Disagreement, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 53–68, 2010; The Philosopher’s Magazine, fourth quarter, pp 77–82, 2012; True enough, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2017; in: Johnson (ed) Voicing dissent: the ethics and epistemology of making disagreement public, Routledge, New York, pp 10–21, 2018). I defend it against a series of objections, and I then identify some fruitful ways in which her view could be developed further.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
King’s discussion avoids talk of degrees of belief, strictly for simplicity, but I have added it parenthetically here, in order to not foreclose the possibility that conciliationism can lead to diminished confidence that is nevertheless compatible with belief. I have also added the modifier ‘epistemically’, for reasons that will be discussed in Sect. 5.7.
Elgin adds: “The reason for the restriction to assertoric inference is to screen off premises used in reductios. The reason for the restriction to cognitive interests is that a premise accepted because it fosters noncognitive ends—because it is consoling or amusing, for example—is epistemologically irrelevant” (2010, p. 64). In a different article, she offers a similar definition of belief (2012, p. 81), but it becomes clear that what she really means is acceptance. And in yet another article, she refers to this stance as being committed (2018, p. 20). In what follows, I stick with the more familiar term ‘acceptance’.
I believe that Dunn (ms.) was the first philosopher in the disagreement debate to draw this connection to the argumentative theory of reason.
Elgin, in fact, comes close to making the same point when she says that on her model, those who remain steadfast “have a strong incentive to strengthen and stabilize their position and to protect themselves should it turn out that they are wrong” (2018, p. 20).
As I explain in Sect. 6, it will be extremely difficult to flesh out this minimal epistemic threshold precisely. But I don’t think that this presents a special challenge for Elgin’s view: everyone in the disagreement debate ultimately owes an account that specifies which sorts of views have enough going for them, epistemically speaking, to motivate conciliationism or steadfastness.
I should note, however, that this move relies on a different, enriched, account of acceptance. Elgin does not simply appeal here to her official definition of acceptance simpliciter, which I set out in Sect. 3. Rather, she has in mind the more specific idea of accepting a proposition for the sake of one’s community—and she emphasizes that this, properly construed, does not license stubbornness. Elgin is, of course, entitled to stipulate such an enriched account of what’s involved in acceptance in this context—but then the defender of steadfastness about belief can do likewise, which would undermine Elgin’s original complaint, set out in Sect. 2, that steadfastness leads to objectionable stubbornness. Be that as it may, I think that it is dialectically legitimate for Elgin to say that, properly understood, her view of acceptance for the sake of one’s community does not license stubbornness—and this is all she needs to defeat the objection. I thank Nathan Ballantyne and David Hunter for careful discussion of this issue, and an anonymous referee for pressing me to clarify it further.
Apparently this is a (very!) free-form paraphrase of Nicomachean Ethics I.1094b24 which actually states: “Each of our claims, then, ought to be accepted in the same way [as claiming to hold good, usually], since the educated person seeks exactness in each area to the extent that the nature of the subject allows” (transl. Irwin 1985).
A related proposal is due to Goldberg, who recommends adopting an attitude of attitudinal speculation: “[O]ne who attitudinally speculates that p regards p as more likely than not-p, though also regards the total evidence as stopping short of warranting belief in p” (2013, p. 283). See Barnett (2019) for discussion.
I thank an anonymous referee for suggesting these two points.
As Thomas Kelly puts the point: “… whether there is any actual disagreement might very well depend on factors that everyone will immediately recognize as irrelevant to the truth of the question at issue. (Suppose, for example, that there would be considerable disagreement with respect to some issue, but that all of the would-be dissenters have been put to death by an evil and intolerant tyrant.)” (2005, p. 181).
I am persuaded that the problem of possible peer disagreement is every bit as serious as the problem of actual peer disagreement, but I will not argue for this here.
I am grateful to Kirk Lougheed for pushing me to think this through more carefully.
That’s because it introduces nothing that Elgin has not already conceded.
I thank an anonymous referee for pressing me to develop responses to the second and third of these.
