Oppy on Disagreement (Part 3)

This post is part of a series on Graham Oppy's article "Disagreement". The article provides an overview of the epistemology of disagreement and considers its application to the philosophy of religion.

Part one covered the basic concepts and questions behind the epistemology of disagreement. The key question is: "What is the rational response to disagreement between doxastic peers?" Part two answered that question by considering several example cases.

As we saw in part two, once we move away from clear-cut hypothetical questions and towards more serious real life disagreements, the answer to the key question becomes elusive. In this part we consider a range of strategies -- identified in the literature -- for coping with real-life disagreements. We then see how these might apply to religious disagreements.


1. Coping with real disagreements
Oppy thinks that the following strategies for coping with real cases of disagreement have been identified in the literature on the epistemology of disagreement (some of these aren't "strategies", more like "observations" that lead to strategies):

• Hard Line: According to this strategy, there are no cases of reasonable disagreement between peers. All actual cases of disagreement are traceable to cognitive or evidential differences between the parties to the disagreement. Thus, it might be reasonable to stick with the beliefs that you have.

• Insight: According to this strategy, it is reasonable to stick with your beliefs if you have reason to think that you have a special insight into the subject matter of disagreement. The problem here is that insight is easy to claim and so appeal to it can seem like an irrational prejudice.

• Extreme philosophical scepticism: According to this strategy, the fact of reasonable disagreement is itself a reason to withhold judgment on all potentially controversial topics. This may be one of the motivations for Pyrrhonian scepticism.

• Moderate philosophical scepticism: Same as the above except the withholding of judgment is limited to cases of actual disagreement.

• Merely Verbal Disagreement: We might be inclined to live with certain disagreements when they are "merely verbal". In other words, when they are matters of linguistic or conceptual bookkeeping as opposed to substantive disputes over what is or is not the case.

• Inscrutability of Reasons: Often, the evidence and reasons on which we base our knowledge claims is inscrutable. This inscrutability might pull us in opposite directions. On the one hand, it might encourage us to be cautious about adjusting our beliefs in the face of disagreement. On the other hand, it might encourage us to be more open-minded.

• Different Starting Points: Given that, in real life, we often arrive at our knowledge claims from different epistemic starting points (prior probabilities, worldviews, presuppositions etc.), we might think caution is preferable when confronted with disagreement. But, then again, maybe the different starting points should incline us toward open-mindedness.

• Insufficient Agreement: It could be that a single instance of disagreement is actually reflective of a much broader range of disagreement. This would go back to the inscrutability of reasons and the different starting points.

• Alethic Impurity: Beliefs and desires often become entangled in our knowledge claims. And given that desires are not thought to have truth values, this might force us to abandon cognitivism about certain disagreements. And this, in turn, might support a non-conciliationist attitude toward disagreement. The problem with this observation is that some disagreements clearly refer to cognitivist areas of inquiry.

As can be seen, there is no single correct response or strategy to take toward actual cases of disagreement. The unsurprising irony is that the epistemology of disagreement has managed to give rise to a whole new set of disagreements.

Oppy considers what this means for cases of religious disagreement.

2. Religious Disagreement

Oppy begins by pointing out that some of the "strategies" outlined above could not apply to religious disagreement. First off, the disagreement is clearly not just a question of linguistic or conceptual bookkeeping. Second, it contains some obviously cognitive components (e.g. "God exists" or "Jesus was resurrected from the dead").*

That said, most of the strategies do apply:

• There are usually different epistemic starting points. For example, some religious believers appeal to the internal witness of the Holy Spirit as constituting their starting point. This can also be viewed as a unique type of "insight". This would be completely alien to a non-believer. 

• There is often inscrutability of the reasons for belief or disbelief. Few could identify all the grounds on which they believe/disbelieve in certain religious doctrines.

• Particular instances of disagreement are usually indicative of a much broader territory of disagreement.

• Finally, it is interesting to note that people are usually aware of the disagreement before they adopt their own beliefs. Let's face it, unless we live exceptionally sheltered lives we know that one's stance toward religion is going to be a source of disagreement. 

That last observation is particularly suggestive. Of what? Of the fact that mere disagreement is not particularly significant when it comes to assessing the merits of the disputed beliefs. All areas of philosophy are highly contentious and contain many disagreements, this is not surprising. 

So for an epistemologist to make the second-order observation that there are cases of peer-disagreement in philosophy tells us nothing that the first-order dispute over reasons-for-belief did not. In other words -- and I take this to be Oppy's key point -- disagreement must be dealt with in the ordinary way: I'll state reasons, provide arguments and pinpoint evidence, and you'll do the same.

This is quite an interesting conclusion.

Oppy on Disagreement (Part 2)

This post is part of a brief series on Graham Oppy's article "Disagreement". The article provides an overview of the epistemology of disagreement and considers its application to cases of religious disagreement.

