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Conformity and Rationality, Part 1
If everyone around disagrees with you, wouldn't you be more rational to admit you might be wrong — that maybe there just isn't a "right answer" in this case? Hmm.
A Better Argument From Moral Disagreement?
In my last series of articles, I argued that the so-called Argument from Moral Disagreement needs a lot more cowbell. It's not at all clear that its premises are true and, even if its premises were obviously true, it would still be unclear how they support the conclusion that morality is subjective.
Can we conclude, then, that disagreement over morality constitutes no problem at all for the moral beliefs we hold?
Unfortunately, no. The fact that people disagree over morality gives us insufficient reason to embrace the metaphysical conclusion that morality isn't objective — that nothing beyond human opinion grounds our claims about morality — but disagreement over morality might constitute evidence that we are mistaken in a lot of our moral views. Disagreement, then, might constitute an epistemological (rather than metaphysical) problem for our moral views.
Disagreement as Evidence That You're Wrong
To see why this might be the case, suppose that you spend regular time in TrueU's Coffee Shop, and suppose that (for whatever reason) you've posted an opinion about the morality of tobacco use. According to your post, one ought to refrain from smoking cigarettes, but it's morally permissible to enjoy a pipe every now and then. (Pipes aren't addictive the way cigarettes are, and this makes a difference, you argue.) But now suppose that, in the days that follow this post, nearly all of your Coffee Shop peers post comments objecting to your position. According to almost all of your peers, you're distinction between cigarettes and pipes is spurious.
How should you respond to these objections? What's the rational course of action here?
We've already seen that your disagreement with other Coffee Shop regulars gives you no good reason to conclude that there's no objective fact of the matter regarding the morality of tobacco use. But doesn't it give you evidence that you might be objectively wrong about tobacco use?
After all, compare the following scenarios:
Scenario 1
You post a comment in the Coffee Shop claiming that it's OK to smoke a pipe, and, after they've thought hard about what you've said, everybody agrees with you.
Scenario 2
You post a comment in the Coffee Shop claiming that it's OK to smoke a pipe, and, after they've thought hard about what you've said, everybody disagrees with you.
In which scenario would it be more rational for you to continue to believe that it's OK to smoke a pipe: Scenario 1, in which everybody agrees with you, or Scenario 2, in which everybody disagrees with you? Isn't it obvious that continuing to believe it's OK to smoke a pipe would be more rational in Scenario 1 than in Scenario 2? Isn't it also obvious that this is because you acquire evidence for and against your belief that it's OK to smoke a pipe in the various scenarios — evidence for your belief in Scenario 1, and evidence against your belief in Scenario 2?
Given all of this, however, how can we resist the conclusion that you are rationally obligated to conform to the opinions of you Coffee Shop peers? You can't continue to believe that smoking a pipe is OK without believing that you're right and everybody else is wrong. But wouldn't it be terribly dogmatic for you to believe this? Doesn't the reasonable course here consist in moving your opinion about pipe smoking toward the opinions of those with whom you disagree?
Or consider another scenario:
Scenario 3
You post a comment in the Coffee Shop claiming that it's OK to smoke a pipe, and, after they've thought hard about what you've said, half of your Coffee Shop peers agree with you and the other half disagree with you.
Wouldn't the rational response in this scenario consist in agnosticism?1 In Scenario 1, where everybody thought you were right about smoking pipes, the rational response seemed to consist in gaining confidence that smoking pipes was OK, and, in Scenario 2, where everybody thought smoking pipes was wrong, being a reasonable, non-dogmatic person seemed to consist in forming the belief (or at least becoming somewhat confident that) smoking pipes wasn't OK. In Scenario 3, then, where the vote is split, wouldn't it be rather dogmatic to believe one way or the other? Wouldn't rationality require you to say you're just not sure whether or not smoking a pipe is OK? If so, then we appear to have a whole new problem.
Disagreement as a Problem for Belief in General
If rationality requires you to conform to the views of your peers in these cases, then it seems that rationality would require a level of conformity to the views of your peers in every case. But as we saw in "The Argument from Moral Disagreement, Part 1" the views of our peers are rather diverse. We disagree about all kinds of things, even within the smallest sub-groups of evangelicalism. So it looks like moral disagreement might be a problem for our moral beliefs after all.
