tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post2716734157813696833..comments2023-10-29T10:32:36.914-04:00Comments on Philosophy, et cetera: Cognitivism and Moral / Philosophical Peer IntransigenceRichard Y Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-22560204415372864572018-02-27T00:48:53.064-05:002018-02-27T00:48:53.064-05:00Hi Richard,
While I don't find Rowland's...Hi Richard, <br /><br />While I don't find Rowland's argument persuasive, I don't think your reply fully works, either, for the following reason: granting that your argument regarding the epistemic weight of peer disagreement is correct, the fact is that some other philosophers disagree with you on that, and consider peer-disagreement to be evidence against one's moral beliefs (or other philosophical beliefs). If the rest of Rowland's argument were successful, then this would imply that peer intransigent moral judgments made by people who do take peer disagreement to be evidence, are not beliefs. But if those are not beliefs, that would seem to be considerable evidence (though perhaps not conclusive) that moral judgments in general are not beliefs. Of course, as you point out, one can run this argument for philosophical disagreement in general (at least, with regard to philosophers who disagree with you on the epistemic status of peer disagreement), and the result is pretty absurd, so something is surely wrong. <br /><br />I think one problem (there might be more problems) might be intelligibility. While it's intelligible that a person persists in her belief on the face of peer disagreement while believe that peer disagreement is evidence, it's difficult (at least for me) to comprehend that she might not update her probabilistic assessment at all (she might persist in her believe, but assigning lower probability to it than before). <br /><br />Still, there are some ways I think I can make sense of something like that. For example, let's say Bob believes, while calmly reflecting on the matter, that peer disagreement is evidence, and that Alice is his peer. But when he thinks about one particular moral claim C1 made by Alice, he's outraged, and not updating his credences at all - but condemning Alice. Yet, in that case, it seems to me that implicitly, Bob is either downgrading Alice from peer to not peer, or perhaps coming to believe that Alice is lying and actually does not believe C1, or something along those lines. There are other scenarios that make it intelligible, but so far, I find that one or more of Rowland's hypotheses does not hold in the scenarios I find intelligible (e.g., a person does not consider the other person a peer, or at least not at that moment, when thinking about that particular belief, etc.). Angra Mainyuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16342860692268708455noreply@blogger.com