Philosophical Pluralism and Modest Dogmatism

Philosophers are sometimes prone to excessive skepticism, especially in the face of persisting disagreement. People often seem really bothered by the lack of consensus in philosophy (including, e.g., Derek Parfit, Jason Brennan, and most recently, Liam Kofi Bright).  But a large portion of such worries seem to stem from a failure to appreciate when actual disagreement is (distinctively) undermining:

In cases of what we might call 'non-ideal' disagreement, there's a presumption that the disagreement is rationally resolvable through the identification of some fallacy or procedural mis-step in the reasoning of either ourselves or our interlocutor. The disagreement is 'non-ideal' in the sense that we're only disagreeing because one of us made a blunder somewhere. We are sufficiently similar in our fundamental epistemic standards and methods that we can generally treat the other's output as a sign of what we (when not malfunctioning) would output. The epistemic significance of the disagreement is thus that the conflicting judgment of a previously-reliable source is some evidence that we have made a blunder by our own lights, though we may not yet have seen it.

Many philosophical disagreements do not have this crucial feature.  This is because "(i) there are many possible internally coherent worldviews, (ii) philosophical argumentation proceeds through a mixture of ironing out incoherence and making us aware of possibilities we had previously neglected." As a result, many philosophical disagreements simply reflect different substantive starting points rather than any purely procedural blunder.  And the fact that somebody exists who holds different substantive starting points than you has zero epistemic import over and above the prior observation that there are coherent alternatives to your own view (which you really should already know!).

Now, it's totally fair to worry about the epistemic significance of coherent alternatives. As I put it previously, it follows that "(iii) even the greatest [philosophical] expertise... will only help you to reach the truth if you start off in roughly the right place. Increasing the coherence of someone who is totally wrong (i.e. closer to one of the many internally coherent worldviews that is objectively incorrect) won't necessarily bring them any closer to the truth."

Good reasoning provides no guarantee of truth. There's a real possibility that we're irreparably mistaken, in which case no amount of procedurally conscientious reasoning would see us right.  Moreover, there's no neutrally-recognizable standard by which we can determine whether we are irreparably mistaken in this way. (If there were, the error wouldn't be so irreparable, after all!)  These facts may be disheartening to those who hoped for a transparent light of Reason to guide our way; but epistemic maturity requires us to recognize that such Cartesian hopes were never really reasonable or realistic in the first place.  We muddle by as best we can, and hope for the best.  If we successfully reach (or at least approximate) an internally-coherent position, it's possible that the one we reached is the one true view of the matter, but we cannot expect to be able to prove this to any who doubt us -- not even ourselves.  The most we can hope for is to be, in a sense, philosophically lucky. (But that's a fine thing to hope for!  Nothing is gained by holding out for unattainable Cartesian certainties.  It remains well worth striving for coherence, since that at least gives us a chance at being right.)

Once the above lessons are properly internalized, viewpoint diversity and philosophical dissensus comes to seem entirely appropriate. We need advocates to work out all the options, after all. (Nothing is gained by having a coherent alternative view be routinely ignored or overlooked: a merely sociological uniformity of opinion is no "consensus" worth having.) And if a view is internally coherent, you shouldn't expect to be able to argue a sophisticated advocate out of that position. Nothing forces them to share your premises!

Rather than seeing this as some deep failure of "analytic philosophy" (as if different training would somehow break the logical symmetry between modus ponens and modus tollens), I'd encourage clear-eyed acceptance of this reality, combined with default trust or optimism about your own philosophical projects. After all, unlike all those fools who disagree with you, YOU'RE beginning from roughly the right starting points, right? ;-)

On Parfit on Knowing What Matters

If I had to pick a "favourite philosopher", it would be Derek Parfit.  His book Reasons and Persons is, in my view, the best there is -- containing striking insights and arguments on every page, and laying the groundwork for basically all subsequent work on the deepest puzzles surrounding consequentialism, personal identity, and population ethics.  So it was a great honour to have him respond to my paper 'Knowing What Matters' in his third volume of On What Matters.  I wish he were still around to be able to continue the conversation further, as I would have liked to prompt him to engage more closely with various claims (that he was instead initially inclined to reject by just re-asserting his antecedent view). Sadly, that's no longer possible.  But I guess I can at least continue my side of the conversation, and perhaps other readers will suggest further comments and responses that could be made on Parfit's behalf.