For a survey of various presentations of objections in this vein, see Lougheed and Simpson (2017). See also Dunn (ms.) for discussion.
They write: “… when an agent identifies some spectrum of rationally permissible doxastic attitudes in response to some body of evidence, and where she has some ability to influence what doxastic attitude she holds among that range of options, then, to the extent that she has reason to believe that her holding doxastic attitude X will have better global epistemic consequences than her holding doxastic attitude Y, she has a reason—one that may be aptly characterized as an epistemic reason—to favour X over Y (2017, p. 157).
Leite is not himself a committed instrumentalist (2007, p. 554).
Space does not permit an extended discussion of (a) and (b). I should note that insofar as (b) is a version of evidentialism, the most comprehensive defence of this view is Conee and Feldman (2004). The most prominent rival to this view is typically thought to be reliabilism. See, for example, Goldman (1986).
Here is why I hedge by saying ‘virtually’. A well-known objection to conciliationism holds that this view is self-defeating. (For discussion of this objection, see, for example, Elga 2010). Given that this is an objection to conciliationism, it might be thought to be an indirect defence of steadfastness. But clearly it carries no commitment to the denial of (a) and (b).
Interestingly, Dunn and Ahlstrom-Vij (2018) urge that even evidentialism ought to be deemed a species of epistemic consequentialism.
Although (2) might appear to add nothing important to (1), I think it does: after all, it’s easy to imagine that a view could satisfy all of the disjuncts listed in (1), while nevertheless failing to meet a plausible overall epistemic threshold.
Lougheed (2018a) defends what he calls the “Benefits to Inquiry Argument”, which is similar in spirit to Elgin’s. He also considers an objection in this vein. But he dismisses it too hastily when he says: “This objection is about the practical application of the argument not the truth of any of the premises” (2018a, 275). After all, the third premise in his own argument is this:
S reasonably believes that there are future epistemic benefits [to be gained] from continuing to believe P within the context of R in the face of peer disagreement about P (2018a, p. 266).
If, as the objection posits, nobody can reasonably believe such a thing, then this does seem to count against the truth of this premise: it is true of no subject S.
More precisely: sufficient to license S’s steadfastness provided that (1) and (2) are also satisfied. I make the same presumption with respect to (4) and (5) below.
There may, of course, be some context-sensitivity here: perhaps it is reasonable to expect more evidence-gathering from S in some situations than in others. (Thanks to Nathan Ballantyne for pointing this out).
In fairness, one might wonder whether Semmelweis really satisfies the entire antecedent of (SK1*). But let’s stipulate that, given his knowledge and environment, and the knowledge and environment of those who disagreed with him, there were at least some temporal slices of Semmelweis that do satisfy this antecedent.
Of course not everyone is a Semmelweis, or, for that matter, a Copernicus or a Darwin. Nor, indeed, is every context in which Elgin wants to license steadfastness is relevantly and sufficiently similar to these cases. That, however, is not a problem, for (5) does not demand this. There might well be other cases, to which S’s situation is relevantly and sufficiently similar, that do not involve such intellectual giants and heroes.
At this point in the dialectic, the burden of proof remains on the objector to specify a plausible necessary condition for S to be sufficiently confident that her remaining steadfast concerning P for time interval t will help her community to achieve its epistemic goals. There is a more ambitious way to respond to this objection. Instead of conceding that a necessary condition along these lines needs to be satisfied, and waiting for the objector to provide it, Elgin could say that, given the epistemic benefits of viewpoint diversity, there is no such condition. Instead, she could say, S should simply be presumed to be within her rights to remain steadfast about P, unless this presumption is defeated by, for example, concrete reasons to suppose that her steadfastness will not help the community in this particular case. I thank an anonymous referee for this suggestion.
And, of course, one well-worn reason for this is just what we have seen: it appears to demand that agents know far more about the consequences of their actions than is reasonable to expect.