Worse still, there's nothing special about moral disagreement. If disagreement over our moral beliefs gives us evidence that we're wrong, then, for exactly the same reasons, disagreement over any of our beliefs gives us evidence that those beliefs are wrong. If the rational response is conformity to the opinions of those with whom we disagree in the case of moral disagreement, then the rational response is conformity in other cases of disagreement as well.
But now think of the beliefs you hold about which everybody agrees. There are very few of them, aren't there? People disagree about the existence of God, about the effectiveness of the war in Iraq, and all that. But even relatively non-controversial beliefs, like your belief that you're sitting at a computer right now, aren't completely free of disagreement. (No doubt, someone somewhere — probably some philosopher — thinks you're not really sitting at a computer right now.) Most of our beliefs, then, seem to be infected by disagreement.
So, here's the question: Won't the reasonable, non-dogmatic person conform (at least to some degree) to the views of his peers? And given the fact that people disagree about almost everything, won't this conformity lead to agnosticism about almost everything?
If all of us were ideally rational — free of dogmatism, personal insecurity and intellectual hubris — in response to almost any question about the world, wouldn't we respond in stereo, Who knows. It looks one way to me, another way to you, and a third way to someone else. There's no way to tell which of us is really right?
Hold On a Minute!
Well, perhaps you don't think so. Perhaps you think this argument has moved way too fast, barreling over dozens of important distinctions and qualifications along the way. If so, you're undoubtedly right. Whether or not one is rationally obliged to conform in the face of disagreement surely has a lot to do with the people with whom one is disagreeing, the subject under dispute, and much else besides.2
C O F F E E S H O PIf a rational person admits to the fact that they just might not know, then what's to keep us from being agnostic about everything, including God?
Join the discussion!
In my next article, we'll get into these distinctions and qualifications. There (and in the article to follow), I will try to defend the thesis that there are important cases where disagreement gives you no obligation at all to conform — cases where you can simply ignore the opinion of someone who disagrees with you, and do so without being guilty of dogmatism.3
- Take the proposition that Hilary Clinton is going to be the next president of the United States. To be agnostic toward this proposition is to neither believe that Hilary will be our next president nor believe that she won't be our next president. Agnosticism toward this proposition consists in considering it and concluding that you have too little evidence one way or the other. You just can't tell. To become agnostic toward your post about pipe smoking, then, isn't to conclude that your post was mistaken. It's simply to withhold judgment on what you said there. Maybe you were right, and maybe you were wrong. You just can't tell. Back^
- In case you're wondering if I've set up and attacked a straw man here, the answer is, why yes, I have. But note that attacking straw men is only objectionable when our doing so involves attributing bad arguments to people who do not forward them. In this case, I've done no such thing. Rather, I've presented a somewhat caricatured version of an argument I heard in class, not for the sake of showing that anybody is wrong, but for the sake of raising a nest of interesting questions about the epistemic significance of disagreement. Back^
- By "dogmatism," I mean that you are overly stubborn in the face of objections and counter-evidence.4 Back^
- By "counter-evidence," I mean evidence that suggest ~p wherever you believe p.5 Back^
- Suppose "p" is the proposition that the proper pronunciation of "TrueU" is "Troo-eee-ooo." Then ~p is the proposition that the proper pronunciation of "TrueU" is not "Troo-eee-ooo."6 Back^
- A proposition (in the philosophical sense of the word) is the thought or idea that can be abstracted from different sentences with the same meaning. The proposition is whatever idea they both express. For example, the English sentence "snow is white" expresses the same proposition as the German sentence "Schnee ist weiss."7 Back^
Notes on Notes
Notes on Notes on Notes
Notes on Notes on Notes on Notes
Look, Notes on Toast
Blake Roeber is a graduate student in philosophy at Northern Illinois University, but not for long. After completing his MA in the spring of '08, he'll start a PhD in philosophy at Rutgers.
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