'Knowing What Matters' argues that Parfit concedes too much to the moral skeptic, and explores how the robust realist might defensibly take a less conciliatory line on moral epistemology.  In particular:

Cognitivism and Moral / Philosophical Peer Intransigence

Richard Rowland's forthcoming Analysis paper on 'The Intelligibility of Moral Intransigence' presents a curious argument against moral cognitivism.  It goes roughly as follows:

P1. Beliefs track perceived evidence.
P2. Perceived peer disagreement is perceived evidence.
Hence C1. Peer intransigent judgments are not beliefs.
P3. Moral peer intransigence is intelligible: moral judgments can be peer intransigent.
Hence C2: Moral judgments are not beliefs.

The argument seems to prove too much, insofar as one could just as well replace 'moral' with 'philosophical' in P3, but non-cognitivism about all philosophy seems pretty absurd.

Philosophical Expertise, Deference, and Intransigence

Here's a familiar puzzle: David Lewis was a better philosopher than me, and certainly knew more and had thought more carefully about issues surrounding the metaphysics of modality.  He concluded that modal realism was true: that every concrete way that a world could be is a way that some concrete universe truly is (and that these concrete universes serve to ground modal truths -- truths about what is or is not possible).  But most of us don't feel the slightest inclination to defer to his judgement on this topic.  (I might defer to physicists on the 'Many Worlds' Interpretation of quantum mechanics, but that's a different matter.)  Are we being irrational?

Formulating Theories of Peer Disagreement

Just a quick thought... The "Equal Weight" View (roughly, that epistemic peers should "split the difference" between their credences) is often glossed as the view that you should give your peer's opinion the same weight that you give your own. But opponents of the view need not deny this (at least on one natural reading).

The best alternative views do not hold that your judging that p is better evidence for p than is your peer's judgment. Rather, they hold that this "higher order evidence" -- provided by the judgments of yourself and your peer -- does not exhaust the relevant evidence. While there's an epistemic symmetry at this level, we must also consider the first-order evidence (on which your original judgment was based), which might count in favour of one view over the other.

Indeed, even the most "steadfast" views give equal weight to your own and your peer's judgments (as such) -- for they give no weight at all to either psychological fact; they instead hold that the rational credence is entirely determined by the first-order evidence.

So it seems to me that we would do better to avoid this misleading way of formulating the issue. The question is not how to weight others' judgments against your own; it's about how to weight the higher-order evidence against the first-order evidence.

Ideal Disagreement

Discussion in the previous post brought out that there are two very different kinds of disagreement cases, and for at least one of these kinds, actual disagreement is importantly undermining in a way that merely imagined disagreement is not. As Daniel put it: if we learn that my thermometer actually disagrees with yours about the temperature, that's epistemically significant in a way that merely imagining a divergent thermometer reading is not. But I think the sort of "ideal disagreement" that metaethicists are interested in does not share this feature. So let me say a bit more about these two kinds of disagreement, and why the modal status of a disagreement (as actual or merely possible) makes no difference in cases of the second kind.

Actual vs. Possible Disagreement

I'm very puzzled by Parfit's concern, in On What Matters, to establish that most actual moral theories converge. That is, I'm not sure why he sees the 'argument from disagreement' as troubling only when it involves alternative views with actually existing advocates. If it's epistemically undermining to be faced with an internally coherent alternative to your present views, why should it matter whether the advocate of this alternative view really exists, or is merely a figment of your imagination playing devil's advocate?

Desirable vs. Rationality-Enhancing Dispositions

We previously noted that dispositions (e.g. internalized rules) can have other consequences besides producing downstream acts in the agent herself. (In particular, other agents might harm or reward you directly on the basis of whether you possess some disposition.) This suggests that we can distinguish (i) dispositions that have high expected value, all things considered, and (ii) dispositions that have high expected value in respect of the downstream actions they'll tend to produce. We can call the former class of dispositions 'desirable', and the latter 'rationality-enhancing' (on the assumption that rational actions are those that maximize expected value).

Asymmetries in Peer Disagreement

Does higher-order evidence swamp the first-order evidence in determining what we rationally ought to believe? If we disagree with someone whom we'd previously considered an 'epistemic peer', should we moderate our credence in their direction, or may we steadfastly infer that they must be the mistaken one? Consider the following case:

Right and Wrong are mutually acknowledged peers considering whether P. At t0, Right forms 0.2 credence in P, and Wrong forms a 0.8 credence in P. The evidence [E1] available to both of them actually supports a 0.2 credence in P. Right and Wrong then compare notes, and realize they disagree. (Christensen, p.3)

What credence should Right and Wrong then settle on? One version of the Equal Weight View would have them 'split the difference' and settle on 0.5. But, as Tom Kelly has objected, this seems to neglect the first-order evidence entirely. The higher-order (psychological) evidence is equally balanced between .2 and .8, so if we add in the first-order evidence (which supports .2), this should presumably tilt the balance of evidence to something less than .5.

