Lammenranta. Disagreement, Skepticism and the Dialectical Conception of Justification

copy Koninklijke Brill NV Leiden 2011 DOI 101163221057011X554124

International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 1 (2011) 3ndash17 brillnlskep

Disagreement Skepticism and the Dialectical Conception of Justifi cation

Markus Lammenranta University of Helsinki

markuslammenrantahelsinkifi

Abstract It is a common intuition that at least in some cases disagreement has skeptical consequences the participants are not justifi ed in persisting in their beliefs I will argue that the currently popular non-dialectical and individualistic accounts of justifi cation such as evidentialism and reliabilism cannot explain this intuition and defend the dialectical conception of justifi cation that can explain it I will also argue that this sort of justifi cation is a necessary condition of knowledge by relying on Craigrsquos genealogy of the concept of knowledge I will then respond to the accusation that the dialectical conception leads to radical skepticism My response is partly concessive It does lead to skepticism in areas where controversy prevails such as philosophy politics and religion but this sort of skepticism is quite intuitive Finally I deal with the objection that my defense of skepticism about philosophy is self-refuting

Keywords disagreement dialectic genealogy justifi cation skepticism

Ancient skeptics argued that people should suspend belief if they disagree and cannot rationally resolve their disagreements In doing so they seemed to understand justifi cation dialectically and socially (Lammenranta 2008 forth-coming) Th e received view of justifi cation in contemporary analytical episte-mology in contrast is non-dialectical and individualistic Th at is why it is no surprise that epistemologists have not paid much attention to disagreement Th e reason why it became a hot topic quite recently seems to be that we do have the intuition that disagreement has at least in some cases skeptical conse-quences while non-dialectical and individualistic accounts of justifi cation have diffi culties in explaining this ndash or so I claim

In order to defend my claim I will discuss a typical case in which we have the intuition that disagreement prevents justifi cation and knowledge and argue that the received individualistic views cannot explain the intuition Th is speaks for the dialectical and social view I will also defend my diagnosis of this

4 M Lammenranta International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 1 (2011) 3ndash17

case and the dialectical conception of justifi cation by relying on Edward Craigrsquos genealogy of the concept of knowledge I will argue that Craigrsquos hypoth-esis about the point of the concept supports the view that dialectical justifi ca-tion is a necessary condition of knowledge I will then respond to the objection that the dialectical conception leads to radical skepticism I will try to show that it leads at most to urbane skepticism 1 a form of skepticism that is restricted to controversial issues in philosophy science and religion Th is is not a problem because this sort of skepticism is quite intuitive and plausible Finally I deal with the objection that my defense of skepticism about philoso-phy is self-refuting

1 Epistemic Peerage

Initially it may seem that the standard non-dialectical accounts give no epistemic signifi cance to disagreement Th is is because they are individualistic and disagreement is a social phenomenon Th ey make the conditions of justi-fi cation concern the individual subject restricting the justifying factors to the subjectrsquos mental states or the causal sources of those states For example evi-dentialism takes justifi cation to be a function of the subjectrsquos experiences and beliefs and reliabilism takes it to be a function of the causal origin of those beliefs 2 So it may seem that what other people believe ndash whether they disagree or not ndash is irrelevant to justifi cation

Th e matter is not so simple It is true that disagreement as such has no epistemic signifi cance according to these individualistic accounts What is rele vant are the subjectrsquos beliefs about disagreement Both evidentialism and reliabilism allow that beliefs about disagreement may aff ect the justifi cation of other beliefs they can defeat the justifi cation of these other beliefs

Let us take an example of a typical case Adam Elgarsquos horse race about which we do have the intuition that disagreement prevents the participants from having justifi cation for their beliefs

We are to judge the same contest a race between horse A and horse B Initially I think that you are as good as me at judging such races and you think in the same

1 On the distinction between rustic Pyrrhonism and urbane Pyrrhonism see Barnes ( 1997 61ndash2)

2 It might be pointed out that the etiology of belief can extend to other people and their beliefs However reliabilists typically identify the sources of belief individualistically with the psychological processes (Goldman) intellectual faculties (Sosa) or introspectively accessible grounds (Alston) of the subject whose belief is epistemically evaluated

M Lammenranta International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 1 (2011) 3ndash17 5

way about me but then we realize that we disagree I believe that horse A won the race and you believe that horse B won (Elga 2007 486)