I thank Gary Toop for originally pushing me to think this way. Lougheed and Simpson (2017, pp. 159–160) also appear sympathetic to a rule-consequentialist defence of steadfastness on community-oriented grounds. Relatedly, Leite also suggests that instrumentalism can be developed in rule-utilitarian terms (2007, p. 461).
An excellent entry point into the literature on epistemic consequentialism is Ahlstrom-Vij and Dunn (2018).
Moreover, I submit that these are useful directions for further inquiry even if Elgin’s community-oriented defence of steadfastness is not best construed in rule-consequentialist terms.
I thank an anonymous referee for suggesting the latter point.
See Elgin (2017, pp. 112–113) for some related discussion of what separates epistemic communities from other communities.
In particular, conciliating for community-oriented reasons might be rationally permissible. Indeed, in some cases it might be rationally required.
References
Ahlstrom-Vij, H., & Dunn, J. (2018). Epistemic consequentialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ballantyne, N. (2014). Counterfactual Philosophers. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 88, 368–387.
Barnett, Z. (2019). Philosophy without belief. Mind, 128, 109–138.
Bergmann, M. (2009). Rational disagreement after full disclosure. Episteme: A Journal of Social Epistemology, 6, 336–353.
Brodbeck, F. C., Kerschreiter, R., Mojzisch, A., Frey, D., & Schulz-Hardt, S. (2002). The dissemination of critical, unshared information in decision making groups: The effects of pre-discussion dissent. European Journal of Social Psychology, 32, 35–56.
Christensen, D. (2007). Epistemology of disagreement: The good news. Philosophical Review, 116, 187–217.
Christensen, D. (2009). Disagreement as evidence: The epistemology of controversy. Philosophy Compass, 4, 756–767.
Cohen, L. J. (1992). An essay on belief and acceptance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Conee, E., & Feldman, R. (2004). Evidentialism: Essays in epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Crisp, R. J., & Turner, R. N. (2011). Cognitive adaptation to the experience of social and cultural diversity. Psychological Bulletin, 137, 242–266.
De Cruz, H., & De Smedt, J. (2013). The value of epistemic disagreement in scientific practice. The case of Homo Floresiensis. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 44, 169–177.
Duarte, J. L., Crawford, J. T., Stern, C., Haidt, J., Jussim, L., & Tetlock, P. E. (2015). Political diversity will improve social psychological science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 38, e130.
Dunn, J. (ms.). “Peer disagreement and group inquiry.”
Dunn, J., & Ahlstrom-Vij, H. (2018). Introduction. In H. Ahlstrom-Vij & J. Dunn (Eds.), Epistemic consequentialism (pp. 2–20). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Elga, A. (2007). Reflection and disagreement. Noûs, 41, 478–502.
Elga, A. (2010). How to disagree about how to disagree. In R. Feldman & T. Warfield (Eds.), Disagreement (pp. 175–186). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Elgin, C. (2010). Persistent Disagreement. In R. Feldman & T. Warfield (Eds.), Disagreement (pp. 53–68). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Elgin, C. (2012). “Begging to differ.” The Philosopher’s Magazine. Fourth Quarter (pp. 77–82).
Elgin, C. (2017). True enough. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Elgin, C. (2018). Reasonable Disagreement. In C. R. Johnson (Ed.), Voicing dissent: The ethics and epistemology of making disagreement public (pp. 10–21). New York: Routledge.
Everett, T. J. (2015). Peer disagreement and two principles of rational belief. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 93, 273–286.
Feldman, R. (2006). Epistemological puzzles about disagreement. In S. Hetherington (Ed.), Epistemology futures (pp. 216–236). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Feldman, R. (2011). Reasonable religious disagreements. In A. I. Goldman & D. Whitcomb (Eds.), Social epistemology: Essential readings (pp. 137–157). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fleischer, W. (2018). Rational endorsement. Philosophical Studies, 175, 2649–2675.
Gigone, D., & Hastie, R. (1997). Proper analysis of the accuracy of group judgments. Psychological Bulletin, 121, 149–167.
Goldberg, S. (2013). Defending philosophy in the face of systematic disagreement. In D. E. Machuca (Ed.), Disagreement and skepticism (pp. 277–294). New York: Routledge.
