Religious Disagreement and Pluralism

This volume explores many issues at the intersection of the epistemology of disagreement and religious epistemology. Epistemological questions about the significance of disagreement have advanced in concert with broader developments in social epistemology concerning testimony, the nature of expertise and epistemic authority, the role of institutions, group belief, and epistemic injustice, among others. During this period, related issues in the epistemology of religion have re-emerged as worthy of new consideration, and available to be situated with new conceptual tools. Does disagreement between, and within, religions, challenge the rationality of religious commitment? How should religious adherents think about exclusivist, inclusivist, and pluralist frameworks as applied to religious truth, or to matters of salvation or redemption? This volume engages in careful reflection on religious diversity and disagreement, offering ways to balance epistemic humility with personal conviction. Recognizing the place of religious differences in our social lives, it provides renewed efforts at how best to think about truths concerning religion.

Disagreement and epistemic improvement

This paper proposes a methodological turn for the epistemology of disagreement, away from focusing on highly idealized cases of peer disagreement and towards an increased focus on disagreement simpliciter. We propose and develop a normative framework for evaluating all cases of disagreement as to whether something is the case independently of their composition—i.e., independently of whether they are between peers or not. The upshot will be a norm of disagreement on which what one should do when faced with a disagreeing party is to improve the epistemic properties of one’s doxastic attitude or, alternatively, hold steadfast.

The Dialogue Between Believers and Atheists: the Platonic Model in the Laws

This paper examines the question concerning the right model of epistemically rational dialogue. First of all, the main, though not undisputed, principles of rational dialogue are defined according to the contemporary field of the epistemology of disagreement. It then explains why even these principles are not sufficient for making the disagreement between believers and atheists not only a rational discourse but also a fruitful dialogue. This paper defends a thesis that the latter aim can be achieved with a proper model of dialogue, which is found in Plato’s Laws – one of the first discussions between the believers and the atheists in the Western intellectual tradition. This model not only includes the contemporary principles of rational argument but also provides some new guidelines for the solution of problems that lead the believers and the atheists to the communicational dead end.

Epistemic Intuition and Disagreement

This chapter examines skeptical objections to epistemic intuition that are based on disagreement. Section 1 distinguishes internal from external rationality in order to facilitate our understanding and analysis of the epistemology of disagreement. Section 2 lays out a variety of kinds of disagreement with respect to epistemic intuition. Section 3 explains why disagreement gives rise to a defeater in cases where it is not rational to view the one disagreeing with you as a person with worse evidence than you or as a person who is worse than you at responding well to evidence. Section 4 considers, in light of the previous sections, whether the intuitionist particularist anti-skeptic’s beliefs based on epistemic intuition can withstand disagreement-based skeptical objections in a way that is compatible with the requirements of intellectual humility. Section 5 works through the implications of disagreement about the proposed response (in Section 4) to disagreement about epistemic intuition.

Peer Idealization and Internal Examples in the Epistemology of Disagreement

The epistemology of disagreement has developed around a highly idealized notion of epistemic peers. The analysis of examples in the literature has somewhat entrenched this idealization, when using cases of extant philosophical disputes between named interlocutors. These examples make it hard to emphasize the ordinary ways in which discussants, as disciplinary colleagues, may be wrong. Overlooking these possibilities is probably made easier by widespread attitudes in philosophy about the importance of genius or raw intelligence in doing philosophy. The use of such internal examples needlessly limits consideration of the full range of epistemically relevant features of disagreements.

Uniqueness and Logical Disagreement

This paper discusses the uniqueness thesis , a core thesis in the epistemology of disagreement. After presenting uniqueness and clarifying relevant terms, a novel counterexample to the thesis will be introduced. This counterexample involves logical disagreement . Several objections to the counterexample are then considered, and it is argued that the best responses to the counterexample all undermine the initial motivation for uniqueness.