What is epistemic peer disagreement, and how should we deal with it?

Abstract

This paper provides a general overview on the topic of epistemic peer disagreements. It is broadly structured into three sections. In the first section, I provide an introduction to epistemic peer disagreement; I explain what it is, why it is philosophically interesting and introduce the two main contrasting views on how to handle it. In the second section, I provide two arguments on how I think we should manage cases of epistemic peer disagreements. The first argument claims all unverifiable disagreements should be treated with the equal weight view; the second argument claims we should strive to adopt steadfast attitudes towards verifiable disagreements. In the last section, I briefly consider the question of whether epistemic peers even exist, before concluding that they do. Through this paper, I hope to provide a broad overview on how to manage epistemic peer disagreements. I also hope to show that while it is still a relatively new area of epistemology, epistemic peer disagreements are philosophically interesting and should deserve more development and expansion in the future.