Th e intuition is that neither of us is justifi ed in persisting in our beliefs we should both give them up and look for further evidence Th e individualistic accounts try to explain the intuition by appealing to defeaters According to this story I fi rst have a justifi ed belief that horse A won but when I learn that you disagree I obtain a defeater for this belief my belief that A won is no longer justifi ed How is this supposed to work

First of all it is clear that my belief that you disagree does not alone have defeating power I must also believe that you are as good as me at judging such things I must believe that you are my epistemic peer Two necessary condi-tions for epistemic peerage are typically given 3

Evidential equality Two persons are evidentially equal relative to the question whether p if and only if they are equally familiar with the evidence relevant to the question whether p

Cognitive equality Two persons are cognitively equal relative to the question whether p if and only if they are equally competent or reliable in assessing the evidence relevant to the question whether p

So what is supposed to defeat my justifi cation for believing that p is my belief that you are my epistemic peer and you believe that not- p If I believe this I am no longer justifi ed in believing that p Th is is how individualism attempts to explain the intuition that disagreement prevents justifi cation in some cases

2 Undercutting Defeaters

What are defeaters A defeater is a belief or some other mental state that makes some other belief lose its justifi cation Assume that I am justifi ed in believing that p on the basis of evidence e Th en I form a new belief d My belief d defeats my justifi cation for believing that p if and only if e and d do not justify me in believing that p

John Pollock ( 1986 38ndash9) distinguishes between two kinds of defeaters (1) Rebutting defeaters for my belief are my reasons to believe that my belief is false (2) Undercutting defeaters are my reasons to believe that my evidence

3 See for example Kelly ( 2005 174ndash5) Christensen ( 2007 188ndash9) and Lackey ( 2010 and forthcoming)


does not support or indicate the truth of my belief I assume following Pollock (1989 150) that a rebutting defeater d cannot have less justifi cation than the defeated belief p In other words the evidence for d cannot be weaker than the evidence for p Otherwise d would itself be defeated by p If the evidence for p and the evidence for d are equally strong p and d defeat each other and neither is justifi ed Pollock calls this collective defeat

Which kind of defeater is relevant in the case of peer disagreement Let us take fi rst the option that believed disagreement provides an undercutting defeater Assume that e is good evidence for p and that I believe that p on the basis of e When I now learn that you whom I take to be my epistemic peer believe that not- p on the basis of e I get evidence that e is not good evidence for p So I seem to have an undercutting defeater for my belief that p However this is not clear because as Th omas Kelly ( 2005 190) points out I also have equally strong evidence that e is good evidence for p Our being epistemic peers and equally competent in evaluating the common evidence your believ-ing that not- p on the basis of e is evidence that e is not good evidence for p and my believing that p on the basis of e is evidence that e is good evidence for p My new total evidence includes thus the following

(1) evidence e (2) I believe that p on the basis of e (3) you believe that not- p on the basis of e (4) we are both equally reliable in evaluating evidence e and (5) e cannot be good evidence for both p and not- p (the uniqueness thesis)

Th e conjunction of 3 4 and 5 constitutes my evidence for believing that

(UD) e is not good evidence for p

It is thus a potential undercutting defeater for my belief that p Th e problem is that I have also a rebutting defeater for this undercutting defeater because 2 and 4 give me evidence for believing that

(RDUD) e is good evidence for p

Because UD and RDUD are equally justifi ed for me and because I know that they cannot both be true (5) there occurs what Pollock calls collective defeat UD and RDUD defeat each other and I am not justifi ed in believing either So I no longer have a defeater for my justifi cation for believing that p Kelly concludes that peer disagreement does not have epistemic signifi cance It does not make our beliefs unjustifi ed which is counterintuitive in the horse race case and other similar cases


One may object to Kellyrsquos conclusion and insist that I still have a defeater of some kind for my belief because my conscious suspension of judgment about the question whether e is good evidence for p is also an undercutting defeater for my belief that p So undercutting defeaters need not be beliefs Other attitudes like suspension of judgment can also work as a defeater Richard Feldman ( 2006 232ndash3) and Michael Bergmann ( 2005 426) defend this view If I consider whether my evidence supports p and I have to suspend judgment about the matter I am not justifi ed in believing that p Th is may be intuitive 4 However two problems arise when understanding defeaters in this way

