The Variable Weight View An Alternative To Peer Oriented Accounts In The Epistemology Of Disagreement
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The Variable Weight View, an Alternative to Peer-oriented Accounts in the Epistemology of Disagreement
The epistemology of disagreement is primarily concerned with determining the rational response to disagreement. Of particular interest in the literature is the question of peer disagreement: how should you revise your beliefs when faced with the disagreement of an epistemic peer (i.e., someone who is just well-equipped as you are to evaluate the topic of disagreement)? The majority of the disagreement literature is directed toward the question of peer disagreement, and a range of different views have been proposed. Some views maintain that the rational response is to withhold judgment when faced with peer disagreement, while other views maintain that it can be rational to remain steadfast in your initial belief, and still other views hold that each of these responses can be reasonable under the right circumstances. In what follows, however, I will argue that the literature's emphasis on peer disagreement is misguided, because it leads to unnecessary confusion, without offering any additional insight about how to rationally resolve disagreements. After a brief introduction in Chapter 1, I go on in Chapter 2 to argue that, although the concept of epistemic peerhood is useful for identifying epistemically interesting disagreements for study, when it comes to determining the rational response to those disagreements, peerhood becomes more of a hindrance than a help. As an alternative to standard peer-centric views of disagreement, I propose a 'sliding-scale' approach to the epistemic evaluation of interlocutors, a view I refer to as the Variable Weight View of disagreement (the VWV). After proposing the VWV in Chapter 2, I expand upon it in Chapter 3, responding to several potential objections, as well as considering how the VWV might be expanded upon in the future. I pay particular attention to the social dimension of disagreement, and the potential role that collective or community-level epistemic norms might play with respect to disagreement - a topic which I suggest deserves more attention than it presently receives in the literature. In Chapter 4, I consider what I take to be a particularly clear example of how peer-centric views of disagreement can go wrong. I consider the Equal Weight View as defended by Elga (2007), and I argue that his view ultimately fails because it relies for its success on a particularly problematic definition of peerhood. In Chapter 5, I conclude by comparing the VWV to the standard peer-oriented views of disagreement in the literature. I argue that, in each case, the most plausible versions of those views would benefit from abandoning their strict focus on peer disagreement, in favor of adopting a sliding-scale approach to epistemic evaluation, such as that proposed by the VWV.
Epistemic Authority
Author: Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski
language: en
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Release Date: 2015
Gives an extended argument for epistemic authority from the implications of reflective self-consciousness. Epistemic authority is compatible with autonomy, but epistemic self-reliance is incoherent. The book argues that epistemic and emotional self-trust are rational and inescapable, that consistent self-trust commits us to trust in others, and that among those we are committed to trusting are some whom we ought to treat as epistemic authorities, modelled on the well-known principles of authority of Joseph Raz. Some of these authorities can be in the moral and religious domains. The book investigates the way the problem of disagreement between communities or between the self and others is a conflict within self-trust, and argue against communal self-reliance on the same grounds as the book uses in arguing against individual self-reliance. The book explains how any change in belief is justified--by the conscientious judgment that the change will survive future conscientious self-reflection. The book concludes with an account of autonomy. -- Información de la editorial.
The Philosophy of Group Polarization
Author: Fernando Broncano-Berrocal
language: en
Publisher: Routledge
Release Date: 2021-02-15
Group polarization—the tendency of groups to incline toward more extreme positions than initially held by their individual members—has been rigorously studied by social psychologists, though in a way that has overlooked important philosophical questions. This is the first book-length treatment of group polarization from a philosophical perspective. The phenomenon of group polarization raises several important metaphysical and epistemological questions. From a metaphysical point of view, can group polarization, understood as an epistemic feature of a group, be reduced to epistemic features of its individual members? Relatedly, from an epistemological point of view, is group polarization best understood as a kind of cognitive bias or rather in terms of intellectual vice? This book compares four models that combine potential answers to the metaphysical and epistemological questions. The models considered are: group polarization as (i) a collective bias; (ii) a summation of individual epistemic vices; (iii) a summation of individual biases; and (iv) a collective epistemic vice. Ultimately, the authors defend a collective vice model of group polarization over the competing alternatives. The Philosophy of Group Polarization will be of interest to students and researchers working in epistemology, particularly those working on social epistemology, collective epistemology, social ontology, virtue epistemology, and distributed cognition. It will also be of interest to those working on issues in political epistemology, applied epistemology, and on topics at the intersection of epistemology and ethics.