In part one, I introduced the basic concepts and motivating questions behind the epistemology of disagreement. As we saw, the key question is "What is the rational response to cases of disagreement between doxastic peers?". A doxastic peer is someone who has the same cognitive capabilities, and access to the same information, as you do.

In this part, we consider some examples of disagreement. The examples provide some instruction as to how to answer the key question. However, one of Oppy's key points is that while clear cut answers might be possible in uncomplicated hypothetical examples, once we get closer to real-life cases of disagreement things become much less clear-cut.


1. Cases in which you should adjust your beliefs
We begin with four cases of disagreement in which it would seem rational to change your original belief. They are:

• Restaurant: A group of diners agree to split the bill after a meal in a restaurant. Two of them add-up the items on the bill in order to determine what each individual's contribution should be. The first says the contribution is $63; the second says it is $61. Both are confident that they added-up the figures correctly and both have been shown, in the past, to be equally good at this kind of arithmetic. 

• Wrist Watch: Twin brothers are given identical watches for their birthdays. Before going to sleep they synchronise the time on their watches. When they wake up, the first twin reports the time as being 6.45; the second twin reports the time as being 6.51. There is no reason to suspect that either is lying or cognitively disabled in any way.

• Horse Race: A group of punters are watching a horse race. They have each backed different horses. The finish to the race is very tight, with several horses appearing to cross the line at roughly the same time. Nonetheless, one of the punters jumps up, elated that his horse has won. Several other punters do the same thing, even though they backed different horses.

• Perfect Pitch: Two expert musicians, with equal training and experience, are listening to an operatic performance. Their enjoyment of the performance is ruined when they disagree about whether a singer has hit a C or a C-sharp.

Why would it be reasonable to alter the degree of confidence you have in your belief in these types of cases? What do these cases have in common?

Well, they involve people with equal experience and epistemic access to the domain in which the disagreement takes place and, further, that domain is the kind of domain in which even experts may occasionally get things wrong. So it would be strange to assume that one's original judgment must be correct.

2. Cases in which you should not adjust your beliefs

We can contrast the examples just given with the following cases. In these cases, adjustments seems less rational:

• Elementary Math: Two departmental colleagues, who have known and worked with each other for over a decade, are trying to work how many people will be attending an upcoming conference. The first one, reasoning out loud, says that two people will be attending on Wednesday and two on Thursday. That means four in total. The second colleague disagrees, saying "But 2+2 does not equal 4".

• Perception: Three roommates, who have been living together for several years, are silently enjoying lunch. The first roommate asks the second to pass the salt to the third, who is gesturing at the other end of the table. The second roommate refuses on the grounds that the third roommate is not present.

• Directions: Two neighbours, who have lived in the same area for several years, meet each other while out walking around the neighbourhood. The first tells the second that he is going to his favourite restaurant. The second -- who is also a fan of the restaurant -- tells him that he is heading in the wrong direction. The first disagrees.

• Bird: You and your best friend are in the university library. You are both staring out the window. You notice a bird flying past. You turn to your friend and ask "What type of bird was that?". Your friend claims there was no bird.

Why would adjustment be irrational in these cases? What do they have in common? 

Well, they would seem to involve cognitively basic judgments. That is, judgments about immediate perceptual experience, personal memory or elementary math and logic. These are not the kinds of judgments we expect to be mistaken about.

3. More Problematic Cases

Those cases were relatively straightforward. The following cases are more tricky because they involve complex judgments about complex topics. It is not clear what should be done in these cases.

• Meteorologists: Two highly experienced and respected meteorologists are asked to predict the likelihood of rain tomorrow. They both avail of the most up-to-date techniques for computer modelling of the weather and they feed the same data into their models. After doing so, the first meteorologist says there is a .55 probability of rain tomorrow, the second says there is a .35 probability of rain.

• Detectives: Two experienced and successful detectives are both investigating the same case. The evidence is very complicated. Some of it points toward one suspect; some of points toward another suspect. After analysing all the evidence, they both decide upon a different culprit.

• Doctors: Two impeccably well-educted doctors, with oodles of clinical experience are called-in to consult on a particularly difficult case. They both run the same tests and consider the same case history. After doing so, the first physician thinks that the patient has chronic fatigue syndrome. The second thinks the patient has lupus.

We might worry about whether the experts in these examples are really peers since it would be difficult to determine if they have the exact same experience, ability and evidence. Still, they are close to serious, real-life cases of disagreement. How we respond to these types of disagreement can be significant.

As can be seen in the following case:

• Two Expert Judges: Suppose there are two expert judges who agree in 90% of cases and disagree in 10%. Suppose further that they are each correct in 95% of cases. So of the 10% of cases involving disagreement, each judge will be right in 5% of the cases. It just happens that there is no way of knowing which 5%.

