1. Introduction
I take the following to be a paradigmatic instance of deep disagreement:
Alex and Billie: Alex is a deeply religious Christian. Her views on a variety of topics are influenced by her Christian identity. For instance, she believes that God implants a soul at the moment of conception. This belief informs Alex's firm pro-life stance on the topic of abortion. Billie is an atheist. He was raised in a secular household. Billie believes that morality is independent of religion, and is pro-choice. Alex and Billie regard each other as generally intelligent and reasonable, but when it comes to abortion, they do not see eye to eye. Neither accepts the reasons offered by the other for their respective positions. Whenever the topic comes up, Alex and Billie's discussion either becomes heated, or they avoid talking about their views and change the subject.
What makes this a paradigmatic instance of deep disagreement, intuitively, is that – in contrast to ordinary disagreement – it is persistent and cries out for resolution. We can imagine that in a case like this, ordinary methods for resolving disagreement, such as gathering more evidence, compromising, clarifying the positions of the disputants, etc., are ineffective in bringing about a consensus. Yet Alex and Billie, we can imagine, each continues to think that they are right and the other is wrong, rather than suspending judgment or lowering confidence in their own view. Could such a steadfast response to a disagreement of this sort be anything other than irrational?
There are several explanations of the persistence of deep disagreement. I shall focus (in section 3) on an account of deep disagreement, offered by hinge epistemology, that I find plausible at least for a limited but significant range of cases.Footnote 1 This account holds that deep disagreements are not directly rationally resolvable when they concern a hinge commitment of one of the disputants – that is, a commitment held with maximal subjective certainty yet which lacks rational grounding (in a sense to be explained).
Though I focus here on hinge epistemology, the issue I aim to explore in this paper – namely, that of how intellectual humility can be useful in navigating deep disagreement – is relevant for other accounts that also explain the persistence of deep disagreement by appeal to beliefs, principles, or assumptions that are particularly resistant to change by rational means.Footnote 2 So I shall not primarily be arguing for the theoretical advantages of a particular explanation of the persistence of deep disagreement. (Indeed, I see no reason to think that the persistence of all cases of deep disagreement must be explained in just one way.) Nevertheless, I shall frame the issues throughout in terms of hinge epistemology, since I find that to provide a plausible account of the disagreements of interest, and to provide a framework suitable for illuminating the points I wish to make about intellectual humility.
The conclusion that seems to be invited by the hinge epistemic approach is that when one's hinge commitments are challenged, the only rational response available is to dogmatically hold to them, and thus if a resolution to the disagreement is possible at all, it will have to proceed (at least initially) through non-rational means.Footnote 3 This conclusion appears unappealing for two reasons: first, because it seems to endorse dogmatism or arrogance as a response to certain disagreements, and second, because it possibly leaves us with something like propaganda or even force as the only available means of resolving deep disagreements on pressing matters. However, I shall identify (in section 4) an attitude of intellectual humility that it is appropriate to have towards our hinge commitments, and discuss how this attitude can be useful for navigating deep disagreement.
2. What is deep disagreement?
Intuitively, part of what makes a disagreement deep rather than shallow has to do with how easily the disagreement could be rationally resolved by the disputants’ lights. Let us restrict our discussion to disagreements of the following sort: disagreement that occurs when A claims that p, and B denies that p, where A and B are each aware of the other's claim and denial, respectively. Here is how I propose to capture the distinction between shallow and deep disagreement:
Shallow disagreement: A disagreement is shallow just in case the disputants are fairly easily able to reach a substantive consensus by rational means; that is, through an exchange of their reasons, acquiring further reasons, or correcting any simple errors in reasoning.
By ‘substantive consensus’, I mean a response to a disagreement concerning whether p where all disputants come to agree either that p is the case, or that not-p is the case. This rules out cases where disputants ‘resolve’ their disagreement by agreeing to disagree or by suspending judgment concerning whether p.Footnote 4 If shallow disagreement were defined simply as disagreement that can fairly easily be rationally resolved, including by agreeing to disagree or by suspending judgment, then it would seem that almost all disagreement is shallow (since in almost any disagreement, disputants could rationally choose either to agree to disagree or to suspend judgment), and so we would have lost the distinction we set out to capture.Footnote 5 However, in a more restricted range of disagreement – the range that is of interest for this paper – it is not rational even for disputants to agree to disagree or to suspend judgment (more on this below).
By resolving disagreement through rational means, I mean ‘rational’ in an internalist sense; rational by the lights of each disputant (or perhaps an idealized version of each disputant), given what they believe and what epistemic principles they endorse. This internalist understanding has the result that when disputants disagree not just concerning whether p, but also on facts relevant to assessing the truth of p or on what would even count as evidence for p, the disagreement is not a shallow one.
