Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T02:29:02.668Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE COMMUTATIVITY OF EVIDENCE: A PROBLEM FOR CONCILIATORY VIEWS OF PEER DISAGREEMENT

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2013

Georgi Gardiner
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Conciliatory views of peer disagreement hold that when an agent encounters peer disagreement she should conciliate by adjusting her doxastic attitude towards that of her peer. In this paper I distinguish different ways conciliation can be understood and argue that the way conciliationism is typically understood violates the principle of commutativity of evidence. Commutativity of evidence holds that the order in which evidence is acquired should not influence what it is reasonable to believe based on that evidence. I argue that when an agent encounters more than one peer, and applies the process of conciliation serially, the order she encounters the peers influences the resulting credence. I argue this is a problem for conciliatory views of disagreement, and suggest some responses available to advocates of conciliation.

Type
Articles
Information
Episteme , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , March 2014 , pp. 83 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Ballantyne, N. and Coffman, E. J. 2012. ‘Conciliationism and Uniqueness.’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 90: 657–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christensen, D. 2007. ‘Epistemology of Disagreement: the Good News.’ Philosophical Review, 116: 187–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christensen, D.. 2009. ‘Disagreement as Evidence: The Epistemology of Controversy.’ Philosophy Compass, 4: 756–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christensen, D.. 2010. ‘Higher Order Evidence.’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 81: 185–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elga, A. 2007. ‘Reflection and Disagreement.’ Noûs, 41: 478–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elga, A.. 2010. ‘How to Disagree about How to Disagree.’ In Warfield, T. and Feldman, R. (eds), Disagreement. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Feldman, R. 2006. ‘Epistemological Puzzles about Disagreement.’ In Hetherington, S. (ed.), Epistemology Futures, pp. 216–36. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Feldman, R.. 2007. ‘Reasonable Religious Disagreements.’ In Anthony, L. (ed.), Philosophers without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life, pp. 194–214. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Field, H. 1978. ‘A Note on Jeffrey Conditionalization.’ Philosophy of Science, 45: 361–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frances, B. 2010. ‘Disagreement.’ In Pritchard, D. and Bernecker, S. (eds), Routledge Companion to Epistemology, pp. 68–74. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gabbay, D., Hartmann, S. and Woods, J. (eds) 2010. Handbook for the History of Logic. Vol. 10, Inductive Logic. Berlin: Springer.Google Scholar
Genest, C. and Zidek, J. 1986. ‘Combining Probability Distributions: A Critique and an Annotated Bibliography.’ Statistical Science, 1: 114–35.Google Scholar
Hawthorne, J. 2009. ‘The Lockean Thesis and the Logic of Belief.’ In Huber, F. and Schmidt-Petri, C. (eds.), Degrees of Belief, pp. 49–74. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jeffrey, R. 1965. The Logic of Decision. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Jeffrey, R.. 2002. Subjective Probability: The Real Thing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jehle, D. and Fitelson, B. 2009. ‘What is the ‘Equal Weight View'?’ Episteme, 6: 280–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, T. 2005. ‘The Epistemic Significance of Disagreement.’ In Gendler, T. and Hawthorne, J. (eds), Oxford Studies in Epistemology, pp. 167–96. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, T.. 2010. ‘Peer Disagreement and Higher Order Evidence.’ In Warfield, T. and Feldman, R. (eds), Disagreement, pp. 111–174. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lange, M. 2000. ‘Is Jeffrey Conditionalization Defective By Virtue of Being Non-Commutative? Remarks on the Sameness of Sensory Experience.’ Synthese, 123: 393–403.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacFarlane, J. draft. ‘Varieties of Disagreement.’Google Scholar
Wagner, C. 2002. ‘Probability Kinematics and Commutativity.’ Philosophy of Science, 69: 266–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, A. 2010. ‘Disagreement, Equal Weight and Commutativity.’ Philosophical Studies, 149: 321–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar