Abstract
In this paper, I provide a novel explanationist framework for thinking about peer disagreement that solves many of the puzzles regarding disagreement that have troubled epistemologists over the last two decades. Explanationism is the view that a subject is justified in believing a proposition just in case that proposition is part of the best explanation of that subject’s total evidence. Applying explanationism to the problem of peer disagreement yields the following principle: in cases of peer disagreement, the thing that the subjects ought to believe is the thing that is the best explanation of their total evidence, where part of their evidence is the fact that they happen to find themselves in disagreement with an epistemic peer. In what follows, I show how to understand and apply this core idea.
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Notes
When authors give examples of “splitting the difference,” they invariably give examples where the two credences in question average out to .5, so “splitting the difference” amounts to updating to .5. This is unfortunate, because it does not distinguish between views where “Equal Weight” means averaging credences and views where “Equal Weight” means updating to a credence of .5. The Equal Weight View is often explained as an “averaging” view, and so I’ve explained it that way in the main text. But the most well-known proponent of the Equal Weight View, Elga (2007), probably had the latter “updating to .5 (when appropriate)” view in mind. See fn. 4 below.
The correct answer if there are five diners.
Christensen is a hesitant ally of the Equal Weight View because he recognizes a number of problems with the simple version of the Equal Weight View presented here. His main contention is that the Independence Principle (discussed below) is true, and that a robust need for conciliation in almost all cases of peer disagreement follows from this.
Elga does not put the point in precisely these terms. Instead, he says that a peer is someone whom “you think that, conditional on a disagreement arising, the two of you are equally likely to be mistaken” (Elga 2007, fn.21). And the fact that you are both “equally likely to be mistaken” implies that it is irrational to be more than 50% confident in your own judgment.
The “best explanation of” relation is not transitive. Explanatory inference is not deductive and, as is well known, long chains of inductive inference can lead to improbable conclusions. In this particular case, however, the connections are strong enough and the chain is short enough that the final conclusion is part of the best explanation of my auditory experience, and not the “best of a bad lot,” and therefore justified.
My justification does not depend on me making any of these inferences consciously; it only depends on my having the relevant background beliefs which could allow me to conduct this kind of reasoning.
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Lutz, M. Explanationism provides the best explanation of the epistemic significance of peer disagreement. Philos Stud 177, 1811–1828 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-019-01286-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-019-01286-0