The problem of disagreement I go on to discuss concerns what, from the first-person perspective, as parties to a disagreement, we ought to do to resolve it. Thus, what matters is not what is in fact objectively good reason for belief, but instead what reasons disputants will take as good reasons. So understood, the focus in this paper can be understood as a dialectical one about the reasons we can offer each other. When I am in a disagreement, it will be no help for me to ‘inform’ my interlocutor that I have objectively good reason for my position – this is part of what is at issue between us.Footnote 6
In appealing to what the disputants would find rational by their own lights, it might seem that my account makes deep disagreement too easy to come by. Imagine a ‘stubborn’ disputant who holds to his claim come what may, and rejects any principle of rationality that would make it rational for him to abandon his claim. On my view, any disagreement with this stubborn interlocutor will not be a shallow disagreement, unless it is us who would easily be convinced by him. I do not see this as a problem, however. We should ask whether the stubborn interlocutor genuinely holds to his commitment with such certainty that he finds it reasonable to reject any reasons which might call his commitment into question, or whether he is only posing, perhaps in order to play devil's advocate, or perhaps because he just likes to argue.Footnote 7 If the former, then I think we may indeed be faced with a deep disagreement. If the latter, then we are not facing deep disagreement, for the interlocutor is not truly making an assessment of what it is rational to believe, and is instead engaging in some other kind of activity. This reveals that in order for deep disagreement to occur, it must at least be the case that the disputants share some epistemic goals; they must be concerned with truth, and with deciding what it is rational to believe.Footnote 8 (As we shall be in a position to see later, those who persist in disagreement without sharing a concern for the truth cannot exhibit the sort of intellectual humility I go on to identify.)
The notion of deep disagreement that is of interest for the present project I define as follows:Footnote 9
Deep Disagreement: A disagreement is deep just in case (i) it is persistent, in that the disputants cannot easily reach a substantive consensus through an exchange of their reasons, acquiring further reasons, or correcting any simple errors in reasoning, (again, by their own lights) and (ii) there is a felt rational pressure among the disputants towards reaching a substantive consensus.
(i) distinguishes deep disagreement from shallow disagreement. But (i) alone, I think, is not sufficient to capture what is characteristic of paradigmatically deep disagreement. In some disagreements, it may be that no substantive consensus can easily be reached, but nevertheless disputants do find it reasonable to agree to disagree, or to suspend judgment, or to judge that there is no knowable objective truth of the matter. For instance, we might have a persistent disagreement over how many hairs were on Aristotle's head at the moment he died, but the reason we cannot reach a substantive consensus here is just that we recognize that we cannot know the answer. This may qualify as deep disagreement in some sense, but the range of disagreement of interest here are disagreements where there is rational pressure towards consensus, in the sense of there being a commitment to there being a knowable truth of the matter.Footnote 10
Part of what is distinctive of deep disagreement is that it is cause for cognitive concern. Alex and Billie are unable to easily reach a substantive consensus through an exchange of reasons, acquiring further reasons, or correcting errors in reasoning. But we can imagine that Alex and Billie are not content, as a purely rational, epistemic response to the disagreement, to suspend judgment or agree to disagree, or think that there is no knowable objective truth of the matter.Footnote 11 (They may of course agree to disagree for other reasons, such as a desire to maintain their friendship). Each thinks that there is a correct position to take on the issue, and that it is possible to discover what that position is; they take each other to be in error, and each thinks the error of the other could be corrected if the other side would only see things the right way (that is, by using the principles of reasoning and assessing evidence that their own side endorses).Footnote 12 We can suppose, for instance, that Alex thinks Billie does not give adequate weight to the sanctity of life in his thoughts about abortion, and Billie thinks Alex does not give enough weight to the right to control over one's body. After all, if they did not each think there was an objectively correct position, or if they did but thought it was impossible to discover, why would they continue to insist (or at least hope) that their interlocutor change their mind?
2.1. Explaining deep disagreement
One might think that the persistence of deep disagreement is evidence that neither disputant is wrong, in any objective sense. This could be because either there is no objective truth about the matter of dispute, or because disputants are simply talking past each other without realizing it.Footnote 13 Think of (some) disagreements on matters of taste – if I find Coltrane's music more beautiful than Mozart's, and you find the opposite, there is no objective sense in which one of us must be wrong, and so nothing that could rationally compel us to converge on a single answer. Though this might explain why some ‘disagreements’ over taste persist, disagreements about taste do not manifest (ii) – there is no pressure towards resolution, as we are content to agree to disagree on the matter, and so these are not true instances of deep disagreement as I understand it.Footnote 14 Now, we might continue to disagree because we mistakenly think there is an objective fact of the matter – there would then be a felt rational pressure towards resolution. I allow that some deep disagreement might be explained in this way – by the fact that disputants mistakenly take there to be an objectively correct position on the matter. In the case of Alex and Billie, however, it seems implausible to explain the disagreement as merely verbal, or to think there is no objectively correct position to take (barring moral nihilism or relativism of some sort). Alex straightforwardly believes, while Billie denies, as they are both aware, the proposition that abortion is almost always morally impermissible.
One may try to explain the persistence of deep disagreement by appealing to the difficulty of the issues involved, or to limitations on the cognitive abilities of the disputants, rather than accepting the surface appearance of deep disagreement as being rationally unresolvable. Perhaps we see persistent disagreement in philosophy, for instance, because philosophical problems are just really hard to figure out. There are simply contingent limitations on our cognitive abilities that explain why we might persistently disagree on a matter about which there is an objectively correct answer. Crucially, however, for this to succeed as an explanation of deep disagreement, it seems the cognitive limitations we face must be limitations we are unaware of.Footnote 15 For if disputants were aware that their cognitive limitations are responsible for their continued disagreement, then they should each find it rational to suspend judgment (and so there would no longer be a felt pressure towards rational resolution); after all, the sort of cognitive limitation under consideration here seems to defeat knowledge.Footnote 16 But where the cognitive limitations are ‘hidden’, disputants may (mistakenly) think that there is a knowable correct position to take (their own, of course), and so persist in the disagreement.