In 'Disagreement, Question-Begging and Epistemic Self-Criticism' [pdf], David Christensen offers a novel response to this objection. He suggests that there's an important asymmetry between the evidence available to the two agents. Basically, the idea is that we get higher-order evidence from other people's judgments, since they can act as 'checks' on our own conclusions; but it would be double counting to treat one's own judgments in the same way. (Just imagine: "E supports .2 credence in H; plus, I just judged that this is so -- all the more reason to give H .2 credence!") Or, as Brian Weatherson might put it, the first-order evidence subsumes whatever evidential force is had by the psychological fact of one's own judgment (regarding that very evidence).

As Christensen points out (p.10), this has very interesting consequences for the case of Right and Wrong:

the important determinants of what's rational for Right to believe are the original evidence E1 (which should, and does, move her to put 0.2 credence in P), and Wrong's dissent (which does and, according to the Equal Weight Conciliationist, should move her from 0.2 to 0.5). In contrast, the determinants of what Wrong should believe are E1 (which should move him toward having 0.2 credence in P), and Right's belief (which also should move him toward 0.2).

In other words, Right should be moved by the (alas, misleading) disagreement from 0.2 to 0.5, whereas Wrong should be moved all the way to 0.2, with his initial judgment counting for naught.

This is interesting, because it's often assumed that both agents share all the same evidence and hence ought to conclude the same thing. And perhaps the most common alternative view would secure divergence in outcome simply by allowing each agent to stubbornly stick close to their own initial estimates. Christensen's solution, by contrast, introduces a genuine asymmetry between the two agents -- thus doing justice to the first-order evidence -- whilst also requiring each agent to give 'equal weight' to the opinion of their peer, rather than downgrading them in a question-begging manner. He can thus offer intuitively appealing answers to both of the opening questions of this post -- an impressive achievement!

Personal Bias and Peer Disagreement

The epistemic issues that arise when considering how to rationally respond to evidence of one's own bias are, I think, exactly the same as those discussed in the peer disagreement literature. The core issue, in both cases, is how to weigh higher-order evidence (of our own possible unreliability) against the first-order evidence. If I believe P when an epistemic peer judges my evidence to instead support not-P, this seems isomorphic to a case where I know 50% of people in my position will be mistaken due to bias [corrected, thanks Daniel]. So the same three basic positions suggest themselves in either case:

(1) Higher-order evidence trumps. This is called the 'Equal Weight View' in the peer-disagreement case. In the personal bias case, we might call it the 'Automatic Adjustment View', since it claims you should adjust your initial judgment to compensate for merely possible bias, no matter what the first-order evidence actually recommends. This is essentially the claim that you're in the same epistemic position whether you turn out to be actually biased or not. (After all, the argument goes, from the inside you can't tell which of the two positions you're in. So any rule you can follow will have to treat both situations the same.)

(2) First-order evidence trumps. In the peer disagreement case, this is called the 'Asymmetric No Independent Weight View' -- since the thought is that whoever is actually right about what the first-order evidence supports may thereby "stick to their guns", giving no weight to the opinion of their mistaken peer, but the mistaken person should of course change their opinion to what the evidence really supports. (And too bad if they don't realize this.) This is essentially the claim that learning of possible bias doesn't change your epistemic situation; either the evidence supports P or it doesn't, and your own (in)capacities don't change this fact.

(3) The Total Evidence View. Finally, we might think one is rationally required to take all the evidence into account. Neither first- nor higher-order evidence necessarily trumps the other; though in particular cases it may do so. Note that the inclusion of the first-order evidence introduces some 'asymmetry', but even the correct person may be required to compromise their initial judgment somewhat in light of the (misleading, as it happens) higher-order evidence of their unreliability.

Note that it would seem absolutely bizarre for someone to hold different views about peer disagreement and personal bias. If you think that first-order evidence trumps in case of peer disagreement, it would be terribly inconsistent to suddenly turn around and say the higher-order evidence trumps in case of personal bias. The two issues go hand-in-hand. I'll wrap up this post by noting two further points of correspondence:

(A) The 'equal weight' and 'automatic adjustment' views both gain their plausibility from considering perceptual (more precisely: non-inferential) examples. But this is misleading, because we're effectively imagining a case where there is no (other) first-order evidence; the judgment itself is all we have to go on, so of course unopposed higher-order evidence about the reliability of this judgment is going to be decisive.

