Dilemmas, Disagreement, and Dualism

Abstract

What should we do when someone who is smart and well-informed disagrees with us? Should we change our opinion, or hold fast to our previous viewpoint? This question has divided epistemologists, and those working in the epistemology of disagreement have spilled much ink defending various answers. 1 One concept that's been central to the disagreement debate is an epistemic peer. An epistemic peer is roughly someone who is epistemically "on a par" with you-they have similar evidence to you, and are approximately equally reliable, epistemically virtuous, and free from bias about the matter in question. While later, I'll argue that epistemic peerhood need not play a central role in the epistemology of disagreement, it's important for understanding the debate thus far. For now, we'll understand the central question of peer disagreement as: should one alter their opinion when they knowingly encounter a disagreeing epistemic peer?In this chapter, following Buchak (2021), I argue that this central question of peer disagreement presents us with a dilemma; we have good reason to answer both "yes" and "no" to this question. I then offer and motivate a particular solution to that dilemma. This solution revolves around what I call belief-credence dualism, the view that we have two attitudes-beliefs and credencesand neither reduces to the other. In particular, I'll argue that we should alter our credences, but not our beliefs, when encountering an epistemic peer.This chapter proceeds as follows. In Section 13.2, I explain how peer disagreement leads to an epistemic dilemma. That is, there's good reason to think that we should both revise and not revise our opinions in response to peer disagreement. In Section 13.3, I offer a solution to this dilemma: if belief-credence dualism is true, this allows for the possibility that we should modify our credences, but not our beliefs, in response to peer disagreement. In Sections 13.4 and 13.5, I motivate this solution; my first motivation relates to the nature of contents and attitudes, and the second relates to epistemic peerhood. In Section 13.6, I address some worries about the view I've proposed, and in Section 13.7, I conclude.

On the independence of belief and credence

“…lower their credence). Further, insofar as belief and credence are normatively independent, one's credence could get quite low but one could continue to believe without compromising rationality (see Buchak, 2021; Jackson, 2021). Alternatively, one could be a steadfaster about credence but a conciliationist about belief; this combination may be less natural, but belief‐credence independence allows to us symbiotically combine various positions in the epistemology of disagreement.…”