Abstract
Much recent discussion in social epistemology has focussed on the question of whether peers can rationally sustain a disagreement. A growing number of social epistemologists hold that the answer is negative. We point to considerations from the history of science that favor rather the opposite answer. However, we also explain how the other position can appear intuitively attractive.
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For present purposes, “doxastic attitude” denotes either outright belief, outright disbelief, or suspension of judgment. Some (e.g., Christensen [2007] and Elga [2007]) have preferred a treatment in terms of degrees of confidence. As will be seen, some of the arguments presented here carry over to the alternative treatment.
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A point that was also forcefully argued for in Hanson [1958].
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See on this also Lugg [1978:286f].
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It is not clear that those considerations apply quite generally. We expect from scientists that they are able to critically reflect upon their own proposals. We do not have the same expectation of, say, religious people.
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Notice that this is not the only way in which two agents can disagree. After all, it may also be that one agent suspends judgment while the other holds a belief (disbelief). For convenience’s sake, we will often restrict our focus to cases in which the parties to the disagreement hold contrary beliefs.
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This, we take it, is the core point of Elga’s [2007, Sect. 10] bootstrapping argument.
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For the record, we think that scholarly disputes often approximate the ritualized way of communication closely enough.
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Notice that the two databases differ from the communities of agents modelled in Douven [2010], which adopt different policies to deal with disagreements, to wit, “sticking to their guns” and “splitting the difference,” respectively. After all, even the tension-resolving database may come to the conclusion that the right thing to do is to split the difference.
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This point is very much in line with the results presented in Douven [2010], which stress the importance of contingent facts to the rationality of disagreements.
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We are indebted to Henk de Regt and Fred Muller for valuable discussions on the topic of this paper.
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Kelp, C., Douven, I. (2012). Sustaining a Rational Disagreement. In: de Regt, H., Hartmann, S., Okasha, S. (eds) EPSA Philosophy of Science: Amsterdam 2009. The European Philosophy of Science Association Proceedings, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2404-4_10
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