(B) Any view which disregards the epistemic importance of first-order evidence is decisively refuted by the problem of implausibly easy bootstrapping. Here I adapt Tom Kelly's objection to the EWV to instead apply to Erica Roedder's automatic adjustment view:

Suppose I receive an incoherent C- paper, and irrationally misjudge it to deserve an A. If the author happens to be a black student and I have evidence that instructors are typically biased against black students, does that automatically mean that all things considered I should boost the grade and give it an A+? Surely not. My initial judgment may be some evidence that the paper warrants an A+. But it's not the only relevant fact. In particular, it can't make up for the fact that the details of the paper itself constitute overwhelming evidence that the paper should be given a C-. The presence of higher-order evidence doesn't excuse me from concluding what the first-order evidence demands.

In short, the AAV (if understood as making positive claims about what I rationally ought to judge) makes it too easy for me to get things right. No matter what loony judgment I initially make, if I then amend it slightly in response to higher-order evidence of bias, then my resulting judgment is guaranteed to be rationally justified! Too easy.

P.S. For background, see Tom Kelly's excellent paper: 'Peer Disagreement and Higher Order Evidence' [pdf].

Perceptual and Rational Bias

Suppose I learn that most (but not all) people have a condition which leads them to misperceive purple line segments as only being about half as long as they really are. Further suppose I have no special evidence regarding whether I myself am one of the people with this odd condition. Now I see a purple line, which seems to me about an inch long. How long should I believe it is? (Here I use 'belief' to simply indicate the bulk of one's credence. It is what one would choose if forced to bet one way or the other.) Two inches, presumably.

Next, suppose I learn that most academics in my vicinity have been exposed to a drug that leads them to make inverted evaluations without realizing it: they're inclined to give A grades to C-meriting papers, and vice versa. As before, I have no special grounds for expecting myself to be free of this condition. Now I read a paper by Joe Shmoe that seems hopelessly incoherent and deserving of a C. What grade should I give it? An A?

Erica Roedder proposes an analogy roughly along these lines, but I think the two cases are importantly different. In the first case -- what I'll call 'perceptual bias' -- the only reason for believing that the line is an inch long is the phenomenology of it seeming so. You only have access to the phenomenal 'output', and not to any of the raw data or 'inputs' that form the bases of this judgment. So once you learn that the phenomenology is actually evidence of something else -- namely, the line being twice that length -- that settles the matter. There is no further evidence in play.

However, in case of 'rational bias' -- cases like the second where we make bad inferences or otherwise misinterpret some independently available evidence -- we have more to go on. In addition to the output of our initial judgment, there is also the raw data of the paper itself. So presumably the epistemic fact of what we should believe depends on all this evidence, and not only the higher-order evidence provided by our initial judgment. My initial judgment of badness provides some evidence (due to the known likelihood of bias) that the paper is actually good. But that doesn't settle the matter, for surely the details of the paper itself are also relevant to what grade I ought to give it!

Let's consider the two possibilities in turn. Either I'm biased and the paper is actually good, or I'm unbiased and the paper is truly bad. If the paper is actually good, then both the first-order evidence provided by the paper and the higher-order evidence provided by my initial judgment agree: I should conclude that the paper is good. Simple.

Now for the more interesting possibility: suppose the paper truly is bad. It's still the case that my initial judgment of badness provides some higher-order evidence that the paper is actually good. But there is also the first-order evidence of the incoherent paper itself, which pretty strongly establishes its low quality. I have access not only to my initial judgment, but also to the paper itself and the fact that it reads as follows: (*insert copy of incoherent paper here*). It seems entirely possible that this latter evidence could outweigh the former, in which case I really should conclude that the paper is bad, and give it a C.

In summary: we should correct for the likelihood of perceptual bias, even if it turns out we weren't biased. This is because we have no other evidence to go on in such a case. But cases of rational bias are different, and the appropriate response is contingent on further details. If we are biased, then of course we should correct for it -- that's uncontroversial. But the actually non-biased person arguably should not recalibrate their judgments, or at least not to the same degree. This is not just because they happen to be non-biased (they obviously have no access to this fact), but because of other facts they do have access to, namely the first order evidence.

Recognizing Incompetence

The aptly named In Socrates' Wake links to research suggesting that people don't know when they don't know much. Or, as the researchers put it:

* Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill.
* Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others.
* Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy.

They found, for instance, that "individuals who scored in the 12th percentile believed that their general reasoning abilities fell at the 68th percentile". Curiously, even the top students "tended to overestimate" the incompetent ones. But at least they were better at assessing themselves. (I wouldn't be surprised if there was actually a reverse effect at higher levels -- cf. Colin Marshall's 'Why Smart People Often Think They're The Dumbest Person in the Room').

Should such research lead us to place less weight on subjective (self-)assessment, and more on external indicators of success?

Two Thoughts on Prominent Converts

Suppose that a founder (or other prominent adherent) of some philosophy theory X later comes to repudiate this theory. Does their conversion have epistemic significance for onlookers to the debate over X?

