Truth approximation,belief merging,and peer disagreement

In this paper, we investigate the problem of truth approximation via belief merging, i.e., we ask whether, and under what conditions, a group of inquirers merging together their beliefs makes progress toward the truth about the underlying domain. We answer this question by proving some formal results on how belief merging operators perform with respect to the task of truth approximation, construed as increasing verisimilitude or truthlikeness. Our results shed new light on the issue of how rational (dis)agreement affects the inquirers’ quest for truth. In particular, they vindicate the intuition that scientific inquiry, and rational discussion in general, benefits from some heterogeneity in opinion and interaction among different viewpoints. The links between our approach and related analyses of truth tracking, judgment aggregation, and opinion dynamics, are also highlighted.     

A diachronic perspective on peer disagreement in veritistic social epistemology

The main issue in the epistemology of peer disagreement is whether known disagreement among those who are in symmetrical epistemic positions undermines the rationality of their maintaining their respective views. Douven and Kelp have argued convincingly that this problem is best understood as being about how to respond to peer disagreement repeatedly over time, and that this diachronic issue can be best approached through computer simulation. However, Douven and Kelp’s favored simulation framework cannot naturally handle Christensen’s famous Mental Math example. As a remedy, I introduce an alternative (Bayesian) simulation framework, Laputa, inspired by Alvin Goldman’s seminal work on veritistic social epistemology. I show that Christensen’s conciliatory response, reasonably reconstructed and supplemented, gives rise to an increase in epistemic (veritistic) value only if the peers continue to recheck their mental math; else the peers might as well be steadfast. On a meta-level, the study illustrates the power of Goldman’s approach when combined with simulation techniques for handling the computational issues involved.

     

On Merely Modal Epistemic Peers: Challenging the Equal-Weight View

There is a controversy, within social epistemology, over how to handle disagreement among epistemic peers. Call this the problem of peer disagreement. There is a solution, i.e. the equal-weight view, which says that disagreement among epistemic peers is a reason for each peer to lower the credence they place in their respective positions. However, this solution is susceptible to a serious challenge. Call it the merely modal peers challenge. Throughout parts of modal space, which resemble the actual world almost completely, there are hordes of epistemic peers, who disagree with almost any arbitrarily chosen belief had by residents of the actual world. Further, the mere modality of these peers is not itself an epistemic difference-maker. Thus, on the equal-weight view, we should significantly lower the credence we place in most of our beliefs. Surely, this is seriously mistaken. Thus, there are serious considerations that cut against the equal-weight view.     

Resolving Peer Disagreements Through Imprecise Probabilities

Two compelling principles, the Reasonable Range Principle and the Preservation of Irrelevant Evidence Principle, are necessary conditions that any response to peer disagreements ought to abide by. The Reasonable Range Principle maintains that a resolution to a peer disagreement should not fall outside the range of views expressed by the peers in their dispute, whereas the Preservation of Irrelevant Evidence (PIE) Principle maintains that a resolution strategy should be able to preserve unanimous judgments of evidential irrelevance among the peers. No standard Bayesian resolution strategy satisfies the PIE Principle, however, and we give a loss aversion argument in support of PIE and against Bayes. The theory of imprecise probability allows one to satisfy both principles, and we introduce the notion of a set‐based credal judgment to frame and address a range of subtle issues that arise in peer disagreements.     

Expertise,Argumentation, and the End of Inquiry

This paper argues that the problem of expertise calls for a rapprochement between social epistemology and argumentation theory. Social epistemology has tended to emphasise the role of expert testimony, neglecting the argumentative function of appeals to expert opinion by non-experts. The first half of the paper discusses parallels and contrasts between the two cases of direct expert testimony and appeals to expert opinion by our epistemic peers, respectively. Importantly, appeals to expert opinion need to be advertised as such, if they are to sway an epistemic peer. The second half of the paper sketches a theoretical framework for thinking about assessments of expertise in a unified way, via a ‘default and challenge’ model that emphasises the need for a version of conversational scorekeeping. It is through such scorekeeping that interlocutors can track and coordinate their differences in epistemic outlook. The paper concludes with a genealogical perspective on the function of (attributions of) expertise: acceptance of another’s appeal to expert opinion may be construed as tacit agreement that inquiry, for now, has been taken far enough.     