First it is not clear that UD and RDUD are equally justifi ed for me When all my evidence is taken into account it seems more probable to me that it is you who have made a mistake in evaluating the evidence If this is true there is no collective defeat only UD is defeated in which case my belief that p remains undefeated and justifi ed I will discuss this sort of evidence in more detail in connection with rebutting defeaters and concentrate now on the sec-ond problem

Th e whole idea that disagreement provides undercutting defeaters for our beliefs presupposes that you and I literally share the evidence that we possess exactly the same evidence Assuming that evidence covers private perceptual experiences and memory experiences it is clear that we cannot literally share our evidence I do not have your experiences neither have you mine So if ldquoevidential equalityrdquo means that we share or possess the same evidence there are no evidential equals and no epistemic peers And individualism fails to explain our intuitions concerning disagreement

ldquoFamiliarity with the evidencerdquo could be understood more loosely It is enough that we tell each other about our evidence Th en we both attain testi-monial evidence about each otherrsquos evidence Feldman ( 2006 233) says that evidence about evidence is evidence He seems to mean that my evidence about your evidence for not- p is also evidence for not- p Th is may be so but it is important to keep in mind that this is testimonial evidence I cannot attain perceptual evidence in this way

For example in the case of the horse race we do not share our evidence My evidence for my belief that horse A fi nishes ahead of horse B consists of my perceptual experience it appears to me that A fi nishes ahead of B Your

4 Also Pollock and Cruz ( 1999 200ndash1) discuss a case in which a collectively defeated conclu-sion retains its defeating power


evidence consists of your perceptual experience it appears to you that B fi n-ishes ahead of A After disclosing our evidence to each other we get evidence about each otherrsquos evidence I learn that your evidence supports your belief and you learn that my evidence supports mine Th is gives neither of us an undercutting defeater Because we donrsquot have the same evidence it may very well be that my evidence supports my belief while your evidence supports yours One of us simply has misleading evidence

3 Rebutting Defeaters

How do we then explain the intuition that I am not justifi ed in persisting in my belief in the horse race case and other similar cases Th e only way seems to be to appeal to rebutting defeaters Th e idea is that when I learn that you believe that horse B won on the basis of your evidence I get evidence that horse B won even though I do not share your evidence So I do not have evidence only for the proposition that horse A won but also for the proposi-tion that horse B won Th e evidence for the latter proposition is a rebutting defeater for my belief that horse A won 5

If this suggestion is to work my evidence for horse B must be at least equally strong as my evidence for horse A We may assume that your percep-tual evidence for your belief is equally strong as my perceptual evidence for mine but this does not mean that I possess equally strong evidence for both propositions because I do not share your perceptual evidence I have at most testimonial evidence about it It seems clear that this testimonial evidence for the proposition that horse B is the winner cannot be as strong as my direct perceptual evidence for the proposition that A won So the former cannot be a rebutting defeater for the latter It is rather the other way around

If one thinks that my perceptual evidence is not strong enough to do the work alone I have also other evidence that supports my belief over yours I have simply many more reasons to doubt the proposition that B won than to doubt the proposition that A won First you may be lying or joking or teasing me when you claim that B won So it may not really appear to you that horse B won On the other hand I know very well that I am not the one who is lying or joking if one of us is So I have no similar reasons to doubt my own belief that A won Second assuming that you are sincere there are still many

5 Th is is the way Kelly (2010 150ndash2) tries to explain the skeptical intuition


reasons to suspect that it is you who made a mistake For example you may have gotten something in your eye and your evidence was therefore unreli-able Perhaps you were drunk or perhaps your eyesight is faulty and so on Th e point is that there is a large number of possible mistakes that I cannot rule out in your case but that I can rule out in mine Surely I know that there was nothing in my eye and that I was not drunk So it is epistemically more prob-able that you are the mistaken party instead of me

Jennifer Lackey ( 2010 277ndash8 forthcoming) calls the evidence that I have about my own experiences beliefs intentions and reliability but that I lack about yours personal evidence She argues that if my belief enjoys a very high degree of justifi ed confi dence and I have personal evidence supporting it I am justifi ed in persisting in this belief in the face of peer disagreement Th is gives a wrong result in the horse-race case assuming that I have a high degree of justifi cation for my belief However one could insist that my belief in such a case can only enjoy a low degree of justifi ed confi dence Perhaps the race was close and it was not easy to say which horse won Now Lackey says that I am no longer justifi ed in my belief or at least I should substantially lower my confi dence in it I still have similar personal evidence supporting my belief but she does not think that in the case of low justifi ed confi dence my personal evidence breaks the symmetry She gives no grounds for the omission of per-sonal evidence in such cases and it is indeed diffi cult to fi nd such grounds from reliabilism or evidentialism Th e omission is thus completely ad hoc if individualism is true