It's often treated as evidence against X. ("Even prominent X-theorist Jane now realizes that X is fundamentally flawed!") This may be understood against the background assumptions that people typically suffer from confirmation bias, and that motivated reasoning will be especially strong in case of a view that's become entrenched in one's sense of identity. Surely, we may think, it would take compelling reasons to overcome such strong biases and cause a prominent adherent to repudiate their theory. (Okay, that's not the only possible explanation, but it might be one of several that receives a significant credence boost, thus justifying a lower credence in X.)

On the other hand, the fact that Jane changed her mind is evidence that she is less biased and irrational than your average Joe. So maybe her views -- including her past views -- are worth taking pretty seriously. This might not lead you to think X more likely true, but you might at least look more carefully for other virtues of the theory that you'd previously overlooked. After all, if someone like Jane once believed it, it can't be completely idiotic. (Well, it could be, but we're talking about shifts in your balance of credence here.) So if you previously did think X completely idiotic, I guess it's conceivable that this might actually boost your credence in X ever so slightly!

I just found that curious. Either way, I don't expect it matters much in practice, as this kind of meta-evidence will typically be swamped by the first-order reasons for or against X.

Is Knowledge (Ever) Indefeasible?

My old thread on the surprise examination paradox has seen an interesting revival of discussion. Along the way, Pablo claims:

If someone knows that Q, that person cannot be thrown into a state of epistemic confusion regarding Q.

I doubt this. It seems that in many cases knowledge can be undercut when we acquire further (perhaps misleading) beliefs. I may see (and hence know) that the widgets are red, until I form the defeating belief that they are irradiated by red light. Similarly, if an apparently infallible source ('God') tells me that I can't know that Q, his assertion may be self-fulfilling, by raising doubts and plunging me into a state of epistemic confusion and uncertainty that is incompatible with full-blown knowledge.

On the other hand, the unrestricted claim that epistemic doubts are self-fulfilling leads to contradiction when combined with other plausible assumptions (introspection and closure under known entailment). Perhaps the two most promising options are then:

(1) Allow only justified doubts to act as defeaters; or
(2) Restrict the claim, so that only undoubted doubts are automatic defeaters. If you come to believe that your doubts [about your belief that p] are unjustified, then those doubts no longer undercut the justification for your belief. (The defeater is itself defeated.)

Remaining questions: Which of these options is right? If (1), will that make some knowledge indefeasible after all? Or is the doubt and confusion raised by God's testimony justified, so that it may defeat your knowledge in any case?

Acting on Meta-reasons

Another way to bring out my contrast between 'Moral Roots and Alienating Aspirations' is to consider the practical significance of higher-order evidence.

Suppose it seems to you that you ought to phi, but you also think that your judgment in this case could well be biased or otherwise impaired. You believe that other people in similar circumstances to yours have turned out to be mistaken. Moreover, others you consider to be moral experts -- reliably more insightful than yourself -- are unanimous in insisting that you should not phi. What should you do?

Objectivists must allow that appearances can be misleading, and so higher-order evidence can undermine our first-order beliefs. In the above scenario, it looks like your all-things-considered judgment should be that the totality of reasons that exist weigh against phi-ing, even though you do not currently have access to all those reasons yourself. The reasons in your possession count in favour of phi-ing, but as a realist you acknowledge that there may be other reasons beyond your grasp, and the views of experts can give you some indication of what the totality of reasons really favours.

What of the 'rooted' conservative/subjectivist? Here it is less clear. There may still be some room for overriding your personal judgments, e.g. if they rest on some merely empirical or logical error, and so do not really reflect your core values. But if we accept the Vellemanian position that what fundamentally matters is making sense to oneself, then there seems something deeply problematic about acting on mere "meta-reasons", i.e. the abstract promise of reasons out there that you have not fully grasped. You can't really make sense of your action, because even though there is abstract evidence that you did what is for the best, you do not yourself possess the grounds for this judgment; you don't, in other words, understand why it is for the best. So it may seem that you acted for reasons that are not, in some vital sense, your own.

This practical difference marks a vivid distinction between the two metaethical views. Whether we act for the sake of making internal sense to ourselves, or to make the external world better, will influence our receptivity to meta-reasons, and hence what decisions we make.

