Knowledge and Disagreement

Abstract

This chapter investigates the prospects of a knowledge-first approach to disagreement. This approach takes knowledge to be the central value of the epistemic domain, and norms governing moves in this domain – such as belief in the face of disagreement – to drop right out of this value. On our account, in a case in which A and B disagree about whether p – where, after the discovery of the disagreement, A has a doxastic attitude D with content p and B has a doxastic attitude D* with content not-p – A prima facie should conciliate in virtue of her disagreement with B if and only if A’s doxastic attitude thus adopted would thereby be closer to knowledge than D, or else hold steadfast.