So both my perceptual evidence and my personal evidence support my belief over yours Th erefore my belief that you disagree does not give me a defeater Of course one could point out as Feldman (2005 116) does that our situation may still be symmetric You can rely on similar considerations that support your belief So from an impartial point of view evidence on both sides is equally strong However it is hard to see how this is relevant if we assume an individualist account of justifi cation If justifi cation depends on my individual point of view ndash on my beliefs and experiences ndash it does not matter how things appear to an impartial observer From my point of view there is no symmetry my evidence supports my belief rather than yours And according to individualism it is this point of view that decides the justifi cation of my beliefs

Th e problem with individualism regarding cases like the horse race is that my perceptual evidence and my personal evidence give stronger support to my belief that p than my testimonial evidence about your evidence gives to not- p Th is is why the latter evidence cannot defeat my justifi cation for believing that p If it were required that my evidence for p be independent of the


disagreement as David Christensen ( 2007 198) and Adam Elga (2007 492) suggest I could not count my perceptual experiences as a part of my evidence but I still would have my personal evidence that supports my belief So such an independence requirement may not be enough to secure a balance between my positive and negative evidence for p Furthermore the requirement is completely unmotivated and ad hoc if justifi cation is understood individualis-tically Why should I disregard a part of my evidence as a response to disagree-ment if individualism is true

Th e only motivation that Christensen ( 2007 198) gives for the indepen-dence requirement is that my appealing to my original evidence would beg the question against you Th e term ldquoquestion-beggingrdquo is sometimes used for arguments that are formally circular However nothing is formally circular in this case So Christensen can only mean that my appealing to my perceptual evidence begs the question in a dialectical sense I beg the question in this sense when I defend my belief by reasons that you would not fi nd acceptable Th is motivation for the independence requirement is however not available for Christensen assuming he is an individualist According to individualism justifi cation does not require such non-question-begging evidence my justifi -cation does not depend on what you fi nd acceptable

4 Th e Dialectical Conception of Justifi cation

I donrsquot deny that the independence requirement and symmetry considerations are intuitive It is only that individualism cannot explain them Th ey can be explained only if we accept the dialectical conception of justifi cation that does require that my evidence be also acceptable to you Assuming that this con-ception is true neither my perceptual evidence nor my personal evidence is able to justify my belief because you who disagree with me have reasons to doubt that evidence I should have evidence that is independent of the dis-pute evidence that you could accept

If our situation is symmetric in the way Feldman supposes we have both internal evidence for our beliefs but because my evidence is also a reason to doubt your evidence and your evidence is a reason to doubt mine neither of us has good evidence according to the dialectical conception and we should both give up our beliefs So only the dialectical conception of justifi cation respects the independence and symmetry considerations

Th us it seems that we need the dialectical conception of justifi cation to explain our intuitions about certain cases of disagreement According to it justifi cation is roughly a matter of defensibility ndash not just to oneself as some


coherentists may have it but defensibility to others Defensibility to oneself cannot handle the cases intuitively because it requires just coherence ndash the absence of defeaters ndash and in cases such as the horse race we can both have coherent beliefs What we lack is the capacity to defend our beliefs for each other and this explains why our beliefs are not justifi ed So only the dialectical conception gets the right result

Th omas Kelly (2010 171ndash2) dismisses the dialectical conception of justifi -cation too quickly he appeals to Timothy Williamson ( 2004 2007 238ndash41) who notes that the view he calls dialectical conception of evidence would hand an easy victory to a skeptic who does not accept anything as evidence Obviously it is impossible to rationally persuade such a skeptic If justifi cation required this it would be impossible

Kelly and Williamson seem to assume that dialectical justifi cation requires that we be able to defend ourselves against all comers ndash even the global skeptic Perhaps this is also what the Pyrrhonists presupposed when they argued that we should suspend all belief However the assumption is unreasonably strong We can see how it can be avoided after considering Craigrsquos genealogical account of our concept of knowledge

