2019/01/02 by Kevin Dorst · 90 citations
Arts and Humanities · Computer Science · Social Sciences · #Access Control and Trust #Certainty #Dual (grammatical number) #Economics #Epistemology #Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics #Financial economics #Goldilocks principle #Law and economics #Logic, Reasoning, and Knowledge #Philosophy #Warrant
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/phpr.12561
published in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 100(3), 586-632 (Wiley)
openalex publication_date 2019/01/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Assume that it is your evidence that 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 being modest : uncertain what your evidence warrants, and (thus) uncertain whether you’re rational. (2) But it must always warrant being guided : 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 the Goldilocks 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.