Armchair Disagreement

Abstract

A commonly neglected feature of the so-called Equal Weight View, according to which we should give our peers opinions the same weight we give our own, is its prima facie incompatibility with the common picture of philosophy as an armchair activity: an intellectual effort to seek a priori knowledge. This view seems to imply that our beliefs are more likely to be true if we leave our armchair in order to find out whether there actually are peers who, by disagreeing with us, force us to revise our beliefs. This article argues that the Equal Weight View should be spelled out in such a way that not only actual peer disagreement requires us to revise our beliefs, but also merely possible peer disagreement. This result is not a reductio ad absurdum of the view. Quite the opposite: it shows that the view is, contrary to appearance, compatible with our common way of doing philosophy.

Epistemic Thought Experiments and Intuitions

“…For example, religious disagreements have their consequence concerning epistemic obligations: when two epistemic peers with very different religious views dispute some matter, "the parties enter the discussion with different starting points that affect their judgment of what is evidentially significant and how it should be weighed" (Holley 2013, p. 36). Among authors who support the negation of the uniqueness thesis are (Rosen 2001;Douven 2009;Titelbaum 2010;Ballantyne and Coffman 2011;Brueckner and Bundy 2012;Decker 2012;Rosa 2012;Kelly , 2013Meacham 2014;Peels and Booth 2014;Schoenfield 2014;Kopec 2015;Weber 2017;Barz 2019).…”