Goldman, A. (1986). Epistemology and cognition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Greitemeyer, T., Schulz-Hardt, S., Brodbeck, F. C., & Frey, D. (2006). Information sampling and group decision making: The effects of an advocacy decision procedure and task experience. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 12, 31–42.
Hallsson, B., & Kappel, K. (forthcoming). Disagreement and the division of epistemic labor. Synthese.
Hastie, R. (1986). Experimental evidence on group accuracy. In B. Grofman & G. Owen (Eds.), Information pooling and group decision making: Proceedings of the second University of California, Irvine conference on political economy (pp. 129–157). JAI Press.
Hooker, B. (2000). Ideal code, real world: A rule-consequentialist theory of morality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Howe, J. (2008). Crowdsourcing: Why the power of the crowd is driving the future of business. New York: Three Rivers Press.
Irwin, T. (1985). Aristotle: Nicomachean ethics (Transl.). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.
Jehn, K. A., Northcraft, G. B., & Neale, M. A. (1999). Why differences make a difference: A field study of diversity, conflict, and performance in workgroups. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44, 741–763.
Kelly, T. (2003). Epistemic rationality as instrumental rationality: A critique. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 66, 612–640.
Kelly, T. (2005). The epistemic significance of disagreement. In J. Hawthorne & T. Szabó Gendler (Eds.), Oxford studies in epistemology (Vol. 1, pp. 167–196). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kelly, T. (2007). Evidence and normativity: Reply to Leite. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 75, 465–474.
King, N. (2012). Disagreement: What’s the problem? or a good peer is hard to find. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 85, 249–272.
Kitcher, P. (1990). The division of cognitive labour. Journal of Philosophy, 87, 5–22.
Kopec, M., & Titelbaum, M. (2016). The uniqueness thesis. Philosophy Compass, 11, 189–2000.
Krause, S., James, R., Faria, J. J., Ruxton, G. D., & Krause, J. (2011). Swarm intelligence in humans: Diversity can trump ability. Animal Behaviour, 81, 941–948.
Kuhn, D., Shaw, V., & Felton, M. (1997). Effects of dyadic interaction on argumentive reasoning. Cognition and Instruction, 15, 287–315.
Lackey, J. (2010). The epistemology of disagreement. Oxford Bibliographies Online.
Lamm, H., & Myers, D. G. (1978). Group-induced polarization of attitudes and behavior. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 11, 145–195.
Laughlin, P. R., & Ellis, A. L. (1986). Demonstrability and social combination processes on mathematical intellective tasks. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 22, 177–189.
Leite, A. (2007). Epistemic instrumentalism and reasons for belief: A reply to Tom Kelly’s ‘‘epistemic rationality as instrumental rationality: A critique. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 75, 456–464.
Lougheed, K. (2018a). The epistemic value of deep disagreements. Informal Logic, 38, 263–292.
Lougheed, K. (2018b). Recognition and epistemic injustice in the epistemology of disagreement. Philosophical Forum, 49, 363–377.
Lougheed, K., & Simpson, R. (2017). Indirect epistemic reasons and religious belief. Religious Studies, 53, 151–159.
Matheson, J. (2015a). The epistemic significance of disagreement. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Matheson, J. (2015b). Disagreement and the ethics of belief. In J. H. Collier (Ed.), The future of social epistemology: A collective vision (pp. 139–148). Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
Mercier, H., & Sperber, D. (2011). Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory. Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 34, 57–111.
Mercier, H., & Sperber, D. (2017). The enigma of reason. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Miller, D. (2014). Rule Utilitarianism. In B. Eggleston & D. Miller (Eds.), The Cambridge companion to utilitarianism (pp. 146–165). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Moffett, M. (2007). Reasonable disagreement and rational group inquiry. Episteme: A Journal of Social Epistemology, 4, 352–367.
Moscovici, C., & Personnaz, B. (1980). Minority influence and conversion behavior in a perceptual task. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 16, 270–282.
