The Flaws in David Enoch's Not Just a Truthometer: Taking Oneself Seriously (but not Too Seriously) in Cases of Peer Disagreement

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Intuitively, a first person perspective is used to resolve a disagreement by allowing one to remain steadfast about their position. In his paper, Not Just a Truthometer: Taking Oneself Seriously (but not too seriously) in Cases of Peer Disagreement, Enoch describes that a first person perspective allows one to be steadfast, in the face of peer disagreement, because the perspective is ineliminable. He argues that the significance in the role of the first person perspective is its ineliminability, or being not-merely-a-truthometer. Enoch’s not-merely-a-truthometer strategy fails to provide a significant role for the first-person perspective in the epistemology of disagreement. Enoch accepts that his strategy is vulnerable to the problem of bootstrapping, but remains confident that it can avoid skepticism. I will argue that if Enoch accepts bootstrapping then he cannot avoid general skepticism because it leads to the problem of easy knowledge. Furthermore, if Enoch rejects bootstrapping because it is uninteresting and remains confident in his strategy, he will have to accept easy knowledge and reliabilism, which weakens his strategy altogether. To conclude I will propose that, when it comes to resolution, the first person perspective does not play a significant role in disagreement.
Firstly, Enoch specifies that he is arguing for what we should do in the face of disagreement with a peer, rather than what we actually do (Enoch, Pg. 955). Second, the types of disagreements he is focusing on are ones that are simply epistemological, or that occur when we cannot turn to metaphysical “non-factualisms” or relativism for resolution (Enoch, Pg. 955). Third, he is speaking of degrees of belief rather than all or nothing beliefs (Enoch, pg....

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... avoid unjustified beliefs. Second, like the equal weight view claims, a first person perspective does not give an argument asymmetry. Finally, the first person perspective as a role in disagreement is more inspective than detective. It can be used to show aspects such as peer hood and reliability, but it cannot deduce from these “inspections” that one’s view has more weight than their opponents because those deductions are unjustified.

References

(1) Enoch, David. "Not Just a Truthometer: Taking Oneself Seriously (but Not Too Seriously) in Cases of Peer Disagreement." Thesis. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2010. Mind 19 (2010): 953-97. Web.

(2) Goldman, Alvin. "Reliabilism." Stanford University. Stanford University, 21 Apr. 2008. Web. 28 Feb. 2014.

(3) Lammenranta, Markus. "Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy." Epistemic Circularity N.d. Web. Feb. 2014.

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