The Equal Weight view can be interpreted as entailing that we lack moral knowledge. However, I am now going to go on to dispute this conclusion, primarily by focusing on the definition of epistemic peers and narrowing it so that this unfortunate outcome does not arise.
Elga says someone is an epistemic peer if you count them ‘as being as good as you at evaluating such claims’, and ‘if and only if you think that, conditional the two of you disagreeing about the claim, the two of you are equally likely to be mistaken’ (Elga, 2007). Gutting has said an epistemic peer is defined as an equal with respect to factors such as ‘intelligence, perspicacity, honesty, thoroughness, and other relevant epistemic virtues’ (Gutting, 1982. p83) while Kelly has said ‘familiarity with the evidence and arguments which bear on [the relevant] question’, and ‘general epistemic virtues such as intelligence, thoughtfulness, and freedom from bias’ (Gutting, 1982). Elga backs his definition because it would seem strange that even if you are the same in respect to intelligence, thoroughness and unbiased-ness, if you thought your friend was more likely to be wrong than you it would be odd to still give their view equal weight to yours. I am going to go on to discuss some clarifications, working with any of these definitions, that narrow down the number of situations in which someone could be considered your epistemic peer.
Elga makes an important clarification that while you may consider someone who you have entered into a disagreement into as ordinarily being your epistemic peer, it is important to consider the circumstances of the disagreement as this affects whether they truly are your peer or not in the situation. He uses the example of the weather getting extremely hot (Elga, 2007. p16). While you previously thought your friend was your epistemic peer, you are aware of the fact that they cannot think straight in hot weather, whereas you can. As such instead of lowering your confidence in your belief and suspending judgement on the matter, you should instead feel fairly confident that your friend is the mistaken party as a result of the hot weather altering their judgement. His point is that you should not be guided purely by your prior assessment of the supposed epistemic peer’s judging ability. Instead you should be guided by your prior assessment of their judging ability when factoring in the judging conditions as this can often affect the accuracy of one’s conclusion. It is therefore not correct to give a supposed epistemic peer’s view equal weight and thus suspend judgment if you know they are likely to err in particular circumstances and those circumstances arise. Furthermore, Elga also makes the clarification that you might consider a friend as your epistemic peer in regards to an areas such as mathematics, but then find yourself in a disagreement with them on an ethical topic such as euthanasia (Elga, 2007. p16). It would not, however, be correct to then suspend your judgement on the euthanasia topic and give their view equal weight because being epistemic peers in mathematics does not translate to being epistemic peers on euthanasia.
These clarifications begin to narrow down the number of occasions in which two people can be considered epistemic peers. However, I am going to extend this idea and go on to discuss why genuine instances of peer disagreement do not actually tend to exist often, if at all, in the real world.
As such, conciliatory views of peer disagreement do not actually entail that we lack moral knowledge as a whole because genuine epistemic peer disagreement is not a wide-spread common phenomenon. If there are instances where it does arise, leading to us lacking moral knowledge, it is only in a few small and isolated occasions, and does not lead to wide-spread moral scepticism. This is as a result of a large number of instances of supposed disagreements between epistemic peers not being genuine situations of epistemic peers, and as such not being able to merit suspending judgement on the matter.
Vavova argues that ‘conciliationism does not require agnosticism in response about the most basic moral beliefs, such as pain is bad’ because it is very rare that there are disagreements over such basic ethical beliefs (Vavova, 2014. p1). As such we are justified in holding these more foundational moral beliefs. Extending on this idea, Simpson argues that while in trivial factual cases such as in a peer disagreement of memory, where A and B differ over the order of events that happened, it is fairly easy for the opposing parties to be genuine epistemic peers in regards to the case because both of them were present and have similar processing powers and as such they should cede ground about their beliefs. However, in a more complex ethical disagreements, a lot more factors come into play and it is unlikely if the two will ever quite qualify as genuine epistemic peers (Simpson, 2012. p563). Kelly argues that ‘there is no magic red light that illuminates when one responds to the evidence correctly, no warning bell that sounds when one does not’ (Kelly, 2010. p60) meaning that often when disputes arise there is no fact of the matter about who responded correctly to the evidence that can be used to resolve the dispute, so it seems that suspending judgement is the correct response to take. However, in most real world situations one of the parties is always going to have an upper hand, either by having more evidence that is relevant to the situation or possessing more refined cognitive abilities, which justifies them in not suspending judgement and as such retaining justification for their belief (Simpson, 2012. p563). As such, we are justified in holding basic moral beliefs as there do not tend to be disagreements over these, much less by genuine epistemic peers, and in more complex matters so many factors come into play that again it is very hard to deem the opposing parties as truly being epistemic peers.
2019-3-22-1553252568