Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to bring together work on disagreement in both epistemology and argumentation theory in a way that will advance the relevant debates. While these literatures can intersect in many ways, I will explore how some of views pertaining to deep disagreements in argumentation theory can act as an objection to a prominent view of the epistemology of disagreement—the Equal Weight View. To do so, I will explain the Equal Weight View of peer disagreement and show how it entails that deep disagreements between epistemic peers are rationally resolvable. I will then examine a challenge to the Equal Weight View that claims that this consequence is untenable. Having motivated the challenge, I show that there is a viable response to make on behalf of the Equal Weight View. I conclude by considering and responding to several objections to this response.
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Notes
See Matheson (2015b) for a further discussion here.
Higher-order evidence pertaining to p is evidence about the quantity or quality of evidence for p.
For more on the idealizations in peer disagreements and their relevance for everyday disagreements, see Matheson (2014).
Recall that we are stipulating that neither party has a defeater for the reason to split the difference coming from their discovery of the peer disagreement.
Agreement is a two-party dance. If a disagreement admits of strong rational resolution, then you must do your part to get to agreement. Whether the agreement obtains will depend also on whether your interlocutor does their part.
In contrast, epistemic permissivism allows for disagreements to be resolved in the weakly rational way. According to permissivism there are multiple competitor doxastic attitudes that are justified by a single body of evidence toward a particular proposition. In cases where the disagreeing parties each have attitudes within this permissible range, neither party is rationally required to adjust their doxastic attitude, but neither party is rationally forbidden from doing so either. In such a case, the two parties may rationally come to agree, but they were not rationally required to do so.
This differs somewhat from Fogelin’s original account. While Fogelin claimed that deep disagreements are “generated by a clash of framework propositions” (1985, p. 5), he also gives moral and metaphysical propositions as examples, thus not restricting things to the epistemic.
This is not to say that the problem only applies to linear accounts of justification like foundationalism. Holistic accounts of justification, like coherentism, are equally subject to the problem. While the coherentist maintains that justification is holistic, they endorse coherentism as a fundamental epistemic principle (roughly that beliefs are justified in so far as they cohere with the subject’s system of beliefs).
This also parallels Wright (2004).
Incoherent and disunified epistemic systems would fit what Kitcher (2011) has called “chimeric epistemologies”.
For a distinct contextualist take on the Wittgenstenian position, which may provide a different way of understanding Fogelin, see Godden and Brenner (2010).
Even if one is not convinced that these two parties would be moral peers, each could have evidence such that it supported that they were. That is, even if one party was objectively more likely to be correct about the moral matter, it could be that neither party's evidence indicates this—that the total evidence each possesses supports that they are peers—that they are equally likely to be correct.
Here too it is less relevant whether the two parties objectively are in fact peers, as it is that their evidence on balance supports that they are. So, all that must be maintained here is that being aware that another has different fundamental epistemic principles as you do, does not entail that your evidence does not support that they are in fact your peer.
It could be that both fundamental principles are such that they require making doxastic change regarding the target proposition without there being a reason for changing one’s fundamental epistemic principles. It could even be that the very same doxastic change is required by both competing principles. In such a case, there would be a kind of accidental strong rational resolution to the disagreement. Even there though, this would be insufficient to help EWV since such a resolution is merely accidental—there will be many deep disagreements where this is not the case. Thanks to an anonymous referee for bringing this possibility out to me.
See Fogelin (1985, p. 6).
For more on this argument against Blind Entitlement, see Matheson (2012).
For instance, we can imagine the adherer to Magic-8 asking his Magic-8 Ball whether it should be trusted (perhaps upon being challenged), and the Magic-8 Ball responding, “It is decidedly so.”
Here too it should be noted that Self-Support is consistent with a kind of accidental strong rational resolution. It could happen to be the case that both self-supporting fundamental epistemic principles each independently recommend the same course of action that results in the resolution of the disagreement. While this is a possibility, there will be many cases of deep disagreement where Self-Support will not offer such strong rational resolution.
Lynch calls the skeptical argument based on the premises that you cannot be justified in believing the outputs of your faculties without being justified in believing that your faculties are reliable, and that we cannot be justified in believing that our faculties are reliable, ‘the criterion argument’.
However, while Lynch maintains that deep disagreements are not epistemically rationally resolvable, he notes that epistemic reasons are not the only reasons we can appeal to. According to Lynch, pragmatic reasons fit the bill. Further, since at root a deep disagreement is a disagreement about which epistemic principles to employ, Lynch claims that appealing to pragmatic reasons is fully appropriate. While giving a reason, for Lynch, requires that the other party be able to recognize it as such, Lynch maintains that in a deep disagreement pragmatic reasons can be so recognized. He recommends playing ‘the epistemic method game’. Like with Rawls’ approach to justice, Lynch (2010, 2016) asks us to evaluate fundamental epistemic principles from behind the veil of ignorance. From this perspective, we choose which epistemic principles to commit ourselves to while depriving ourselves of any information about what the nature of the world is, which belief-forming methods are reliable in the world, or what methods we may want to use. According to Lynch, “The fundamental epistemic principles to which it is practically rational to be committed are those that persons concerned to advance their interests would endorse in a position of epistemic and social equality” (2016, p. 6). In particular, Lynch claims that we would have practical reason to favor methods that are repeatable, adaptable, public, and widespread (2010, p. 275). For a challenge to Lynch’s view, see Kappel (2012).
See Pryor (2004) and his account of ‘rational obstruction’ for more on this point.
Here it is important to distinguish the state of justification from the project of justifying one’s beliefs. For more on this important distinction, see Pryor (2000).
This entails that subject’s are rational in following the true fundamental epistemic principles even if they believe that those principles are false.
See Kelly (2005).
Things are a little complicated here. True epistemic principles may matter for following the prescriptions of EWV in more than one way. First, if EWV is itself true, then we should believe accordingly. But second, even if EWV is false, it may be that a true principle nevertheless has it that we should follow the prescriptions of EWV. For instance we can suppose that evidentialism is true, though EWV is false. If my evidence on balance supports that EWV is true, then it may be that my evidence supports believing in accordance with EWV and that this is what I should do (given the truth of evidentialism), despite the fact that EWV is false. See Matheson (2015a) for more on this line of reasoning.
For a more detailed argument as to how the Right Reasons view fails to have it that the steadfast subject evaluates her total evidence correctly see Matheson (2009).
Thanks to an anonymous referee for pressing this point.
Lynch (2010, p. 270) makes this point.
It is important to stress that a rational resolution to a disagreement also needn’t entail resolving the issue. See Feldman (2005) for more on this point. In some cases, perhaps many cases, the rational resolution to a disagreement will be for the relevant parties to suspend judgment about the disputed issue. If all parties are rationally required to suspend judgment about the issue, then the disagreement is rationally resolved (in the strong sense), even though no one has discovered the answer. We want to know whether statements are true or false, and a justified suspension of judgment does not allow for that. When the relevant parties are justified in suspending judgment on an issue, the issue remains open and unresolved even if the disagreement has dissolved. Put differently, not all rational resolutions to a disagreement are equally satisfying. Inquirers want to resolve an issue, but not all rational resolutions to disagreement will deliver on this desideratum. That said, there still may be important epistemic benefits from continuing the disagreement. For instance, see Lougheed (2018).
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Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Pat Bondy, David Godden, Sandy Goldberg, Klemens Kappel, Kirk Lougheed and other participants at the Madrid Summer School in Social Epistemology for helpful comments and discussions that improved this paper.
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Matheson, J. Deep Disagreements and Rational Resolution. Topoi 40, 1025–1037 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-018-9576-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-018-9576-y