Grad Talk Series: Russell Ming (UCI Philosophy Graduate Student)

 Accepting Defeat

Disagreement is common. So, what is epistemic significance? Conciliationism says that evidence of disagreement can undermine knowledge or justification. I argue that conciliationism is self-defeating: proponents of the view must rely on a thesis that they should deny. This is stronger than the familiar self-defeat argument: it is conceptual, not epistemic. Ultimately, the problem with conciliationism is due to its connection to other issues in social epistemology.