Two economists — both with PhDs, having read the same empirical studies — reach opposite conclusions about whether a minimum wage increase reduces employment. On the conciliationist 'equal weight view,' what should each economist do?
AEach should maintain their position, since both have done careful reasoning and the other's conclusion does not add new first-order data
BEach should significantly reduce their confidence in their own view and move toward the other's position, treating the peer's conclusion as evidence on a par with their own
CThe one with more recent publications should be treated as the more authoritative epistemic source
DBoth should suspend judgment entirely until additional empirical evidence settles the question
Conciliationism (the equal weight view) holds that when a genuine epistemic peer reaches a different conclusion from the same evidence, this disagreement is itself evidence that something went wrong — and each party has roughly equal probability of being the one who erred. Therefore each should treat the peer's conclusion as a counterweight to their own, reducing confidence and moving toward the middle. Option A describes the steadfast response — the competing view. Option D might be a rational further step but is not what conciliationism specifically prescribes.
Question 2 Multiple Choice
Philosophers argue that conciliationism is 'self-undermining.' What is this objection?
AConciliationism is self-undermining because it leads to overconfidence — conciliating makes you feel your view is vindicated
BWhen two epistemic peers disagree about whether conciliationism is correct, the view instructs them to conciliate — producing a diluted hybrid, then further conciliation, progressively dissolving the original position
CThe view is self-undermining because who counts as a peer becomes a circular question that conciliationism cannot answer
DThe view is self-undermining because real-world peers never actually update their beliefs, making the theory empirically vacuous
The self-undermining objection targets conciliationism's reflexive application. Suppose philosopher A accepts conciliationism and philosopher B rejects it — they are epistemic peers on the meta-question. Conciliationism instructs A to conciliate, moving toward B's steadfast view and reducing A's commitment to conciliationism. Now A holds 'mild conciliationism.' If another peer disagrees, further conciliation is required, progressively eroding the original position. The view seems to eat itself when applied to its own correctness, motivating restricted versions that apply only in certain domains.
Question 3 True / False
Steadfastness in response to peer disagreement is a form of dogmatism or arrogance — it amounts to refusing to learn from others who have examined the same evidence.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: False
Steadfastness is a principled epistemological position, not stubbornness. The steadfaster's claim is that first-order reasoning — the actual evaluation of evidence — is the primary guide to belief. Discovering that a peer disagrees gives you higher-order information (someone reached a different conclusion) but does not add new first-order evidence about the question itself. A steadfaster may still recheck their reasoning when they discover disagreement; they simply do not take the mere fact of disagreement as requiring movement toward the peer's view. The key question is whether the peer's disagreement tells you something about the truth of the matter — steadfasters say it does not.
Question 4 True / False
Learning that an epistemic peer reached a different conclusion from the same evidence is itself a piece of evidence that you may have made a reasoning error, even if you cannot identify where the error occurred.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: True
This is the core conciliationist intuition. Before the disagreement, your credence reflected your assessment of the evidence. Discovering that an equally capable reasoner examining the same evidence reached a different conclusion changes your epistemic situation: you know someone of equal caliber got a different answer from the same inputs, which is evidence that one of you made an error — but you cannot determine which from the inside. The restaurant bill example makes this vivid: if you trust your friend's arithmetic as much as your own, their different total is genuine evidence that one of you made a mistake.
Question 5 Short Answer
What is the distinction between first-order evidence and higher-order evidence in the disagreement debate, and why does it matter for whether you should update when a peer disagrees?
Think about your answer, then reveal below.
Model answer: First-order evidence is evidence directly about the question under dispute — data, arguments, and observations that bear on whether the claim is true. Higher-order evidence is evidence about the reliability of a reasoning process — information about whether the procedure used to reach a conclusion is likely to produce correct results. A peer's disagreement is higher-order evidence: it tells you that someone equally capable reached a different conclusion, which is evidence that something may have gone wrong in one of your reasoning chains. Conciliationists argue this higher-order evidence should reduce confidence in your view. Steadfasters argue higher-order evidence does not override first-order reasoning: the evidence you already evaluated is the primary basis for belief, and learning that a process delivered a different answer is weaker grounds for revision than finding new evidence about the object of inquiry.
The distinction identifies what work the peer's disagreement can do epistemically. If disagreement counted as first-order evidence — directly informing whether the claim is true — conciliationism would be nearly trivially correct. The steadfaster's defense is precisely that disagreement is not that kind of evidence: it is a signal about epistemic processes, not facts. How much weight to assign that signal, and whether it should override first-order reasoning, is the crux of the debate.