Again, ‘hidden’ cognitive limitations may adequately explain some instances of genuine deep disagreement. But I do not think that all deep disagreements are best explained in this way. For instance, in the case of Alex and Billie, it seems to me that there are no obvious cognitive limitations that may be at work which Alex or Billie could be ignorant of. While I do not endorse any particular moral epistemology here, to my mind, a feature of moral thought is that we are, simply in virtue of being moral agents, competent judges in many moral matters (though this is of course no guarantee of infallibility). There is no special expertise required to be able to form justified moral beliefs. In the absence of any other general cognitive limitations, then, it seems Alex and Billie do not face any hidden cognitive limitations in the abortion case.Footnote 17
Both of the possible explanations so far explained features (i) and (ii) of deep disagreement in terms of misunderstandings of the nature of the disagreement on the part of the disputants; in the first explanation, disputants are in error in thinking there is some objectively correct position to take in the first place, or whether they are talking past each other, and in the second explanation, disputants are in error about the nuances and difficulties involved in forming a justified belief about the topic at hand. In both cases, the disagreement could eventually be rationally resolved; if disputants could realize their misunderstanding, then they should find it rational to suspend judgment or agree to disagree, and the felt pressure towards rational resolution would disappear. But in some instances of deep disagreement, I submit, disputants are not rational in suspending judgment, lowering confidence, or agreeing to disagree. That is, in some instances of deep disagreement, disputants are in fact not talking past each other, and there is an objectively correct position to take that is knowable, both disputants are epistemically blameless in holding the views they do, yet at least one of them has a false belief. The case of Alex and Billie is meant as an example of such a case.
The possibility of this kind of disagreement should not surprise us. As Rawls (Reference Rawls2005) tells us, it is part of living in a liberal democracy that there be a plurality of reasonable religious, moral, and philosophical doctrines. We must have some convictions, and these will inevitably conflict with the convictions of others. This brings us to the third possible explanation of the persistence of deep disagreement; some deep disagreements appear not to be directly rationally resolvable because they really are not directly rationally resolvable. The hinge epistemic account of deep disagreement is one instance of this strategy, and I turn to this in the next section.Footnote 18
3. Hinge epistemology
The hinge epistemic account of deep disagreement holds that deep disagreements are not rationally resolvable when they concern hinge commitments. According to the brand of hinge epistemology I prefer (due to Pritchard Reference Pritchard2012, Reference Pritchard2016, inter alia), ‘hinges’ are commitments which are held with maximal subjective certainty, yet which are (for that very reason) not directly responsive to rational considerations and difficult to abandon. Because these commitments are not directly responsive to rational considerations and difficult to abandon, neither the mere fact of disagreement, nor the reasons put forward in the course of an argument can lead one to rationally doubt the hinge, and neither can one simply abandon the hinge and thereby come to be able to subject the relevant contested proposition to rational evaluation.Footnote 19
Hinge epistemology, which takes inspiration from Wittgenstein's On Certainty (Reference Wittgenstein, Anscombe, von Wright, Paul and Anscombe1969), is often presented as a response to radical epistemological skepticism. The core idea, shared by various accounts of hinge epistemology, is that certain of our commitments are exempt from doubt, because of the special role those commitments play in making the epistemic practice of giving and asking for reasons (including raising doubts) possible in the first place.
There are different views on how best to understand the notion of a hinge commitment, each with different implications for the analysis of disagreement. Here are four dimensions along which hinge epistemologies differ. First, there is a division among views that take hinge commitments to have propositions as their objects (including, inter alia, Wright Reference Wright1986, Reference Wright2004; Coliva Reference Coliva2010, Reference Coliva2015, Reference Coliva2016; Pritchard Reference Pritchard2012, Reference Pritchard2016), and those that take hinge commitments to concern non-propositional objects that are neither true nor false (Moyal-Sharrock Reference Moyal-Sharrock2004, Reference Moyal-Sharrock2016). There is then a second division between views that take hinge commitments to have a positive epistemic statusFootnote 20 (Williams Reference Williams1991; Wright Reference Wright2004), on the one hand, and views that take the attitude of hinge commitment to be removed from the scope of rational evaluation altogether, and so not even enjoying epistemic entitlement (Coliva Reference Coliva2010, Reference Coliva2015, Reference Coliva2016; Pritchard Reference Pritchard2012, Reference Pritchard2016), on the other hand. Relatedly, whereas on Wright's view our entitlement to accept a hinge proposition is defeasible, in that one may only rationally accept the hinge in the absence of any reason to think the hinge false (Wright Reference Wright2004: 181), for Pritchard, our hinges are not responsive to evidence even in this way. On Pritchard's view, because hinges are held with maximal subjective certainty, any reason that might be offered for thinking the hinge false will seem less certain to one than the hinge itself, and so one would instead have reason to reject the purported counter-evidence rather than the hinge.
