Abstract
After arguing for the equal epistemic authority of the citizens of sufficiently deliberative democracies in the preceding chapter, the present chapter sets out to answer the question of how citizens ought to react to their political disagreements with other citizens whom they regard as equal epistemic authorities on justice. To this end, the chapter introduces the debate about the epistemology of peer disagreement. It explains the dialectic between the most prominent positions in the debate and engages with them in detail. In the course of the discussion, it defends the contested principle (Independence) that downgrading the epistemic status of a peer with whom one disagrees is only permissible if there exist independent reasons for doing so. The principle supports the Equal Weight View according to which the rational reaction to peer disagreement is the epistemic conciliation of conflicting judgments. After defending the principle against various arguments aiming to undermine it, the chapter proposes a dynamic model of peer disagreement. This model is then applied to political disagreements, which ushers in an epistemic conception of public reason.
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Notes
- 1.
Recall the definition of equal normative authorities as persons to whom they grant the right to take the results of their deliberations as prima facie reasons for action. In the political realm, this commitment translates into granting others the right to participate as equals in the collective decision-making.
- 2.
Recall the definition of equal epistemic authorities as prima facie equally reliable judges of the rightness of political decisions according to a procedure-independent criterion of rightness (reliable in an epistemic sense).
- 3.
What counts as an independent reason will become clear in the course of the discussion.
- 4.
See Elga (2007) for a definition along these lines. The two points narrowing down the notion are mentioned in Kelly (2005): p. 10. It is crucial that the definition given here spells out epistemic peerhood in terms of an ascription of epistemic status by others, not in terms of an objective possession of that status!
- 5.
See Chap. 1; Procedure-Independent versus Procedure-Dependent Access to the General Will for more on the undercutting/rebutting defeater distinction.
- 6.
- 7.
The debate is sometimes framed in terms of an all-or-nothing model of belief (cf. Feldman 2006: p. 235), but mostly operates with various degrees of credence invested in one’s beliefs (Cf. Christensen 2007: p. 189 and Elga 2007). I will proceed on the assumption that the degree-of-belief model is applicable to peer disagreement. This opens the possibility of being rationally required to revise one’s credence in a belief while nevertheless maintaining it. The standard Bayesian convention has it that the credence one invests in a given belief is assigned a numerical value between 0 and 1 inclusive; 1 represents maximal confidence that the proposition is true, 0 represents maximal confidence that the proposition is false. A state of perfect agnosticism is represented by 0.5.
- 8.
It is also sometimes called Steadfast View.
- 9.
Kelly (2005): 31.
- 10.
The Equal Weight View is sometimes labeled “conciliationism,” which emphasizes the fact that it advocates “splitting the difference” in credence in cases of peer disagreements. In these cases, according to the view under consideration, peers ought to conciliate. This label, however, is misleading given the fact that the view also prescribes an increase in credence in cases of peer agreement. If two peers have a credence of say 0.95 and 0.9 in a shared belief, they should, after becoming aware of this fact, arrive at a credence higher than their original credence. Popular defenses of the Equal Weight View were undertaken by, for example, Elga (2007), Christensen (2007, 2009), and Feldman (2006, 2009).
- 11.
Kelly (2005), p. 31.
- 12.
Elga originally introduced the example to the debate. Cf. Elga (2007): p. 486.
- 13.
Christensen 2007: p. 8f.
- 14.
This is Elga’s (No) Bootstrapping Argument. Cf. Elga (2007), pp. 486ff.
- 15.
Furthermore, we eventually want this analysis to usher in an action-guiding theory of democracy.
- 16.
Cf. Kelly (2010).
- 17.
Cf. Kelly (2005).
- 18.
This of course also holds the other way around. If all your peers agree with you, you are justified in increasing the credence in your belief. Furthermore, this need not be anonymous agreement. Presumably it is enough to have a large majority on your side to justifiably increase your credence. Assuming for a moment that you would have to remain agnostic if the epistemic community was divided at exactly 50:50, even a simple majority might have a buffering effect on your duty to lower your credence and consequences for the permissibility of maintaining your belief. This also bears on Rousseau’s attitude toward the epistemic significance of political disagreement (see Chap. 1; The Epistemic Significance of Political Disagreement).
- 19.
Kelly (2010): p. 27.
- 20.
Ibid.
- 21.
Quoted in Kelly (2010): p. 38. The emphasis is Cohen’s.
- 22.
Kelly (2010): p. 28.
- 23.
Christensen (2009): p. 9.
- 24.
For reasons of brevity, I will subsequently refer to downgrading the epistemic status of X simply as downgrading of X.
- 25.
Christensen (2011): p. 2.
- 26.
Kelly notes some difficulties with Christensen’s formulation of the principle and offers a revised version. See Kelly (manuscript): pp. 8–12.
- 27.
Kelly (2010): p. 34.
- 28.
Kelly (2010): p. 28, my emphasis.
- 29.
Kelly (2010): p. 16, my emphasis.
- 30.
Cf. Sosa (2010).
- 31.
Notice that the example bears some similarity to Extreme Restaurant. In that example you have independent reasons to locally downgrade your friend which consist in the reliability of the common-sense check on his reasoning. It is independent because the common-sense check is a different kind of reasoning than the mental math operation itself. In Restaurant Double-Checked A the calculations on paper and with a calculator are equally independent checks on your original reasoning, that is, your mental math operation.
- 32.
- 33.
Sosa (2010): p. 290.
- 34.
This use of “meta-rational” is similar though not identical to the use Tyler Cowen and Robin Hanson make of the term; cf. Cowen and Hanson (2001): p. 24.
- 35.
Rawls (1996): p. 431.
- 36.
Rawls (1996): p. 275.
- 37.
He describes the judgments in reflective equilibrium as mutually supporting each other; cf. Rawls (1999): p. 19.
- 38.
Rawls (1999): p. 18.
- 39.
Ibid.
- 40.
This also means that the ideal of full reflective equilibrium is unattainable. Cf. Rawls (1996): p. 384, fn 16.
- 41.
- 42.
Mill 1991: Chap. 2, para. 7.
- 43.
The same presumably holds for the criterion of reciprocity of advantage (see Chap. 2).
- 44.
See Ebeling (2014) for a detailed discussion of the bearing of Wittgenstein’s late philosophy on radical disagreement.
- 45.
One might object that Nazi ideology is based on false beliefs about facts and that even Nazis should be in a position to recognize this. However, I assume that there is an irreducible evaluative component to their ideology.
- 46.
Ebeling (2014).
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Ebeling, M. (2017). The Epistemology of Political Disagreement. In: Conciliatory Democracy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57743-6_4
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