Year: 2019
Type: article
Abstract: Assume that it is yourevidencethat determines what opinions you should have. I argue that since you should take peer disagreement seriously, evidence must have two features. (1) It must sometimes warrant beingmodest: uncertain what your evidence warrants, and (thus) uncertain whether you’re rational. (2) But it must always warrant beingguided: disposed to treat your evidence as a guide. It is surprisingly difficult to vindicate these dual constraints. But diagnosing why this is so leads to a proposal—Trust—that is weak enough to allow modesty but strong enough to yield many guiding features. In fact, I argue that Trust is theGoldilocks principle—for it is necessary and sufficient to vindicate the claim that you should always prefer to use free evidence. Upshot: Trust lays the foundations for a theory of disagreement and, more generally, an epistemology that permits self‐doubt—a modest epistemology.
DOI: 10.1111/phpr.12561
Author: Kevin Dorst
Institution: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2907450679