Third, some views seem to take hinge commitment to be a context-sensitive notion, in that an attitude's status as hinge commitment is specific either to a particular domain of inquiry or intellectual project (e.g., Williams Reference Williams1991; Wright Reference Wright2004). Other views take a commitment's status as a hinge commitment for a person to be largely independent of the context of inquiry (Pritchard Reference Pritchard2012, Reference Pritchard2016). For instance, on Williams’ view, the proposition that the world did not come into existence just five minutes ago will count as a hinge commitment relative to certain domains of inquiry (e.g., history), but not relative to others (e.g., philosophical reflection on skepticism) (Williams Reference Williams1991: 121–5). By contrast, on Pritchard's view, if the proposition that the earth did not come into existence just five minutes ago is held as a hinge commitment by someone, then that person will hold this as a hinge commitment regardless of context of inquiry (Reference Pritchard2016: 106).
And finally, some views hold that there are principled limits on what kinds of propositions can play the hinge commitment role (Wright Reference Wright2004; Coliva Reference Coliva2016) – in particular, only ‘Moorean certainties’ such as the proposition that one has two hands can be hinge propositions. Whereas others hold that (almost) any proposition can be a hinge commitment for a particular person, so long as it plays the relevant role – namely, being held with maximum subjective certainty (Pritchard Reference Pritchard2012, Reference Pritchard2016). Thus, on Pritchard's view it could be that, in the right circumstances (given one's upbringing, the beliefs of one's culture, etc.), one could be maximally subjectively certain of, and therefore have a hinge commitment to, just about any proposition. It is this feature of Pritchard's view that I think makes it the most natural framework for developing a hinge epistemic account of disagreement.
Although Pritchard's view allows for variability in personal hinge commitments, it also captures what all hinges have in common, in virtue of which they are hinges: namely, the functional role the hinge commitment plays in the cognitive economy of the person holding it. All hinges are alike in that they are immune from direct rational evaluation and difficult to abandon, because they are held with maximal subjective certainty. And despite the possibility for variation in hinge commitment between people, we should also expect that generally there will be agreement in our hinge commitments; indeed, Moorean certainties (such as commitment to the proposition that one has two hands) and anti-skeptical commitments (such as commitment to the proposition that the earth did not pop into existence just five minutes ago) are hinge commitments that nearly everyone will share.Footnote 21 As I think of hinge epistemology, in the game of giving and asking for reasons, hinge commitments are like the board on which this game is played, in that they are not themselves subject to requests for reasons, nor do they directly provide reasons (they are not moves on the board), but they are commitments we must hold if we are to give and ask for reasons at all (they are the board).Footnote 22
Thus, drawing from Pritchard's non-epistemic propositional view, we can define the notion of ‘hinge commitment’ as follows:
Hinge Commitment: S has a hinge commitment to the proposition that p just in case S is subjectively maximally certain that p is true, where (for that reason) S's commitment is arationally held, in that it is not based on any particular reasons for thinking p true, and is generally resistant to purported reasons for thinking p false.
The arationality and the maximal subjective certainty are crucially related. Because hinges are maximally subjectively certain, no evidence can lead one to rationally reject one's hinge (again, by one's own lights), as the hinge will be more certain than any reasons speaking against it. But by the same token, no evidence can speak in favor of a hinge, either, as any such evidence will also be less certain than the hinge itself. Thus, we should understand Pritchard's view as adopting the following principle, which I dub ‘the rational grounding principle’ (see Pritchard Reference Pritchard2012: 256–7; Reference Pritchard2016: 63–6):
The Rational Grounding Principle: Rational grounds for S to doubt (or believe) proposition p must themselves be more subjectively certain to S than the proposition p which is to be doubted or believed.
When we combine this principle with the observation that, for any epistemic agent, there will be some propositions the agent holds with a maximum subjective degree of certainty, the core commitments of Pritchard's hinge epistemology fall out:Footnote 23 First, whatever is held to a maximum degree of subjective certainty must be rationally groundless – by definition, there is nothing more certain for the agent that could stand as its rational ground. Second, whatever is held to a maximum degree of subjective certainty cannot directly provide rational grounds for knowledge of other initially less certain propositions. For, the hinge, being itself rationally groundless, cannot serve as the rational ground for accepting other propositions. If it could, then reason to doubt the proposition so grounded could provide reason to doubt the hinge commitment grounding that proposition – but hinges, being maximally subjectively certain, are immune to rational doubt. As a result, hinge commitments are themselves arational, standing outside of our ordinary epistemic practices. Yet we must have some hinge commitments in place, because it is only relative to (though not by appeal to) these maximally subjectively certain commitments that we are able to provide rational grounds for doubting and believing other propositions. As Pritchard concludes, the fact that hinge commitments stand outside the scope of rational evaluation shows that our practices of rational evaluation are necessarily local – it is thus simply not possible to subject all of one's cognitive commitments to doubt at once, as radical skepticism would have us do.
