In this paper, I will argue that recent work on the affective dimension of
information-processing poses a serious challenge to mainstream accounts of
disagreement found in contemporary social epistemology. In short, the challenge
is this: Negatively-valenced information results in asymmetric updating of beliefs
such that we are both strongly predisposed to maintain our confidence in our own
belief-forming capabilities on one hand, and equally strongly predisposed to
overemphasize the fact of disagreement in our consideration of the belief under
dispute on the other. These predispositions strongly motivate our belief-forming
processes, but which predisposition is the strongest motivator in any given
situation is highly contextual—and beyond our control. Traditional accounts of
disagreement thus assume a degree of control over our response to disagreements
that we simply do not have, rendering their normative claims inappropriate. In their
place I will sketch an account of disagreement, inspired by the work of William
James, that holds that the most rational response to disagreement is neither
conciliationist nor steadfastness, but rather receptivity to contrary evidence.
This paper shall proceed in the following manner. In the next section, I will
give a brief sketch of the two main strands of thought in the scholarship on
disagreement. In section three, I will consider how contemporary cognitive science
on the asymmetrical updating of beliefs problematizes these accounts. In section
four, I provide a sketch of a James-inspired account of disagreement that eschews a global, normative account of disagreement, instead calling for agents to cultivate
an awareness of how they typically respond to disagreement and the mental
fortitude to resist this impulse under certain conditions.