Group Peer Disagreement

A popular view in mainstream social epistemology maintains that, in the face of a revealed peer disagreement over p, neither party should remain just as confident vis‐a‐vis p as she initially was. This ‘conciliatory’ insight has been defended with regard to individual epistemic peers. However, to the extent that (non‐summativist) groups are candidates for group knowledge and beliefs, we should expect groups (no less than individuals) to be in the market for disagreements. The aim here will be to carve out and explore an extension of the conciliatory insight from individual peer disagreement to group peer disagreement; in doing so, I'll raise and address three key problems that face any plausible defence of such a constraint.     

Intimate Partner Violence Victimization among Heterosexual,Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual College Students: The Role of Pro-Abuse Peer Support

Most studies of peer support for intimate partner violence (IPV) at U.S. institutions of higher learning focused solely on male assaults on heterosexual women. As well, the bulk of this work only examined how all-male social networks perpetuate and legitimate this behavior. Using recent data from a survey administered at a large U.S. residential university, the main objective of this paper is to help fill a research gap by presenting findings on (1) how having peers who have perpetrated dating abuse and (2) peers’ encouragement to be abusive to dates contributes to IPV victimization in a campus lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) community. The results show that LGB students report a higher rate of such victimization than heterosexual students and the two aforementioned types of pro-abuse peer support significantly predict victimization among both sexual orientation groups.     

Distant Peers

What is the nature of rational disagreement? A number of philosophers have recently addressed this question by examining how we should respond to epistemic conflict with a so‐called epistemic peer—that is, someone over whom you enjoy no epistemic advantage. Some say that you're rationally required to suspend judgment in these cases—thereby denying the very possibility of a certain kind of rational disagreement. Others say that it's permissible to retain your beliefs even in the face of epistemic conflict. By distinguishing between close peers and distant peers, I argue that it's rational to respond to different types of peers in different ways. I also argue that remote peers—a particularly distant kind of distant peer—provide us with an important lesson in epistemic humility.     

Unconfirmed peers and spinelessness

The Equal Weight View holds that, when we discover we disagree with an epistemic peer, we should give our peer’s judgment as much weight as our own. But how should we respond when we cannot tell whether those who disagree with us are our epistemic peers? I argue for a position I will call the Earn-a-Spine View. According to this view, parties to a disagreement can remain confident, at least in some situations, by finding justifiable reasons to think their opponents are less credible than themselves, even if those reasons are justifiable only because they lack information about their opponents.     

EFFECTS OF SELF-EVALUATION ON PRESCHOOL CHILDREN'S USE OF SOCIAL INTERACTION STRATEGIES WITH THEIR CLASSMATES WITH AUTISM

This study investigated effects of a self-evaluation procedure on preschool children's use of social interaction strategies among their classmates with autism. Three triads of children (comprised of 1 trained normally developing peer, 1 untrained peer, and 1 child with autism) participated. A multiple baseline design across subjects was used to demonstrate that peers who were taught facilitative strategies increased their use of strategies only after the self-evaluation intervention was introduced. Improvements in social behavior of children with autism was associated with peers' increased strategy use. Untrained peers demonstrated little change in their social behavior. Treatment effects were replicated when trained peers were asked to use self-evaluation with other children with autism during other play times. Self-evaluation procedures enhanced the use of social interaction strategies on the part of normally developing peers during social skills interventions.     

Fight or Flight: Factors Influencing Children's and Adults' Decisions to Avoid or Confront Conflict

Five videotaped dilemmas were used to assess age differences in perceptions of interpersonal conflict and reasoning about whether to avoid or actively pursue incipient disagreements. Each film depicted a clash between friends that could either be pursued by expressing a contrary opinion or avoided by simulating agreement. Three of the topics of potential dispute related to classroom cognitive or judgmental issues, and two revolved around playground social relationships among peers. The 96 male and female subjects were evenly subdivided into 6-, 9-, and 21-year-old age groups. Avoidance was recommended twice as often as engagement overall. But there were differences due to age and to the topic of the conflict. The classroom-related judgmental conflicts were avoided less often than were those involving social relations with peers. Adults likewise recommended avoidance less often than children and were less likely to misperceive the conflicts as hostile. These results supported and extended previous studies of children's concepts of conflict. Their implications for educational practice and the use of peer debate to enhance cognitive development were also considered.     

