Epistemic Conservatism

Abstract

Does the attitude of belief confer some positive epistemic merit on the content of belief? Epistemic conservatism is the doctrine that belief— the state of a subject who is disposed to assert a proposition and use that proposition in theoretical and practical reason—confers some positive merit on the proposition. Conservatism is deeply controversial. While it is recognized as an explanatory virtue, it is widely relegated to a noncognitive, pragmatic virtue. On that approach, conservatism is a good heuristic for selecting among alternative explanations but it provides no reason for thinking that the more conservative theory is more likely to be true. My goal in this chapter is to defend a substantive conservative doctrine.