5 Craigrsquos genealogy

We get further support for the dialectical conception of justifi cation and our diagnosis of the horse-race case by applying the genealogical method of Edward Craig ( 1990 1ndash17) Craig asks us to imagine a primitive community that does not yet have a concept of knowledge and to consider how that community could benefi t from having that concept When we have a hypothesis about the purpose or the role of the concept of knowledge we can then try to fi gure out what kind of concept would best serve the purpose or fi t the role In this way we get the concept of proto-knowledge Th en we can try to understand how our current concept of knowledge could have evolved from it (See also Pritchard 2009 80ndash1)

Craigrsquos hypothesis is that the concept is needed for picking out dependable informants Th e person who knows makes a good informant We can now ask what properties we would want our informants to have It is clear that we want them to have true beliefs about the questions we are interested in but as Craig notes we also want them to have a property by which we can detect them and this property must be reliably connected to truth As some reliabi-lists have noted this idea supports a reliabilist account of knowledge It seems clear that we choose informants by virtue of their reliability Someone having


a reliable vision and standing on a hill is a good informant about what is hap-pening in the valley 6

I think this is right Knowledge does require a true and reliably formed belief but it requires more Often we are not in a position to assess the reli-ability of potential informants In such cases it would be very useful if we could ask them how they know what they claim to know and if they could defend their beliefs for us People who can defend themselves and respond to our challenges make better informants 7 So Craigrsquos hypothesis about the point of knowledge attribution supports the view that knowledge requires dialectical justifi cation in addition to reliability 8

Th e hypothesis also supports my diagnosis of the horse race It is clear that we would not take each other to be good informants about the winner of the race Neither would a third person who did not himself see the race and who was looking for a trustworthy informant Even though one of us may very well have a true and reliably formed belief about the matter she is not in a position to say which one of us has such a belief Neither can she choose one of us on the basis of the internal evidence that we each have for our beliefs because this evidence is equally strong on both sides So neither reliabilism nor evidential-ism explains why we are both poor informants for each other and for such a third person 9 Only the dialectical conception can do this it is because we cannot defend our beliefs for each other or the third party in a way that is dialectically eff ective

To sum up I have assumed that there are some cases such as Elgarsquos horse race in which disagreement has skeptical consequences and have argued that individualistic accounts such as evidentialism and reliabilism cannot explain this Th e attempt to appeal to defeaters fails and the attempts to appeal to independence requirements symmetry considerations and question-beggingness are unmotivated and ad hoc Th ese sorts of considerations are relevant only if the dialectical conception of justifi cation is true It is only this conception of justifi cation that entails that we should evaluate disagreements

6 See for example Sosa ( 1991 275) and Pritchard ( 2009 80ndash5) Th e example is Pritchardrsquos

7 Fricker ( 2008 41) notes that the capacity to give reasons is an important indicator property of a good informant not discussed by Craig

8 Let me point out that this view does not make knowledge impossible for children and ani-mals because mere reliability is in many cases enough to make a good informant In these cases their beliefs enjoy the status of default dialectical justifi cation See below

9 Both reliabilism and evidentialism entail that one of us may very well satisfy all the condi-tions of knowledge and thus be a good informant though intuitively neither of us is


from a neutral point of view and that has thus the power to explain the skepti-cal consequences Finally I need to respond to Kellyrsquos and Williamsonrsquos accu-sation that the dialectical conception leads to more radical skepticism

6 Objectifi cation

We have so far been working with the concept of proto-knowledge It has been enough to explain our intuitions in simple cases of disagreement such as the horse race In order to get a more detailed account of dialectical justifi cation and to respond to Kellyrsquos and Williamsonrsquos claim about its more radical skepti-cal consequences we need to consider how our current concept could have evolved from the proto-concept Craig ( 1990 82ndash97) calls this process the objectifi cation of the concept

Craig focuses on the third-person applications of the concept but we also apply the concept to ourselves What is the point of doing that It is not plau-sible to suppose that the purpose of my attributing knowledge to myself is to pick out myself as an informant to myself If I already have the information I am not in need of an informant 10 A more plausible answer is that when I attribute knowledge to myself I thereby volunteer myself as an informant to somebody else So while the point of third-person applications of the concept is to pick out a good informant the point of fi rst-person applications is to volunteer oneself as such an informant

I already argued that a good informant needs to have dialectical justifi ca-tion for her belief Kelly and Williamson argued that it is impossible to meet this requirement because we cannot defend ourselves for the skeptic who does not accept any premises However if Craigrsquos hypothesis is correct we do not need to convince the skeptic We just need to convince those who are looking for information about some question

