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Unconfirmed peers and spinelessness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Ben Sherman
Ben Sherman*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA
*
*Email: benrs@bu.edu
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Abstract

The Equal Weight View holds that, when we discover we disagree with an epistemic peer, we should give our peer’s judgment as much weight as our own. But how should we respond when we cannot tell whether those who disagree with us are our epistemic peers? I argue for a position I will call the Earn-a-Spine View. According to this view, parties to a disagreement can remain confident, at least in some situations, by finding justifiable reasons to think their opponents are less credible than themselves, even if those reasons are justifiable only because they lack information about their opponents.

Keywords

Epistemologydisagreementepistemic peerEqual Weight Viewspinelessness
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , August 2015 , pp. 425 - 444
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2015

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Footnotes

†

Shortly prior to this article’s acceptance, the author accepted a position at Brandeis University.

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