The Epistemic Significance of Disagreement (Palgrave Innovations in Philosophy)

Discovering someone disagrees with you is a common occurrence. The question of epistemic significance of disagreement concerns how discovering that another disagrees with you affects the rationality of your beliefs on that topic. This book examines the answers that have been proposed to this question, and presents and defends its own answer. Discovering someone disagrees with you is a common occurrence, but how does discovering that another person disagrees with you about something affect the rationality of your beliefs on that topic? This is the question of epistemic significance of disagreement, which Matheson seeks to answer here. Beginning with a survey of the literature on this issue, Matheson maps out the conceptual space, presents the central examples, and explains the key arguments. At the same time, he develops and defends a particular account of the epistemic significance of disagreement 6 a version of the Equal Weight View. Compared to previous discussions of the epistemic significance of disagreement, this book extends beyond idealized cases of peer disagreement to real-life cases of disagreement and in so doing offers the reader a more complete view of the topic Front Matter....Pages i-xii Introduction....Pages 1-18 Idealized Disagreement....Pages 19-34 Steadfast Views of Disagreement....Pages 35-64 Conciliatory Views of Disagreement and the Equal Weight View....Pages 65-83 Objections to the Equal Weight View....Pages 84-112 Everyday Disagreements....Pages 113-135 Objections....Pages 136-159 Conclusion....Pages 160-166 Back Matter....Pages 167-190