I take this to count in favour of objectivism, since it seems clear that we should be receptive to meta-reasons. As Dan Moller writes in 'Meta-reasoning and Practical Deliberation' [pdf] (p.26):

Failing to act on second-level reasoning means, by definition, acting on the basis of flawed deliberations when there is evidence of how improving those deliberations would affect the outcome. To return to the general [who is biased towards cowardice by the recent deaths of his friends], he presumably cares about discharging his duties as a soldier with integrity, so why shouldn’t he pursue every available opportunity to improve his decision-making? It is true that in that pursuit he may cut himself off from ultimate comprehension of the reasoning that leads to the conclusion to send in the troops, but accepting that limitation would in this circumstance express precisely a commitment to his deepest values and identity as a soldier, not any sort of compromise or abdication.

Isn't the alternative a bit solipsistic?

Epistemic Conservatism and Meta-coherence

Some commenters in the thread on 'structure and similarity' proposed that we should work with whatever concepts we happen to start with -- green rather than grue, or vice versa -- and only change if there's a compelling reason to do so: "I do not have to assume that the way I cut up the world now is the best way (in fact I'm pretty sure it isn't), I just have to consider if the [change] that you are proposing has useful consequences."

However, this runs headlong into a problem that I highlighted in a previous post: that principles of metacoherence mean that such humble meta-beliefs rationally undermine our first-order beliefs. Or, as I put it in my comment:

If you think that both inductive arguments are equally reasonable, and that there's no sense in which X is objectively more similar to Y than Z, then you have no grounds for believing one conclusion rather than the other (e.g. that future emeralds will be green rather than grue). By the principle of metacoherence, you should be agnostic.

I introduce this notion in my global rationality paper:

Sometimes we may be in a position to realize that our initial judgments should be revised. I may initially be taken in by a visual illusion, and falsely believe that the two lines I see are of different lengths. Learning how the illusion worked would undercut the evidence of my senses. I would come to see that the prima facie evidence was misleading, and the belief I formed on its basis likely false. Principles of meta-coherence suggest that it would be irrational to continue accepting the appearances after learning them to be deceptive, or more generally to hold a belief concurrently with the meta-belief that the former is unjustified or otherwise likely false.

As I further explain in my post 'Meta-Coherence vs. Humble Convictions':

It's [meta-]incoherent to believe that P whilst also believing that the weight of evidence fails to support P, since this is just to judge both [on the lower level] that P is true and [on the higher level] that P is probably not true after all.

If, faced with alternative possibilities, you nonetheless retain your belief in P, you must represent this to yourself as being because you judge that P is more likely true, and not just because you happened to have the belief in the past and don't feel like revising it. You can't consciously be an epistemic conservative, because the realization that you believe P partly for non-truth-related reasons will instantly lower your degree of belief in P, to match your assessment of the (subjective) probability that P is really true.

Some form of epistemic conservatism may be true nonetheless, in the trivial sense that we think our existing beliefs are true, and it will take positive work to convince us otherwise. But from a first-personal perspective, the reason we hold on to our existing beliefs is not the egoistic fact that they are our beliefs, but rather the "fact" (as it seems to us) that they are true. If you lose your confidence in the truth of a belief, and are "pretty sure" it's mistaken, then you can't sincerely believe it any more. You can't now appeal to epistemic conservatism as a way to hold onto your belief without judging it to be true. That's incoherent.

Meta-Coherence vs. Humble Convictions

G.A. Cohen points out that Oxford-trained philosophers tend to believe in the analytic/synthetic distinction, whereas Harvard-trained philosophers tend not to. As an Oxfordian himself, he believes in the distinction. But he could have gone to Harvard instead, and so ended up a Quinean. Should this fact undermine his belief?

More detail is required. Here are two possibilities:
(1) The reasons upon which the Harvardians' beliefs rest are, impartially considered, no less weighty than the reasons behind the Oxfordian view. (The difference in their beliefs is merely explained by the fact that each side is more familiar with their own reasons.) If you think this is the situation, then this should immediately undermine your belief. It's [meta-]incoherent to believe that P whilst also believing that the weight of evidence fails to support P, since this is just to judge both [on the lower level] that P is true and [on the higher level] that P is probably not true after all.

(2) Alternatively, you might judge that, all things considered, the weight of reasons really does support the Oxfordian view here. So you're lucky you didn't go to Harvard, in much the same way that it's lucky you weren't born into a society of Flat Earthers (or a religious cult). If you'd been raised and trained differently, you would have been less sensitive to where the weight of reasons truly lies.

As a reflective agent, to truly believe something you must consider it to be epistemically superior to its negation. You must therefore hold that anyone who believes otherwise is ipso facto your epistemic inferior in this respect. (They are failing to believe what is best supported by reasons.)

Conversely: humility + metacoherence = agnosticism.

One might initially be tempted to retain one's convictions even whilst modestly admitting that others' views are equally well supported (all things considered). Cohen thinks this is a fairly common stance (e.g. between Protestant and Catholic friends). But you cannot coherently maintain this combination of first-order belief and higher-order humility. Which you should give up will of course depend on the details of the case.

