scholarly journals Moral Peer Disagreement and the Limits of Higher-Order Evidence

2020 ◽  
pp. 136-154
Author(s):  
Marco Tiozzo
Keyword(s):  
Higher Order ◽  
Peer Disagreement ◽  
Higher Order Evidence

Return to Reason

2019 ◽  
pp. 226-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael G. Titelbaum
Keyword(s):  
Fixed Point ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Peer Disagreement ◽  
First Order ◽  
Doxastic Justification ◽  
Right Reason ◽  
Higher Order Evidence

This chapter discusses responses to the author’s “Rationality’s Fixed Point (or: In Defense of Right Reason).” Among other things, the chapter: explains how the author understands rationality; explains why akrasia is irrational; intuitively overviews the argument from the Akratic Principle to the Fixed Point Thesis; explains why you can’t avoid this argument by distinguishing the rational from the reasonable, ideal rationality from everyday rationality, or substantive from structural norms; responds to the suggestion that misleading higher-order evidence creates rational dilemmas; explains why the Fixed Point Thesis doesn’t assume objectivist or externalist notions of rationality; dismisses complaints about agents who aren’t able to “figure out” what’s rational; then responds to an objection that peer disagreement undermines doxastic justification. Finally, the chapter modifies the author’s steadfast position on peer disagreement to take into account cases in which peer disagreement rationally affects an agent’s first-order opinions without affecting higher-order ones.

scholarly journals A HIGHER-ORDER APPROACH TO DISAGREEMENT

Episteme ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mattias Skipper Rasmussen ◽  
Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen ◽  
Jens Christian Bjerring
Keyword(s):  
Higher Order ◽  
Equal Weight ◽  
Peer Disagreement ◽  
Equal Weight View ◽  
Formal Framework ◽  
Desirable Feature ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Higher Order Evidence

ABSTRACTWhile many philosophers have agreed that evidence of disagreement is a kind of higher-order evidence, this has not yet resulted in formally precise higher-order approaches to the problem of disagreement. In this paper, we outline a simple formal framework for determining the epistemic significance of a body of higher-order evidence, and use this framework to motivate a novel interpretation of the popular “equal weight view” of peer disagreement – we call it the Variably Equal Weight View (VEW). We show that VEW differs from the standard Split the Difference (SD) interpretation of the equal weight view in almost all cases of peer disagreement, and use our formal framework to explain why SD has seemed attractive but is in fact misguided. A desirable feature of VEW, we argue, is that it gives rise to plausible instances of synergy – an effect whereby the parties to a disagreement should become more (or less) confident in the disputed proposition than any of them were prior to disagreement. Lastly, we show how VEW may be generalized to cases of non-peer disagreement.

Higher-Order Evidence

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Rational Beliefs ◽  
Peer Disagreement ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Normative Significance ◽  
Distinguished Group ◽  
First Time ◽  
Higher Order Evidence

We often have reason to doubt our own ability to form rational beliefs, or to doubt that some particular belief of ours is rational. Perhaps we learn that a trusted friend disagrees with us about what our shared evidence supports. Or perhaps we learn that our beliefs have been afflicted by motivated reasoning or other cognitive biases. These are examples of higher-order evidence. While it may seem plausible that higher-order evidence should somehow impact our beliefs, it is less clear how and why. Normally, when evidence impacts our beliefs, it does so by virtue of speaking for or against the truth of their contents. But higher-order evidence does not directly concern the contents of the beliefs that they impact. In recent years, philosophers have become increasingly aware of the need to understand the nature and normative role of higher-order evidence. This is partly due to the pervasiveness of higher-order evidence in human life, for example in the form of disagreement. But it has also become clear that higher-order evidence lies at the heart of a number of central epistemological debates, spanning from classical disputes between internalists and externalists to more recent discussions of peer disagreement and epistemic akrasia. Many of the controversies within these and other debates stem, at least in part, from conflicting views about the normative significance of higher-order evidence. This collection brings together, for the first time, a distinguished group of leading and up-and-coming epistemologists to explore a wide range of interrelated issues about higher-order evidence.

Higher-Order Evidence

2019 ◽  
pp. 312-344
Author(s):  
Declan Smithies
Keyword(s):  
Higher Order ◽  
Epistemic Rationality ◽  
Total Evidence ◽  
Epistemic Akrasia ◽  
Level Splitting ◽  
Higher Order Evidence

Chapter 10 explores a puzzle about epistemic akrasia: if you can have misleading higher-order evidence about what your evidence supports, then your total evidence can make it rationally permissible to be epistemically akratic. Section 10.1 presents the puzzle and three options for solving it: Level Splitting, Downward Push, and Upward Push. Section 10.2 argues that we should opt for Upward Push: you cannot have misleading higher-order evidence about what your evidence is or what it supports. Sections 10.3 and 10.4 defend Upward Push against David Christensen’s objection that it licenses irrational forms of dogmatism in ideal and nonideal agents alike. Section 10.5 responds to his argument that misleading higher-order evidence generates rational dilemmas in which you’re guaranteed to violate one of the ideals of epistemic rationality. Section 10.6 concludes with some general reflections on the nature of epistemic rationality and the role of epistemic idealization.

Can Your Total Evidence Mislead About Itself?

2019 ◽  
pp. 298-316
Author(s):  
Alex Worsnip
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Model ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Total Evidence ◽  
Simple Mathematical Model ◽  
First Order ◽  
Higher Order Evidence

It’s fairly uncontroversial that you can sometimes get misleading higher-order evidence about what your first-order evidence supports. What is more controversial is whether this can result in a situation where your total evidence is misleading about what your total evidence supports: that is, where your total evidence is misleading about itself. It’s hard to arbitrate on purely intuitive grounds whether any particular example of misleading higher-order evidence is an example of misleading total evidence. This chapter tries to make progress by offering a simple mathematical model that suggests that higher-order evidence will tend to bear more strongly on higher-order propositions about what one’s evidence supports than it does on the corresponding first-order propositions; and then by arguing that given this, it is plausible that there will be some cases of misleading total evidence.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document