Assume that I need information about some topic and I am evaluating you as a possible informant Of course I am interested in whether you have rea-sons that would convince me about the truth of your belief I donrsquot care whether they could convince the skeptic Th e same is true about self-attribu-tions of justifi ed belief If I volunteer myself as an informant to you I take

10 Hookway ( 1990 207ndash8) discusses a case in which I can use myself as an informant to myself However this is a special case and does not explain most self-attributions of the concept


myself to have reasons that would convince you If we cared about convincing the skeptic sharing of information would become impossible

Th is suggests that attributions of justifi cation are context-sensitive Th ey have a hidden indexical term When I say that you are justifi ed in your belief I say in eff ect you have reasons that would convince me When I on the other hand say that I am justifi ed in my belief I say that I have reasons that would convince you Of course it follows that my self-attribution of justifi cation would be false if you were a skeptic However this skeptical consequence is restricted to the skepticrsquos context In most other contexts our attributions of justifi cation would be true

However this suggestion does not yet give us our current concepts of justi-fi cation and knowledge It makes attributions of justifi cation and knowledge too context-sensitive Th e content of my self-attribution would vary with whom I am talking to Th ere are also good reasons from an information-sharing point of view why this is not so

One problem is that the suggestion would make it very diffi cult to volun-teer oneself as an informant It would require that we be able to keep track of what each individual person would accept as good reasons We do not usually have such information Furthermore we also recommend people as infor-mants to somebody else Th is would require that this other person would accept the same reason as we do and we must be aware of this fact Th is is also information that we rarely have

It is clear that the practice of giving and asking for reasons enhances the sharing of information When this practice has continued for some time peo-ple learn what beliefs are accepted as reasons for other beliefs and what beliefs are accepted without needing further reasons Th is further facilitates the shar-ing of information Now people have some conception of what kind of rea-sons informants are expected to possess Th is makes it easier to decide when to volunteer oneself as an informant and when to recommend somebody else as an informant to others

So the relevant context is not the individual subject who is looking for an informant It is composed of the social group the members of which are sharing information with each other Th ey have common beliefs about which sources of belief are reliable and under which conditions these sources most likely produce true beliefs Beliefs that are taken to be based on those sources under those conditions are accepted without needing further support We may say that they enjoy the status of default justifi cation in the context Th ey need be defended only if there are specifi c reasons to doubt their truth or reliability in which case the default status is lost (see Williams 2001 148ndash50)


So the dialectical conception of justifi cation does not lead to global skepti-cism Our need to share information requires that many beliefs have the status of default justifi cation Beliefs that have this status need not be defended In order to constitute knowledge they need just to be true and reliably formed and to be taken to be such in the relevant social context

7 A Skeptical Epilogue

It may still be argued that there are many contexts ndash in addition to the context of the global skeptic ndash where the dialectical conception leads to skepticism Th ere are many areas where controversy prevails such as politics religion and philosophy itself Assuming that disagreements in these areas are genuine and rationally irresolvable it follows from the dialectical conception that we lack knowledge and justifi ed beliefs about such matters It may be hard for many people including philosophers to accept this consequence but is it so counterintuitive

Let us focus on the case of philosophy which has a special importance to my discussion I fi nd it quite intuitive that we lack knowledge about many philosophical questions How often do we in fact attribute knowledge to some party in a philosophical dispute It seems that it would not be taken to be appropriate Craigrsquos method confi rms this We would not take disputing phi-losophers to be good informants about philosophical truths Neither would we as philosophers volunteer ourselves as informants to each other or to lay-men We say instead that people should consider the reasons for and against diff erent positions themselves and make up their own minds

It may be further claimed that my account of justifi cation is self-refuting it follows from it that I am not justifi ed in believing it Th is is so if I have not managed to prove my case to other philosophers Of course I have tried to defend my view by relying on intuitions and other reasons that they could fi nd acceptable but I have no illusions about being successful Th is sort of thing rarely happens in philosophy So let us assume that I am not successful and that many of you do not fi nd my reasons acceptable Should I thus conclude that I am not justifi ed in persisting in my view

