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On behalf of controversial view agnosticism
Author(s) -
Carter J. Adam
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
european journal of philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.42
H-Index - 36
eISSN - 1468-0378
pISSN - 0966-8373
DOI - 10.1111/ejop.12333
Subject(s) - agnosticism , epistemology , identity (music) , subject (documents) , morality , function (biology) , sociology , philosophy , computer science , aesthetics , evolutionary biology , library science , biology
Controversial view agnosticism (CVA) is the thesis that we are rationally obligated to withhold judgment about a large portion of our beliefs in controversial subject areas, such as philosophy, religion, morality, and politics. Given that one's social identity is in no small part of a function of one's positive commitments in controversial areas, CVA has unsurprisingly been regarded as objectionably “spineless.” That said, CVA seems like an unavoidable consequence of a prominent view in the epistemology of disagreement— conformism —according to which the rational response to discovering that someone you identify as an epistemic peer or expert about p disagrees with you vis‐à‐vis p is to withhold judgment. This paper proposes a novel way to maintain the core conciliatory insight without devolving into an agnosticism that is objectionably spineless. The approach offered takes as a starting point the observation that—for reasons that will be made clear—the contemporary debate has bypassed the issue of the reasonableness of maintaining, rather than giving up, representational states weaker than belief in controversial areas. The new position developed and defended here explores this overlooked space; what results is a kind of controversial view agnosticism that is compatible with the kinds of commitments that are integral to social identity.