The Epistemic Significance of Disagreement

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.

Matheson has provided us with an excellent overview of some of the most prominent positions and arguments in the literature so far. Matheson's discussion is clear and organized thematically in a way that makes it well suited as an introductory text on the epistemology of disagreement. Matheson's book is not only intended to provide an overview of the existing debate about disagreement, it is also meant to contribute to that debate by mounting a systematic defence of a conciliatory view . (Finnur Dellsén, Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 67 (269), October, 2017)

Auteur

Jonathan Matheson is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Florida. He works mainly in epistemology, and has published articles in Philosophical Studies, Episteme, and Social Epistemology among others, and is the co-editor (with Rico VItz) of The Ethics of Belief: Individual and Social.

Contenu

1. Introduction 2. Idealized Disagreement 3. Steadfast Views of Disagreement 4. Conciliatory Views of Disagreement and the Equal Weight View 5. Objections to the Equal Weight View 6. Everyday Disagreements 7. Objections 8. Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index