If you are following their judgments, what should you do when they disagree? That depends on whether you want to get at the truth or avoid error. If you want to get at the truth you would be better off following one of the judges (since you will then be right 95% of the time). But if you want to avoid error, you should suspend judgment.

In the criminal law, the goal is usually thought to be to avoid error. The famous English jurist William Blackstone once observed (I'm paraphrasing) "'tis better for 10 guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be punished." The problem is that this could be crippling. For imagine if we had several experts, who are usually right, but disagree across a broad spectrum of cases. In that event, we would have to suspend judgment in nearly every case.

In the next part, we will move on to consider religious disagreement.

Oppy on Disagreement (Part 1)

For some reason, the epistemology of disagreement is a hot topic in the world of philosophy at the minute. It looks at a number of scenarios in which epistemic (or doxastic) peers disagree and wonders what is the rational response to such disagreements. I suspect that this interests philosophers since they tend to disagree so much, and their disagreements seem to be perpetual.

Of course, one area which generates a lot of disagreement is the philosophy of religion. There, people of seemingly equal philosophical acumen and care can have profound disagreements. So it is natural that the current fad for the epistemology of disagreement should wander into this fevered pit of philosophical debate.

While reading exapologist's blog recently, I came across a paper by Graham Oppy on the potential significance of the epistemology of disagreement for the philosophy of religion. Unsurprisingly given his previous work, Oppy is not sure that any special insight into religious disagreement can actually be gained with this fad, at least in its present form.

In the process of dampening enthusiasm, Oppy nonetheless provides an excellent overview of the epistemology of disagreement. So by going through his article we can both learn something about this burgeoning field of philosophical inquiry as well as its potential application to areas of serious disagreement.

In this introductory post, I will introduce the key concepts and questions from the epistemology of disagreement (as identified by Oppy).


1. Key Concepts
I am afraid that this will be nothing more exciting than a list of concepts. Here we go:

• Disagreement: A disagreement arises whenever two or more people have different attitudes toward a proposition. For example, Ann and Bob might have different attitudes toward the proposition "Barack Obama is the greatest U.S. president ever." Ann thinks it is true; Bob thinks that nothing could be more ridiculous.

• Reasonable Disagreement: A disagreement is reasonable if it does not seem to arise from any cognitive or evidential flaw or error. In other words, nothing seems to have gone wrong in the process that led to Ann and Bob forming their different attitudes. This may result in the parties agreeing to disagree.

• Cognitive Comparators: People are cognitive peers if they have equal cognitive ability, i.e. they are equally good at perceiving, remembering, inferring and so on. It is also possible for people to be cognitive superiors or inferiors. When talking about cognitive superiority/parity we may only be talking about specific domains of knowledge.

• Evidential Comparators: People are evidential peers if they have access to the same evidence, i.e. they are equally well informed about a given topic. Again, it is possible for them to be superiors or inferiors as well.

• Doxastic Comparators: This is simply a combination of the cognitive and evidential dimensions. So, for example, people are doxastic peers if they have equal cognitive ability and are equally well-informed. One may wonder whether it is actually possible for genuine doxastic peers to exist.

• Belief: A "belief" can be understood in two different ways. Either (i) an all-or-nothing attitude toward a proposition (true/false); or (ii) a graded attitude toward a proposition (e.g. "55% true"). Oppy prefers the graded conception.

• Rationality: One of the main goals of the epistemology of disagreement is to discovery the rational response to disagreement between doxastic peers. "Rationality" here is understood as a normative standard of belief revision. Although no one's quite sure what those norms are, Oppy will assume they can be determined.

Okay so those are the key concepts. Let's move on to the motivating questions.

2. Key Questions

As mentioned above, one of the main goals of epistemology of disagreement is to answer the question "What should doxastic peers do when they learn that they disagree about some proposition P?".

Two extreme positions have been identified in the literature. The first is the conciliationist or conformist position. According to this position, when two people learn that they disagree about a proposition, and they have established their peer-status, they should split the difference between their respective attitudes. In other words, they should give proportional weight to both their own view and the view of their peer.

The second position is the steadfast or non-conformist position. No prizes will be awarded for guessing that this means, in the event of disagreement between doxastic peers, each should stick with the beliefs they originally had.

In the next part of this series we will consider some "toy" cases in which these extreme positions might be appropriate. However, we may wonder about their general applicability. Oppy suggests that the Bayesian position -- "always conditionalise your belief on the evidence" -- is a possible answer to the problem of disagreement and that it is quite distinct from the two extreme positions outlined above.

Apparently, he is preparing an article which will flesh out this Bayesian position in more detail. So we will have to wait and see what it really entails.

Okay, that's enough for now. The next part looks at different cases of disagreement.