Self-refutation is a problem only if I believe that my account is true If I donrsquot believe it I can very well concede that I am not justifi ed in believing it Refl ecting on my attitude to my own account I must say that I do not fully believe it Th is is as it should be given the persistent disagreements in episte-mology and philosophy more generally I am not convinced that I alone am right and all the others defending competing views are wrong On the other


hand it seems to me that the considerations I raise at least favor my account Th at is why I accept it and try to defend it

It seems that in controversial issues such as philosophy the proper attitude is acceptance rather than belief As several philosophers 11 have noticed there is an important distinction between belief and acceptance Th ey emphasize two central diff erences between these attitudes (1) Acceptance unlike belief is under our voluntary control (2) Acceptance does not entail belief We can thus accept something we do not fully believe and use it as a premise in theo-retical or practical reasoning I would like to add a third one (3) Knowledge requires belief rather than acceptance If I were not myself convinced about a matter I would not volunteer myself as an informant about it Acceptance is not enough

However what is the point of doing philosophy if it does not give us knowledge Bertrand Russell ( 1967 91) another philosophical skeptic insists that philosophy is still valuable because even though it cannot tell us how things really are it can tell us how they could be So even if I may not have succeeded in showing that the dialectical view is true I may have managed to show that it at least off ers a coherent view of how things could be epistemi-cally Th is is something that I may be justifi ed in believing 12

Th e dialectical conception of justifi cation does seem to have skeptical consequences concerning philosophy itself 13 Th is may be why epistemolo-gists have been reluctant to accept it Th ey want naturally to defend their own profession However skepticism about philosophy is far from being counter-intuitive Philosophy is so full of controversy that it would sound very strange if somebody claimed to know the right answers to philosophical questions Th e dialectical conception explains this strangeness because according to it the claim would be false 14

11 See especially Cohen ( 1992 ) and Alston ( 1996 ) I follow more closely Alstonrsquos account of the distinction

12 Van Fraassen ( 1980 12) defends a similar view about scientifi c theories which he calls constructive empirism According to it accepting a scientifi c theory involves as belief only that it is empirically adequate that it saves the phenomena It does not involve the belief that the theory is true

13 Th e same is true of religion and politics where I also fi nd skepticism intuitive I have here focused on philosophy because of the accusation of self-refutation

14 I would like to thank Robert Audi Raul Hakli and Diego Machuca as well as the audience of the conference on Responsible Belief in the Face of Disagreement at VU University Amsterdam in 2009 for their helpful comments


References

Alston W P ( 1996 ) ldquoBelief Acceptance and Religious Faithrdquo 3ndash27 in Jordan J and Howard-Snyder D (eds) Faith Freedom and Rationality Philosophy of Religion Today Lanham Rowman amp Littlefi eld

Barnes J ( 1997 ) ldquoTh e Beliefs of a Pyrrhonistrdquo 58ndash91 in Burnyeat M and Frede M (eds) Th e Original Sceptics A Contoversy Indianapolis Hackett

Bergmann M ( 2005 ) ldquoDefeaters and Higher-Level Requirementsrdquo Th e Philosophical Quarterly 55 419 ndash 36

Christensen D ( 2007 ) ldquoEpistemology of Disagreement the Good Newsrdquo Th e Philosophical Review 116 187 ndash 217

Cohen L J ( 1992 ) An Essay on Belief and Acceptance Oxford Clarendon Press Craig E ( 1990 ) Knowledge and the State of Nature Oxford Clarendon Press Feldman R ( 2006 ) ldquoEpistemological Puzzles about Disagreementrdquo 216ndash36 in Hetherington

S (ed) Epistemology Futures Oxford Clarendon Press Fricker M ( 2008 ) ldquoScepticism and the Genealogy of Knowledge Situating Epistemology

In Timerdquo Philosophical Papers 37 27 ndash 50 Hookway C ( 1990 ) Scepticism London Routledge Kelly T ( 2005 ) ldquoTh e Epistemic Signifi cance of Disagreementrdquo Oxford Studies in Epistemology

1 167 ndash 96 ndashndashndashndash ( 2010 ) ldquoPeer Disagreement and Higher-Order Evidencerdquo 111ndash74 in Feldman R and

Warfi eld T (eds) Disagreement Oxford Oxford University Press Lammenranta M ( 2008 ) ldquoTh e Pyrrhonian Problematicrdquo 9ndash33 in Greco J (ed) Th e Oxford