Sexual Harassment and the Cultures of Childhood

ABSTRACT

Sexual harassment is increasingly recognized as a common problem for schoolchildren. Four out of five 8th through 11th graders have experienced some form of sexual harassment in their school lives. Of the girls who experience harassment, 38% report that they were first harassed in 6th grade or before (AAUW, 2001). We propose that children construct a peer-based «school society» where attitudes and behaviors are strongly connected to peer group influence and concerns about social status. School-based peer sexual harassment emerges from a climate of tense, unequal social relations between boys and girls during middle childhood, accelerating into adolescence. One unexplored possibility is that some boys with high social status among their peers may engage in or encourage harassment of girls. Next, we turn to a distinct social context embedded within the school society: relationships of abuse between boy and girl peers. We explore how the dynamics of domestic violence apply to sexual harassment between peers, illustrating themes from narratives of child sexual harassment victims derived from interviews and legal cases. We also use these narratives to examine the institutional responses to sexual harassment by school authorities, identifying the parallels to domestic violence legal solutions. Our discussion emphasizes how school service providers can better appreciate and react to the social and relational context of boys' harassment of girls.     

A qualitative exploration of school racial diversity,friendship choices,and Black women's identity-based experiences in high school

Social integration is a critical component of adolescents' positive school adjustment. Although prior scholars have highlighted how Black women and girls' social identities (e.g., race, gender, social class) influence their academic and social experiences in school, very little work has focused on how school racial diversity shapes Black girls' peer networks throughout K–12 education. To address this gap in the literature, the present qualitative study explored the narratives of 44 Black undergraduate women (M_age = 20 years) who reflected on their friendship choices in high school. We used consensual qualitative research methods to examine how Black women navigated friendships during their time attending predominantly White (less than 20% Black), racially diverse (21%–60% Black), and predominantly Black (61%–100% Black) high schools. Coding analyses revealed five friendship themes: (a) Black female friends, (b) mostly Black friends, (c) mostly interracial friends, (d) mostly White friends, and (e) White friends in academic settings and Black friends in social settings. Our findings highlight how the young women's ongoing negotiation of racialized and gendered school norms influenced their sense of closeness with same-race and interracial peers. Black girls may have challenges with forming lasting and meaningful friendships when they cannot find peers who are affirming and supportive, particularly in predominantly White school contexts. This study underscores the need to look at how racial diversity in the student population offers school psychologists and educators insight into how to better support the social and emotional development of Black girls.     

Confronting deep moral disagreement: the President's Council on Bioethics, moral status, and human embryos

The report of the President's Council on Bioethics, Human Cloning and Human Dignity, addresses the central ethical, political, and policy issue in human embryonic stem cell research: the moral status of extracorporeal human embryos. The Council members were in sharp disagreement on this issue and essentially failed to adequately engage and respectfully acknowledge each others' deepest moral concerns, despite their stated commitment to do so. This essay provides a detailed critique of the two extreme views on the Council (i.e., embryos have full moral status or they have none at all) and then gives theoretical grounding for our judgment about the intermediate moral status of embryos. It also supplies an account of how to address profound moral disagreements in the public arena, especially by way of constructing a middle ground that deliberately pays sincere respect to the views of those with whom it has deep disagreements.     

Using technology to explore social networks and mechanisms underlying peer effects in classrooms

Peer interactions among children have long interested social scientists. Identifying causal peer effects is difficult, and a number of studies have used random assignment to produce evidence that peers affect each other's outcomes. This focus by sociologists and economists on whether peers affect each other has not been matched by direct evidence on how these effects operate. The authors argue that one reason for the small number of studies in sociology and economics on the mechanisms underlying peer effects is the difficulty of collecting data on microinteractions. They argue technology reduces data collection costs relative to direct observation and allows for realistic school activities with randomly assigned peers. The authors describe a novel strategy for collecting data on peer interactions and discuss how this approach might shed light on mechanisms underlying peer influence. The centerpiece of this strategy is the use of handheld computers by middle and high school students as part of interactive math and science lessons called the Discussion Game. The handhelds collect data on interactions between students and track how students' answers evolve as they interact with different peers.     

