On Persistent Disagreement in Cases Concerning the Misattribution of Epistemic Peerhood

Résumé

By reference to the work of Justin Kruger and David Dunning on individual incompetence, I will contend: that (a) persistent disagreement between epistemic peers is a lesser issue than that of disagreement between “epistemic rivals”; that (b) Catherine Elgin’s claim that belief is not a voluntary phenomenon is damaging to our attempts at solving the problem of persistent disagreement; and that (c) resoluteness in one’s beliefs is, perhaps, the only effective strategy for dealing with cases of persistent disagreement between “epistemic rivals”.