3.1. The Hinge epistemic account of deep disagreement
In what follows, I propose an application of Pritchard's version of hinge epistemology to the problem of deep disagreement. Because a hinge commitment is an attitude towards a proposition that involves commitment to the truth of that proposition, and given that there can be divergence between the hinge commitments of individuals it makes sense to say we can disagree about hinges. Now, as noted earlier, the attitude of hinge commitment towards a proposition is not directly responsive to epistemic reasons for thinking that proposition true or false, and not easily abandoned. This is why disagreements that directly concern hinge commitments will be persistent and rationally unresolvable. Nevertheless, hinge commitments can change over time, so there remains the possibility that hinge disagreement can eventually be resolved (I consider a proposal for how this might be accomplished in section 4).Footnote 24
Despite the fact that there can be variation in the hinge commitments of individuals, we should expect hinge disagreement to be relatively rare. As noted earlier, Pritchard (echoing Davidson) holds that we must share a wide range of our hinge commitments if we are even to be intelligible to each other (2018: 6). So, we should not expect widespread disagreement in hinge commitment, but, when such disagreement does occur, it will be intractable, again, because of the role hinge commitments play.Footnote 25
Though hinge disagreement will be rare, I do think that there are some real life instances. It is difficult to say to any degree of precision whether a given disagreement is a hinge disagreement, because this will largely depend on the role that the proposition under dispute plays in the cognitive economy of each disputant. Pritchard offers the following as examples: “someone raised in a religious community where God's existence is taken as an obvious fact of life is likely to have religious hinge commitments that would be alien to someone raised in a largely secular environment. Or consider someone raised in a deeply politically conservative social milieu, as opposed to someone brought up in a commune exclusively populated by people of a left-wing political persuasion. Clearly, one would expect this to lead to individuals with very different hinge commitments regarding core political matters” (Pritchard Reference Pritchard2018: 3).
I would add, as a possible historical example, the attitudes held by white slave-owners towards slavery in the pre-civil war American South, compared with the attitudes of abolitionists. It would not be surprising, I think, for a white person raised in a plantation setting, confronted with slavery as an everyday fact of life, to hold that the institution of slavery is morally justified as a hinge commitment. Racist attitudes held even today may, for some people, play the hinge commitment role.Footnote 26 As a concrete instance, I offer the case of Derek Black, a former white nationalist. From a young age, Black was raised to accept white nationalist ideals – “his father, Don Black, had created Stormfront, the Internet's first and largest white nationalist site, with 300,000 users and counting. His mother, Chloe, had once been married to David Duke, one of the country's most infamous racial zealots, and Duke had become Derek's godfather,” and “Derek had been taught that America was intended as a place for white Europeans and that everyone else would eventually have to leave. He was told to be suspicious of other races, of the U.S. government, of tap water and of pop culture” (Saslow Reference Saslow2016).Footnote 27 Given this sort of upbringing, I suggest that Black's white nationalist views (prior to his conversion – more on this in section 4) are plausible candidates for hinge commitments with which we should disagree.
3.2. Resolving hinge disagreement: a first pass
I have claimed that when a disagreement concerns hinge commitments, that disagreement will be rationally unresolvable. However a more fine-grained analysis of how a disagreement can concern a hinge commitment is required. It will be useful to distinguish immediate from mediate hinge disagreement.Footnote 28 Immediate hinge disagreement is disagreement that directly concerns one's hinge commitment; A is committed to p in the hinge way, and B denies that p. Mediate hinge disagreement is a disagreement over some proposition p, where that disagreement is explained by a further difference in the hinge commitments of the disputants, but where p itself is not a hinge commitment of either disputant. Consider a case of disagreement over abortion, like the disagreement between Alex and Billie. The crucial question here is what explains the disagreement. It may be an immediate conflict in hinge commitment, if either Alex or Billie adheres to their position in the hinge way. But the disagreement here may be based in a further disagreement concerning other propositions, such as the proposition that God implants a soul in the fetus from the moment of conception – this further proposition may represent a hinge commitment of Alex, but not of Billie.
When a disagreement whether p is an immediate hinge disagreement, the disagreement will indeed be rationally unresolvable.Footnote 29 But when a disagreement whether p is a mediate hinge disagreement, so that the disagreement is explained by a further hinge disagreement concerning whether q, then the disagreement concerning whether p may be indirectly rationally resolvable. In the case of mediate hinge disagreement about abortion considered above, I suggest that Alex's position (that abortion is generally morally impermissible) is generally responsive to reasons, but it exhibits a reasons blind spot. That is, Alex's position on abortion is responsive only to reasons that do not call into question Alex's underlying religious hinge commitment. So, Alex and Billie may be able to rationally resolve their disagreement concerning abortion, but this will have to be done by appeal to reasons that have no bearing on whether it is the case that God has implanted a soul in each fetus at the moment of conception. For instance, perhaps Billie could rationally persuade Alex that even if souls are implanted at conception, there are overriding considerations in many cases that morally justify abortion, even though this may not be Billie's own reason for thinking abortion generally permissible.Footnote 30 A rational resolution such as this may well be possible, provided that Alex and Billie share enough other hinge commitments. Thus, where disagreement is initially based in further difference in hinge commitment, there is likely available an alternative route for accomplishing rational resolution: appealing to reasons that do not impact the relevant hinge commitments.Footnote 31
This explains how some deep disagreements, when they are best thought of as cases of mediate hinge disagreement, might nevertheless be rationally resolvable. It remains to be seen, however, how we ought to respond to immediate hinge disagreement, as I speculate might be the case with disagreement with the white nationalist views of Black (pre-conversion). I take this up in section 4.2.
