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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2013

Georgi Gardiner
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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 

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