For example, it seems plausible to me that a proper appreciation of religious pluralism should undermine common grounds for religious belief (e.g. 'religious experience' -- why think that yours is any more reliable than Akbar's?). But this is arguably just because there are independent grounds for skepticism, which actual pluralism makes more salient. The existence of geocentrist cults, by contrast, does nothing whatsoever to undermine heliocentrism.

Meta-Evidence, Rationality and Guidance

How should we revise our conclusions upon learning that an (apparently) equally reliable epistemic agent came to a different conclusion? The Equal Weight View steps back from the fray and suggests that if we have no prior/independent reason to consider ourselves more likely right, we should 'split the difference'.

The Asymmetric No Independent Weight View claims that both parties should believe whatever the first-order evidence in fact supported all along. So if you were reasonable in your initial assessment of the evidence, you can reasonably give no weight at all to my (unreasonable, as it happens) opinion.

A third option, Tom Kelly's Total Evidence View, allows that we often should take higher-order evidence into account -- for peer disagreement is evidence that we have evaluated the first-order evidence incorrectly. However, TEV denies that this automatically swamps all first-order evidence. Instead, what's reasonable to believe is determined by one's total evidence (both first- and higher-order, combined).

When put like that, TEV seems clearly right. But it may be unhelpful in practice, if we cannot actually tell where the weight of (first order) evidence lies. Here are some fun cases from last week's epistemology class which put pressure on the view:

Case 1 (ordinary peer disagreement): You and I are expert weather forecasters with the same data set, training, and track record. Nonetheless, we disagree in our current forecasts. Should we revise our judgments on this basis?

Case 2 (chancy curse): As above, but an oracle tells us that long before we were born, a fair coin was flipped which would definitely curse one of us with all the phenomenology of having evaluated the data correctly, but ensure error.

Case 3 (simple curse): As in case 2, but without the coin flip. That is, all we know is that it was determined long ago -- by some unknown method -- that one of us would have all the phenomenology of having evaluated the data correctly, but be guaranteed to make an error.

It seems like the higher-order evidence swamps in case 2, obliging us to split the difference. But then case 3 may seem relevantly similar, and this in turn is effectively no different from case 1 (esp. if determinism is true). So if we want to avoid the Equal Weight View, we must either reject the intuition that we're rationally on a par in case 2, or else explain how to avoid the slippery slope through case 3. Any suggestions?

See also: How Objective is Rationality?

Explaining Beliefs

Why do we believe the things we do? Fans of evolutionary psychology might be tempted to construct an evolutionary story about how such-and-such a belief might have proven beneficial to our ancestors on the African savannah. (Freudians and others might construct other stories.) But this is usually the wrong level to focus on. Evolution has equipped us with reliable general faculties of sense and reason. This means that the specific conclusions we reach are better explained by what's justified than by what's adaptive. In other words, if a belief is justified then no further explanation is necessary. It is only blatantly unreasonable beliefs that call out for special explanation -- perhaps in terms of evolved biases, developed disorders, social pressures, or the like.

This is important because people often treat evolution (and causal explanations in general) as an argument for moral skepticism: whatever caused our beliefs, it presumably isn't the abstract moral facts themselves!* But such arguments are question-begging, for they presuppose the skeptical view that our moral beliefs aren't justified.** Indeed, I think there's an important sense in which our philosophical beliefs are caused by the facts: we are responsive to considerations of rational coherence, which is precisely what the truth itself consists in.

* = It's also suspicious that only moral philosophy is singled out here. Logic is no less abstract, after all. Not to mention the belief in skepticism itself.

** = It works better as an argument against Platonism, though.

Here's the vital point: if philosophical truth just is what's maximally reasonable, then the skeptic needs to show that no moral views are more reasonable than their competition (for this would suffice to explain our knowing them). But of course merely pointing to Darwin does no such thing.

The Epistemic Argument against Vigilantism

I'm currently working on an essay that develops the arguments against political vigilantism initially presented in my post on 'the ethics of activism'. In this post I want to focus on the Epistemic Principle: No matter how awful X seems to you, if you can't rationally convince your fellow citizens then you're probably wrong about it, and so have no business engaging in coercion.

As background, note the fact of widespread first-order moral/political disagreement, which serves to motivate a liberal-procedural metapolitics. We need some way to adjudicate political conflicts, and reach collective decisions about what ought to be done. The best process will be the one that most reliably distinguishes good proposals from bad ones. I will assume that the liberal-democratic process is the best that is realistically available.