4. The value of intellectual humility
In this section, I consider the question: What is the intellectually humble response to disagreement generally? And why might intellectual humility be valuable as a response to disagreement? Intuitively, it seems that the intellectually humble response to peer disagreement is to at least lower one's initial confidence, and this seems generally to be epistemically valuable because it takes proper account of the potential evidence possessed by one's interlocutor. But when it comes to hinge commitments, one cannot exhibit intellectual humility in this way; one cannot rationally lower one's confidence in one's hinge. And as a result, the potential evidence of one's interlocutor can seemingly have no bearing on one's view. So, on this intuitive understanding of the intellectually humble response to disagreement, we cannot have intellectual humility as a response to hinge disagreement.
The intuitive understanding just canvassed has some support in the literature. It is sometimes simply assumed that the intellectually humble response to disclosed peer disagreement is the one advanced by conciliatory views as also being the rational response: the rational response to peer disagreement, and the intellectually humble response, is to at least lower one's confidence in the initial belief. See for instance, Carter and Pritchard (Reference Carter, Pritchard, Mi, Slote and Sosa2016): “A widely shared insight in the disagreement literature is that, in the face of a disagreement with a recognised epistemic peer (such as between Hawking and Penrose), the epistemically virtuous agent should adopt a stance of intellectual humility – that is, a stance where one exhibits some measure of epistemic deference by reducing one's initial confidence in the matter of contention” (Reference Carter, Pritchard, Mi, Slote and Sosa2016: 3, emphasis added, footnote omitted).Footnote 32
This assumption is not unreasonable, at least concerning shallow peer disagreements. After all, when faced with a disagreement with someone whom you take to be your epistemic peer regarding the topic of disagreement, it is a mark of intellectual arrogance to simply hold to one's belief. Such a response also appears to be irrational (or so conciliatory views claim), as the peer disagreement itself provides reason for you to adjust your doxastic state. The very thing that makes this response irrational also explains why it is arrogant; one would be dismissing the potential evidence of one's peer for no good reason, where this exhibits an undue or improper confidence in one's own epistemic position in relation to one's peer.
Another reason for thinking intellectual humility is valuable for responding to disagreement is offered by Lynch (Reference Lynch2018). Lynch argues that having an attitude of intellectual arrogance, an attitude opposed to intellectual humility, is not only epistemically harmful to the arrogant agent, but is further harmful to the reasonableness of public discourse, and thus to democracy (as a space of reasons) (Reference Lynch2018: 290). Intellectual humility then is epistemically valuable insofar as possessing intellectual humility will prevent the harms that intellectual arrogance causes. One of the reasons Lynch offers for thinking that intellectual arrogance is harmful for public discourse is captured in the following line of thought: to be epistemically arrogant is to think that your worldview is not open to improvement by the evidence or experience of others. Insofar as you have this attitude towards your worldview, you will view yourself as being in a different epistemic playing field compared with others (this is an other-regarding aspect of arrogance); you think that you know, while others are ignorant. As a result, you will not see yourself as epistemically accountable to others; you would see yourself as exempt from demands for reasons. Not only is this harmful for public discourse, it also fails to show proper respect for others as epistemic agents (Lynch Reference Lynch2018: 291–3).
So, intellectual humility appears to be valuable (all else being equal) for navigating disagreement both because it is the rational response to disagreement – intellectual humility is epistemically valuable for the humble agent – and also because it is necessary for reasonable public discourse – it is required for fulfilling our epistemic duties to others. But if the hinge epistemic explanation of deep disagreement is correct, it cannot be rational for one to adjust one's confidence in one's hinge commitments when one discovers that others disagree with that hinge. This is because the hinge is not responsive to rational evaluation. It cannot be that one ought, rationally, to adjust one's attitude towards a proposition when the very nature of that attitude is such that it does not respond to reasons in the first place.
The problem can also be illustrated by considering Lynch's argument for the value of intellectual humility. Intellectual arrogance, according to Lynch, involves taking the attitude that one's worldview is not open to improvement by the evidence or experience of others. But it is hard to see how we could fail to have such an attitude of arrogance towards our hinge commitments. To the extent that you see your worldview as open to improvement, it seems, you will have to be less than absolutely certain it is correct.
Thus, even if intellectual humility is a valuable attitude for navigating peer disagreement, it apparently cannot be the appropriate attitude to have in deep disagreements explained by hinge disagreement, because it is not an attitude one can have with regard to hinge commitments. Given that deep disagreements are characterized by a pressure towards resolution, what methods are left to us? One might begin to worry that the only options here are morally and epistemically problematic; violence, propaganda, manipulation, and coercion come to mind. Wittgenstein suggests we think of what happens when missionaries convert natives, but this does not bring much comfort when we reflect on some of the practices in which missionaries have engaged in the name of their cause.Footnote 33
4.1. Intellectual humility for hinge commitment
If there are disagreements that directly concern incompatible hinge commitments held by the disputants, doesn't that mean there just can be no rational way for the discussion to continue? In that case, isn't persuasion by non-rational means the best we can hope for? In this section I will suggest that we can identify a kind of intellectual humility it is possible to have even concerning our hinge commitments that is valuable for navigating deep disagreement in a constructive, even if non-rational manner.