Handbook of Skepticism Oxford Oxford University Press ndashndashndashndash (Forthcoming) ldquoSkepticism and Disagreementrdquo in D Machuca (ed) Pyrrhonism in

Ancient Modern and Contemporary Philosophy Dordrecht Springer Lackey J ( 2010 ) ldquoWhat Should We Do When We Disagreerdquo Oxford Studies in Epistemology

3 274 ndash 93 ndashndashndashndash (Forthcoming) ldquoA Justifi cationist View of Disagreementrsquos Epistemic Signifi cancerdquo in A

Haddock A Millar and D Pritchard (eds) Social Epistemology Oxford Oxford University Press

Pollock J L ( 1986 ) Contemporary Th eories of Knowledge London Hutchinson ndashndashndashndash ( 1989 ) How to Build a Person A Prolegomenon Cambridge Th e MIT Press Pollock J L and Cruz J ( 1999 ) Contemporary Th eories of Knowledge 2nd edition Lanham

Rowman amp Littlefi eld Pritchard D ( 2009 ) Knowledge Basingstoke Palgrave MacMillan Russell B ( 1967 ) Th e Problems of Philosophy Oxford Oxford University Press Sosa E ( 1991 ) ldquoIntellectual Virtue in Perspectiverdquo 270ndash93 in his Knowledge in Perspective

Selected Essays in Epistemology Cambridge Cambridge University Press Van Fraassen B C ( 1980 ) Th e Scientifi c Image Oxford Clarendon Press Williams M ( 2001 ) Problems of Knowledge Oxford Oxford University Press Williamson T ( 2004 ) ldquoPhilosophical lsquoIntuitionsrsquo and Skepticism about Judgmentrdquo Dialectica

58 109 ndash 53 ndashndashndashndash ( 2007 ) Th e Philosophy of Philosophy Oxford Blackwell


case and the dialectical conception of justifi cation by relying on Edward Craigrsquos genealogy of the concept of knowledge I will argue that Craigrsquos hypoth-esis about the point of the concept supports the view that dialectical justifi ca-tion is a necessary condition of knowledge I will then respond to the objection that the dialectical conception leads to radical skepticism I will try to show that it leads at most to urbane skepticism 1 a form of skepticism that is restricted to controversial issues in philosophy science and religion Th is is not a problem because this sort of skepticism is quite intuitive and plausible Finally I deal with the objection that my defense of skepticism about philoso-phy is self-refuting

1 Epistemic Peerage

Initially it may seem that the standard non-dialectical accounts give no epistemic signifi cance to disagreement Th is is because they are individualistic and disagreement is a social phenomenon Th ey make the conditions of justi-fi cation concern the individual subject restricting the justifying factors to the subjectrsquos mental states or the causal sources of those states For example evi-dentialism takes justifi cation to be a function of the subjectrsquos experiences and beliefs and reliabilism takes it to be a function of the causal origin of those beliefs 2 So it may seem that what other people believe ndash whether they disagree or not ndash is irrelevant to justifi cation

Th e matter is not so simple It is true that disagreement as such has no epistemic signifi cance according to these individualistic accounts What is rele vant are the subjectrsquos beliefs about disagreement Both evidentialism and reliabilism allow that beliefs about disagreement may aff ect the justifi cation of other beliefs they can defeat the justifi cation of these other beliefs

Let us take an example of a typical case Adam Elgarsquos horse race about which we do have the intuition that disagreement prevents the participants from having justifi cation for their beliefs

We are to judge the same contest a race between horse A and horse B Initially I think that you are as good as me at judging such races and you think in the same

1 On the distinction between rustic Pyrrhonism and urbane Pyrrhonism see Barnes ( 1997 61ndash2)

2 It might be pointed out that the etiology of belief can extend to other people and their beliefs However reliabilists typically identify the sources of belief individualistically with the psychological processes (Goldman) intellectual faculties (Sosa) or introspectively accessible grounds (Alston) of the subject whose belief is epistemically evaluated

































































6 Objectifi cation






























References


















































































6 Objectifi cation






























References







































































6 Objectifi cation






























References






























































6 Objectifi cation






























References























































6 Objectifi cation






























References
















































6 Objectifi cation






























References











































6 Objectifi cation






























References




































6 Objectifi cation






























References





























6 Objectifi cation






























References




















6 Objectifi cation






























References










































References



































References




























References



















References


















Documents

Lammenranta. Disagreement, Skepticism and the Dialectical Conception of Justification