Moscovici, S., & Zavalloni, M. (1969). The group as a polarizer of attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 12, 125–135.
Moshman, D., & Geil, M. (1998). Collaborative reasoning: Evidence for collective rationality. Thinking & Reasoning, 4, 231–248.
Muldoon, R. (2013). Diversity and the division of cognitive labour. Philosophy Compass, 8, 117–125.
Mulgan, T. (2007). Understanding utilitarianism. Stocksfield: Acumen Publishing Limited.
Nemeth, C. J. (1986). Differential contributions of majority and minority influence. Psychological Review, 93, 23–32.
Nemeth, C. J. (1995). Dissent as driving cognition, attitudes, and judgments. Social Cognition, 13, 273–291.
Nemeth, C., Brown, K., & Rogers, J. (2001). Devil’s advocate versus authentic dissent: Stimulating quantity and quality. European Journal of Social Psychology, 31, 707–720.
Page, S. (2007). The difference: How the power of diversity creates better groups, firms, schools, and societies. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Rosa, L. (2018). Uniqueness and permissiveness in epistemology. Oxford Bibliographies Online.
Schulz-Hardt, S., Brodbeck, F. C., Mojzisch, A., Kerschreiter, R., & Frey, D. (2006). Group decision making in hidden profile situations: Dissent as a facilitator for decision quality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 1080–1093.
Schulz-Hardt, S., Jochims, M., & Frey, D. (2002). Productive conflict in group decision making: Genuine and contrived dissent as strategies to counteract biased information seeking. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 88, 563–586.
Sosa, E. (2010). The epistemology of disagreement. In A. Haddock, A. Millar, & D. Pritchard (Eds.), Social epistemology (pp. 278–297). Oxford: Oxford University Press. [First published in Episteme: A Journal of Social Epistemology 6.3 (2009): 269–279.]
Sperber, D. (2001). An evolutionary perspective on testimony and argumentation. Philosophical Topics, 29, 401–413.
Sunstein, C. (2002). The law of group polarization. Journal of Political Philosophy, 10, 175–195.
Surowiecki, J. (2004). The wisdom of crowds: How the many are smarter than the few and how collective wisdom shapes business, economies, societies and nations. New York: Doubleday.
Talbot, B. (2014). Truth-promoting non-evidential reasons for belief. Philosophical Studies, 168, 599–618.
Trouche, E., Sander, E., & Mercier, H. (2014). Arguments, more than confidence, explain the good performance of reasoning groups. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143, 1958–1971.
van Knippenberg, D., & Schippers, M. C. (2007). Work group diversity. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 515–541.
Vinokur, A., & Burnstein, E. (1978). Depolarization of attitudes in groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 872–885.
Wienberger, D. (2011). Too big to know: Rethinking knowledge now that the facts aren’t the facts, experts are everywhere, and the smartest person in the room is the room. New York: Basic Books.
Woolley, A. W., Aggarwal, I., & Malone, T. W. (2015). Collective intelligence and group performance. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24, 420–424.
Acknowledgements
I presented ancestors of this paper at the Cave Hill Philosophy Symposium, University of the West Indies at Cave Hill (November 12th, 2014); at Ryerson University’s 8th Annual Philosophy Symposium (May 15th, 2015); at the Canadian Philosophical Association Conference, University of Ottawa (June 1st, 2015); at the Western Canadian Philosophical Association Conference, Saskatoon (October 3rd, 2015); at a symposium on faith and doubt held at Tyndale University College, (March 10th, 2016); and at a symposium on disagreement, higher-order evidence, and new arguments for skepticism, held at the Canadian Philosophical Association Conference, Ryerson University (May 29th, 2017). I am grateful to all my interlocutors on those occasions. I am particularly grateful to Nathan Ballantyne, David Hunter, Kirk Lougheed, and two anonymous referees for very probing and helpful comments on earlier drafts.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kraay, K.J. Elgin’s community-oriented steadfastness. Synthese 198, 4985–5008 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02384-6
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02384-6