Moral Disagreement and Higher-Order Evidence

Abstract

This paper sketches a general account of how to respond in an epistemically rational way to moral disagreement. Roughly, the account states that when two parties, A and B, disagree as to whether p, A says p while B says not-p, this is higher-order evidence that A has made a cognitive error on the first-order level of reasoning in coming to believe that p (and likewise for B with respect to not-p). If such higherorder evidence is not defeated, then one rationally ought to reduce one's confidence with respect to the proposition in question. We term this the higher-order evidence account (the HOE account), and present it as superior to what we might call standard conciliationism, which holds that when agents A and B disagree about p, and are (known) epistemic peers, they should both suspend judgement about p or adjust their confidence towards the mean of A and B's prior credences in p. Many have suspected that standard conciliationism is implausible and may have skeptical implications. After presenting the HOE account, we put it to work by applying it to # We have presented this material at workshops in London, Lisbon, and Copenhagen. Thanks to audiences there for helpful comments, in particular Julien Dutant, Alexander Heape and participants in LVU18, Lisbon. 2 a range of cases of moral disagreement, including those that have featured in recent debates assuming standard conciliationism. We show that the HOE account support reasonable, non-skeptical verdicts in a range of cases. Note that this is a paper on moral disagreement, not on the HOE account, thus the account is merely stated here, while defended more fully elsewhere. 1

Modeling Deep Disagreement in Default Logic

“…4 According to this theoretical stance, deep disagreements are deep because they are not solely concerned with "surface-level" propositions about, say, a particular weather forecast (Christensen, 2007), but also propositions stating the fundamental epistemic principles we ought to apply when trying to predict the weather in general. In other words, deep disagreements are disagreements over fundamental epistemic principles like those specifying which traditions, institutions, methods, sources of evidence, and patterns of reasoning to rely upon when forming beliefs (Kappel and Andersen, 2019).…”

The Role of Moral Experts in Secret Policy

“…14 See Finnur Dellsén and Maria Baghramian (2021) on this issue. 15 For a discussion of how to think about moral disagreement, see Kappel and Andersen (2019).…”