The attitude of intellectual humility it is appropriate to have towards one's hinge commitments involves:
Intellectual Humility for Hinge Commitment: (i) a self-awareness of one's hinge commitments as hinge commitments, and so as not being beliefs enjoying reflectively accessible epistemic justification, or even epistemic entitlement, and (ii) a willingness to stand by one's hinge commitments, in the sense of taking proper responsibility for the hinge commitments one has.
Regarding (i): I do not see this as requiring that ordinary folks be aware of the details of hinge epistemology. Rather, realizing the rational groundlessness of certain of one's commitments is a way of owning the fact that one has not ‘earned’ those commitments through intellectual effort (it is thus a way of owning one's limitations).Footnote 34 This recognizes the Wittgensteinian point that it is part of becoming a member of a community of epistemic agents that we must ‘swallow down’ some propositions as being beyond doubt without argument.Footnote 35 A failure to recognize the rational groundlessness of certain of one's commitments amounts to intellectual hubris. This may provide a possible interpretation for why Wittgenstein admonishes Moore for asserting that he knows he has hands (1969: passage 151); in so doing, Moore presents himself as being in a position to demonstrate that this is so – Moore exhibits intellectual hubris. In this sense, arguments for radical skepticism can be seen as an important corrective, and are properly regarded as humbling.Footnote 36
But in considering arguments for radical skepticism, we should not become overly modest in our estimation of our epistemic positions. An acceptance of radical skepticism in this regard would amount to an intellectual meekness. The radical skeptic underestimates her epistemic abilities to such an extent that she claims no knowledge whatsoever; in attempting to doubt even that she has hands, she attempts to disavow any intellectual commitments at all. This is why the proper attitude towards our hinge commitments will involve (ii) – taking responsibility for the hinge commitments one in fact has. As I understand it, ‘standing by’ one's hinge commitments means recognizing their subjective certainty and continuing to endorse them. In more mundane contexts, where radical skepticism is not under discussion, taking proper responsibility for one's hinge commitments might include not concealing those commitments (including in self-deception).Footnote 37 One cannot exhibit humility concerning one's convictions if one pretends not to have any. In the context of deep disagreements, one way to fail to take responsibility for one's hinge commitment is to (misleadingly) present that commitment as though it were an ordinary (if firmly held) belief, in principle open to rational revision. This can occur when one engages in a dialogue concerning whether p while concealing the fact that the question of whether p is not genuinely open for one – this would be a bad faith effort at dialogue.
The self-awareness involved in the intellectually humble attitude to take towards one's hinge commitments is (following Whitcomb et al. Reference Whitcomb, Battaly, Baehr and Howard-Snyder2017) a mean between obliviousness and obsessiveness over one's limitations. Obliviousness to one's hinges would amount to a failure to recognize where one's reasons give out. The oblivious person will continue to offer reasons that do not really have any bearing on their own commitment; the provided reasons would be a post-hoc rationalization of the commitment. Obsessiveness over one's limitations may lead one to think reasons have given out before they really have; the obsessive would be so uncertain of his own ability to present his authentic reasons for belief, that he will likely avoid argument too often.
4.2. Resolving deep disagreement
How might this understanding of intellectual humility with regard to hinge commitments help when it comes to disagreements immediately concerning those hinges? As already discussed, resolving such disagreements will not proceed by an exchange of reasons. So how are we to proceed?
When it comes to mediate hinge disagreements, being appropriately aware of one's own hinge commitments and the hinge commitments of others can help lead to an indirect rational resolution. When interlocutors can identify their respective hinge commitments, they can set limits on their conversation so as to make it more intellectually fruitful. One cannot in good faith enter into discussion over whether p when one holds p as a hinge commitment, because entering into such a discussion is to present oneself as open to defending p with one's reasons and to rejecting p in response to the reasons offered by one's interlocutors, but one is not open in this way regarding one's hinges. Alex would thus be a responsible interlocutor in explicitly making her religious hinge commitment that God implants a soul at conception ‘out of bounds’ in her discussions with Billie. And Billie, likewise, engages in discussion concerning the permissibility of abortion responsibly by not challenging Alex's religious hinge, even if he may think it is false. In sum: with regard to the hinge commitments of others, proper awareness can alert us to which arguments not to engage in. With regard to our own convictions, proper awareness of their rational groundlessness will alert us to where our reasons will give out, and so when to cease offering arguments.
When it comes to immediate hinge commitments, indirect rational resolution is off the table (as discussed in section 3.2). However, intellectual humility is still valuable for addressing such disagreements. Intellectual humility is valuable in confronting immediate hinge disagreement because it allows us to see that no line of rational argument will be effective. Without the relevant humility, disputants may continue to engage in argument, or cease arguing out frustration, because they each take their interlocutor to just not get it. We can argue (online or off) with the Derek Blacks of the world all we want, but it would be naive to think that reasoned argument alone will be very effective. This position is compatible with there still being a felt rational pressure towards substantive consensus (this is part of taking proper responsibility for one's hinge commitments); we should take it to be possible to know that white nationalist ideals are false and pernicious, and so we should not be content to ‘agree to disagree’ with white nationalists and leave it at that.
