Epistemic Peers, Disagreement, and Biased Judgment: Why A Good Judge of Peerhood is Hard to Find

ABSTRACT The responses to idealized cases of peer disagreement given in the peer disagreement literature are presented as though those responses ought to be applied to real-world cases of disagreement. In order to apply the advice given in the literature to actual disagreement situations, one must first confidently identify one’s epistemic peers. Previous work in the literature, especially by Nathan King, suggests that one cannot confidently identify one’s epistemic peers in real-world cases of disagreement because it is unlikely that any two people will ever meet the idealized conditions of peerhood in real-world disagreements. I argue that due to the unconscious judgment-altering effects of certain cognitive biases, even if one could consciously meet the idealized conditions for epistemic peerhood as they are outlined in the peer disagreement literature, one should still not be confident that one has correctly identified others as one’s epistemic peers. I give examples of how cognitive biases can affect one’s judgments of one’s own epistemic abilities and the epistemic abilities of others, and I conclude that the peer disagreement literature’s prescriptions may not be suitable for, and are perhaps deleterious to, rational real-world disagreement resolution.