Thus, if the process is functioning adequately, we should find that it generally approves good proposals and rejects bad ones. This means that if you cannot rationally persuade your fellow citizens to your position, chances are that this is because you’re in error. Of course, we are engaged in a very high level of statistical abstraction here – in any particular case, there could be reasons that defeat the democratic presumption. For example, the populace might be demonstrably biased or ignorant in some crucial respect. But then, bringing this to their attention should, ideally, suffice to overcome it, unless we are to despair of our fellow citizens as fundamentally unreasonable. Still, the possibility must be granted that a small group of educated radicals might be in a manifestly better epistemic position than the general populace with regard to determining the common good. If they knew this to be so, could that justify radicalism?

The worry, of course, is that many other radical groups mistakenly believe themselves to be in such a position. They are subjectively every bit as certain in their “knowledge” as the correct group is. So the question remains how to distinguish them. However, it’s important to note that, in principle, the ability to distinguish the two situations need not hold symmetrically. Although the justified believer must be able to distinguish their position from that of being unjustified, the converse need not necessarily be the case. As Sosa writes:

Suppose I could now about as easily be dead, having barely escaped a potentially fatal accident. Obviously, we cannot distinguish being alive from being dead by believing oneself alive when alive, and dead when dead. But that is no obstacle to our knowing ourselves alive when alive.

Similarly, we may at times be so muddle-headed that we do not even realize it (for example while dreaming). But the possibility of overlooking such a deficit does nothing to undermine our introspective appreciation of wakeful clarity. As a general rule, our positive awareness of an introspective property is not threatened by the fact that we would be unaware of lacking the property. The full force of one’s actual awareness and appreciation suffices to guarantee that the property is really there. It’s no reflection on your actual situation if others (perhaps including your counterfactual selves or counterparts) are less discerning.

Perhaps the justified radical is in a similar position. She has a deep appreciation of the moral-political facts, we may suppose, and it’s not her fault that others lack such discernment. Even though others are in such a poor epistemic position that they don’t even realize it, this fact does not reflect on the epistemic situation of the fully-aware radical. She, at least, is in a position to tell the difference, even if the others aren’t.

But there are generally tests that one can do to confirm one’s positive awareness and clarity of thought. For example, it may help to focus one’s attention on the details of the property allegedly observed – presumably the deluded will find themselves unable to perform this feat, and thereby become aware of their deficit at last. So we should want to put our political beliefs to a similar ‘test’, which they should have no trouble passing if they’re really as self-evident as we believe. The justified radical will be able to specify the justificatory grounds of her proposals with clarity and logical rigour lacking in the attempts of her opponents. Others might offer justifications that they personally find equally convincing, but only because they are unaware of their flaws.

Are these two situations really subjectively discernible though, even asymmetrically? Is fine-grained epistemic justification, or complex rational insight, the kind of property that is open to introspective awareness? Or must the asymmetry argument be restricted in application to more black-and-white cases (e.g. death vs. life, or muddled dreaming vs. wakeful clarity)? Is it really true that moral justification is internally accessible, so that the phenomenal experience or subjective ‘what it is like’ quality of having justified moral-political beliefs is different in kind from what it is like to have prima facie defensible but ultimately unjustified beliefs on these topics? This seems implausible. So the subjective position of the radical – no matter how convinced they may feel that such-and-such is an intolerable moral outrage – is insufficient to justify coercive action. Their beliefs must pass a more objective test. Whatever test is appropriate here is presumably the test that should be instituted in the political system. So this leads us back to procedural liberalism.

Although there does seem to be a problem for radicalism here, it may not be purely epistemic in nature. After all, it seems reasonable to retain one’s political beliefs even in the face of democratic defeat. (On the view I defend, one must abide by the outcome of a just process, but one need not whole-heartedly agree with it.) We might explain this away by suggesting that the high stakes involved in political action demand more stringent justification than is required for mere belief. The differing prescriptions may also be grounded in a utilitarian fashion. Given the fallibility of mainstream opinion, the advancement of social knowledge might be best served by having individuals persist in trying to support their discredited views – even when this is individually “irrational” in the sense that any given dissenter is statistically unlikely to ultimately prove correct.* Such behaviour is at least collectively rational, so we have reason to support epistemic norms that would allow individuals to retain beliefs that are too ungrounded to serve as a basis for coercive action.

* = I've heard of similar defences of dogmatism by philosophers of science. Can anyone provide a reference here?

Anyway, I'd be very interested to hear what others think about (1) my extension of Sosa's asymmetry argument, and its application to political disagreements; and (2) the collectivist explanation for why we think it epistemically acceptable to hold on to democratically discredited beliefs. [Or (3) any other issues that arise from this discussion...]

Categories:

• epistemology
• democracy