At first, this position may seem to amount to an endorsement of dogmatism, rather than an articulation of a peculiar kind of intellectual humility. After all, my account maintains that even after we recognize that some of our commitments are rationally groundless, we may nevertheless continue to adhere to those commitments, and indeed hold them to a maximum degree of certainty.Footnote 38 However, I think the attitude I have recommended we take towards our hinge commitments is properly described as one of intellectual humility, rather than dogmatism, for the following two reasons. First, ‘dogmatism’ carries with it the implication that the dogmatic are culpably unresponsive to reasons: the dogmatic improperly refuse to believe in accordance with their evidence. It strikes me that one can only refuse to do what one (thinks one) can do. We cannot willingly lower our confidence in our hinge commitments, even in the face of purported counter-evidence – thus, we cannot improperly refuse to do so. We are epistemically innocent with respect to the rational non-responsiveness of our hinge commitments. Second, the attitude of humility I identify – that of realizing the groundlessness of the hinge commitments – is under the voluntary control of agents. This attitude reflects the features of other general accounts of intellectual humility, including taking ownership of one's cognitive limitations, as discussed earlier (Whitcomb et al. Reference Whitcomb, Battaly, Baehr and Howard-Snyder2017). When it comes to hinge disagreement, I suggest that one can exhibit intellectual humility by doing what it takes to recognize a limit on one's dialectical position. Eventually, reasons give out, and when they do, we should see that we are all equals in the groundlessness of our believing. The first step towards addressing immediate hinge disagreement, then, is realizing that one's abilities to logically debate the matter are sometimes beside the point and pursuing such debate will only increase tensions.Footnote 39
If reasoned debate is of no avail, how ought we respond to direct hinge disagreement? Here I think we can learn from the conversion experience of Derek Black. Black's conversion away from white nationalism was arguably sparked by his developing a friendship with Matthew Stevenson, who had invited Black to his weekly Shabbat dinners. Stevenson's approach here seems to me an instance of an (initially) non-rational, but also non-manipulative method for attempting to change the hinge commitment of another. “Matthew decided his best chance to affect Derek's thinking was not to ignore him or confront him, but simply to include him. ‘Maybe he'd never spent time with a Jewish person before,’ Matthew remembered thinking.” Developing a friendship with the attendees of Stevenson's dinners seems to have been a deciding factor in Blacks eventual repudiation of white nationalism, although eventually discussions of race were involved as well. Eventually, “[Black] decided early in his final year at New College to finally respond on the forum. He wanted his friends on campus to feel comfortable, even if he still believed some of their homelands were elsewhere. He sat at a coffee shop and began writing his post, softening his ideology with each successive draft.” Finally, Black would go on to fully reject his previous views. The key to Stevenson's strategy, I suggest, was that rather than immediately engaging in reasoned argument with Black, Stevenson sought first simply to include Black in a community.
But of course, this non-rational strategy will only be effective in changing the hinge commitments of those who are open, at least to some degree, to sharing experiences and building relationships with those with whom they have significant differences; it is easy to imagine Black simply rejecting Stevenson's initial invitation. Lynch understands intellectual humility as an attitude of seeing aspects of one's worldview as open to improvement by the evidence and experiences of others (2018). When it comes to hinge commitments, reasons give out, and so one perhaps cannot view them as open to improvement by the evidence of others. Nevertheless, if one sees one's worldview at least as open to improvement by the experiences of others – and by sharing experiences with others – then one's hinge commitments will be open to change. Being intellectually humble in the right way about our firmest convictions makes possible a constructive albeit non-rational strategy for addressing deep disagreement.
5. Concluding remarks
Opening oneself up to the experiences (if not the evidence) of others, and sharing one's experiences with others, is a start to resolving immediate deep disagreement. This strategy involves influencing the hinge commitments of others. However, this strategy is not without risks and drawbacks. First, there is a risk involved, in that by developing a connection with those whom one disagrees in hinge commitment, one opens up the possibility that one's own hinge commitments will shift. This is not a bad thing in itself, though; if we never opened ourselves up to our convictions shifting in this way, how would our worldviews ever improve? Opening oneself up is the mature way to relate to one's worldview.Footnote 40 Nevertheless, with opening oneself up to the experiences of others comes the risk that one's one worldview may shift for the worse.
Second, such a strategy requires significant personal investment; reaching out to develop relationships and share experiences with those whose views one might find pernicious takes time and energy. These concerns may explain why it is we sometimes judge that seeking to resolve certain conflicts is ‘just not worth it’, and that it is better not to engage. But at the same time, deciding that it is ‘not worth it’ to build connections and shared experiences with those whom we disagree with is also a way of excluding those people from our communities. Insofar as a democratic society is an ideal, we may need to make a commitment to forging and maintaining relationships that reach across deep disagreements. I leave it as a question for further consideration to what extent we might have an obligation to change the views of those who we regard as having morally pernicious hinge commitments.Footnote 41