The Dynamics of a Genetic Counseling Peer Supervision Group

Supervision is a practice that is utilized by a variety of practitioners to hone their counseling skills. Genetic counselors have embraced the supervision process, and some seek out supervision in a group setting with peers. Researchers have described the structure and content of genetic counseling peer supervision groups, and provided evidence for the benefits of seeking peer supervision. This study aimed to describe the interpersonal aspects of one genetic counseling peer supervision group, including personality traits and group dynamics, and how those factors influenced our experiences within the group. We also describe how the process of evaluating these factors impacted us individually and collectively. There was consensus that the group was a safe and trusting one, which was united by similar goals and mutual respect. Members reported gaining insights about how their own personality functioned within the group milieu, and also how the group setting impacted them. Based on our experiences, we recommend that other peer supervision groups consider similar self-evaluations on a periodic basis, both to enhance group functioning and to allow for increased self-awareness and professional growth.     

Perceptions of parent‐child attachment,social self‐efficacy,and peer relationships in middle childhood

Relationships among attachment to each parent, children's social self‐efficacy, and the quality of peer relations (attachment to peers and perceptions of victimization) were explored with 67 fifth and sixth graders (31 female) attending a rural elementary school. Results of hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed main effects for gender and attachment to mother relative to the attachment to peers variable, with girls and more securely attached children reporting higher quality attachment to peers. Main effects were also detected for gender and attachment to father relative to social self‐efficacy, with girls and more securely attached children exhibiting higher self‐efficacy. No main effects were observed relative to the peer victimization variable. None of the interaction effects involving gender and attachment to each parent relative to attachment to peers, peer victimization, and social self‐efficacy were significant. Finally, evidence for mediation of attachment to father on attachment to peers by children's social self‐efficacy was revealed. Implications of the results are discussed and ideas for future research are provided. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Psychoanalytic controversies contextualized

Psychoanalytic disagreements are famously heated, polarized, and prolonged. These controversies are often the reflection of a shared agreement by the participants to engage in debate at an abstract level far removed from the clinical context in which the disagreement first arose. As a specimen example of such disputes, a case report by Patrick Casement is examined, together with a series of polemical discussions it inspired concerning physical contact suddenly demanded by an analysand in session. Over two dozen authors were almost evenly divided on whether to agree with Casement's technical conclusions, but showed a disquieting indifference to the detailed information available in his report regarding how this clinical crisis developed. The substantive merits of the contending arguments are not at issue; rather, the point is to demonstrate the crucial need to refine a methodology of contextualization to clarify inferential assumptions in clinical discussions. Premature truth claims might then give way to a more rational comparison of the clinical sources of divergent opinions. The term contextual horizon is introduced to facilitate an understanding of how the psychoanalyst makes inferences from the patient's associations.     

Disagreement and Evidential Attenuation

What sort of doxastic response is rational to learning that one disagrees with an epistemic peer who has evaluated the same evidence? I argue that even weak general recommendations run the risk of being incompatible with a pair of real epistemic phenomena, what I call evidential attenuation and evidential amplification. I focus on a popular and intuitive view of disagreement, the equal weight view. I take it to state that in cases of peer disagreement, a subject ought to end up equally confident that her own opinion is correct as that the opinion of her peer is. I say why we should regard the equal weight view as a synchronic constraint on (prior) credence functions. I then spell out a trilemma for the view: it violates what are intuitively correct updates (also leading to violations of conditionalisation), it poses implausible restrictions on prior credence functions, or it is non‐substantive. The sorts of reasons why the equal weight view fails apply to other views as well: there is no blanket answer to the question of how a subject should adjust her opinions in cases of peer disagreement.     

Armchair Disagreement

A commonly neglected feature of the so‐called Equal Weight View, according to which we should give our peers’ opinions the same weight we give our own, is its prima facie incompatibility with the common picture of philosophy as an armchair activity: an intellectual effort to seek a priori knowledge. This view seems to imply that our beliefs are more likely to be true if we leave our armchair in order to find out whether there actually are peers who, by disagreeing with us, force us to revise our beliefs. This article argues that the Equal Weight View should be spelled out in such a way that not only actual peer disagreement requires us to revise our beliefs, but also merely possible peer disagreement. This result is not a reductio ad absurdum of the view. Quite the opposite: it shows that the view is, contrary to appearance, compatible with our common way of doing philosophy.