Abstract
Literature in the epistemology of disagreement has focused on peer disagreement: disagreement between those with shared evidence and equal cognitive abilities. Additional literature focuses on the perspective of amateurs who disagree with experts. However, the appropriate epistemic reaction from superiors who disagree with inferiors remains underexplored. Prima facie, this may seem an uninteresting set of affairs. If A is B’s superior, and A has good reason to believe she is B’s superior, A appears free to dismiss B’s disagreement. However, a closer look will show otherwise. I first distinguish competent from incompetent inferiors and then argue that disagreement from the former often gives superiors reason to adjust credence and reevaluate belief. In other words, epistemic inferiority alone is insufficient grounds for dismissing opinion. More nuanced difficulties arise with incompetent inferiors. When superiors disagree with incompetents, this might provide evidence to bolster belief credence; however, agreement from incompetents can defeat justification. In either instance, inferior opinion carries epistemic weight. Yet, this fails to cover all ground; at times, superiors learn nothing from inferior disagreement. I finish by exploring these uninformative disagreements, how to distinguish them from the informative cases, and the proper epistemic reactions thereof.
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Notes
David Christensen (2007) points out this contrast nicely by comparing himself (a conciliatory partisan) to Peter van Inwagen (a steadfast partisan). van Inwagen (1996) argues that, “I think any philosopher who does not wish to be a philosophical skeptic…must agree with me that…it must be possible for one to be justified in accepting a philosophical thesis when there are philosophers who, by all objective and external criteria, are at least as equally well qualified to pronounce on the thesis, and reject it” (emphasis in the original) (p. 139). But, Christensen (2007) is not convinced, “I will argue that in a great many of cases that van Inwagen and others seem to have in mind, I should change my degree of confidence significantly toward that of my friend (and similarly, she should change hers toward mine)” (p. 189).
Although the main focus of his paper was not inferior disagreement, Elga (2007) does argue that when disagreeing with a peer, a superior, or an inferior, one should, “… be guided by your prior assessment of her judging ability conditional on what you later learn about the judging conditions” (p. 489). Nothing said here straightforwardly conflicts with this rule from Elga. This paper aims to fill out further details and note the special impact of disagreeing inferiors.
For instance, responding to a similar example, Elga (2007) argues, “Here is the bottom line. When you find out that you and your friend have come to opposite conclusions about a race, you should think that the two of you are equally likely to be correct” (p. 487).
The terms “sharable” and “non-sharable” are borrowed from Lackey (2010).
In some situations, a skill set enables one to notice or acquire evidence that another cannot, although the disagreeing party could appreciate the evidence with training. Fumerton (2010) discusses this sort of example when he explains his experience with the famous Monty Hall puzzle. “[I]t is not as if there is available to me evidence that wasn’t available to those who disagree with me. Rather, there is a process which I now understand involving the appreciation of available evidence, a process that I have gone through and that I have good reason to believe (based on analogy) they have not gone through” (emphasis in the original) (p. 5). It is likely that given enough time, Fumerton could instruct his disagreeing party about the probability particulars of Monty Hall in order for his interlocutor to gain a full appreciation of the situation. If such instruction were successful, they would be able to share once non-sharable evidence. Perhaps something similar could occur in the above mafia case. Notwithstanding, what is relevant to a given disagreement is the shareability status at the time of the occurring dispute. For more insights related to evidence sharing and evidential compensability, see Feldman’s discussion of “comparable” evidence (2009).
It might also be helpful to consider the situation in terms of what Feldman (2006) has called “full disclosure.” Full disclosure occurs when disagreeing parties have openly exchanged all evidence that it is reasonable for persons to have exchanged. In Feldman’s own words, “The other stage I will refer to as ‘full disclosure’. In this stage…the other person has come to a competing conclusion after examining the same information. There are, of course, intermediate situations in which the various pieces of evidence and the arguments are partially shared. Indeed, almost any realistic disagreement is somewhere between isolation and full disclosure” (p. 419). Moreover, unsharable evidence is similar to what Feldman has called “private evidence.” He argues (2006) that, “If evidence includes private sensory experiences, then two people will never have exactly the same evidence, even if the differences may be only minimal. Perhaps there is also what we might call ‘intellectual evidence’ resulting from the strong impression that the observable evidence supports one’s conclusion. This is what others have called ‘intuitions’” (p .423). Similar to both non-sharable and private evidence is what van Inwagen (1996) has called “incommunicable insight” (p.152). The overreaching point is that we sometimes have reasons for belief accessible to ourselves but inaccessible to others.
There are many possible peer and non-peer dominance relations not discussed. The three chosen models are meant to capture situations that are both interesting and conceptually clear.
We can imagine a case where this fails to hold. For instance, suppose that Warren played terribly in the game that Spade missed. In a case like this, Dixon might judge that Spade’s missed game explains their disagreement. Subsequently, Dixon could justifiably dismiss the evidential weight of Spade’s disagreement based on his evidential inferiority. But, if nothing exceptional occurred in the missed game, such dismissal would be epistemically premature. Dixon does not have enough reason to judge that the missed game accounts for the relevant disagreement.
Frances was looking at cases that suggested the retention of the belief, not simply refusing to lower credence, was irrational. But, it is easy to see the same principles applied where retaining belief is rational but refusing to lower credence irrational. Additionally, Frances was also concerned with whether, all things considered, an agent’s belief remains rational in response to new information. He wanted to distinguish the rationality of an agent’s belief all things considered from the rationality of an agent’s response to new information.
Sosa (2010) also aptly notes, “Disagreement with an epistemic peer may be explained by appealing to the environmental and social factors that lead to the belief” (p. 294). His point could easily be expanded to non-peer disagreement.
We are supposing you are competent.
“Low-information voters” is a term used to refer to those who know very little about politics but nonetheless consistently vote in public elections. The term was first used by political scientist Popkin (1994) in The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in Presidential Campaigns.
Cf., The Civilian (New Zealand), The Daily Mash (United Kingdom), Frank (Canada), The pin (Netherlands), and Titanic (Germany), among others.
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Priest, M. Inferior Disagreement. Acta Anal 31, 263–283 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-015-0277-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-015-0277-5