Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T23:29:45.425Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Consensual Decision-Making Among Epistemic Peers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2012

Stephan Hartmann ,
Carlo Martini  and
Jan Sprenger
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper focuses on the question of how to resolve disagreement and uses the Lehrer-Wagner model as a formal tool for investigating consensual decision-making. The main result consists in a general definition of when agents treat each other as epistemic peers (Kelly 2005; Elga 2007), and a theorem vindicating the “equal weight view” to resolve disagreement among epistemic peers. We apply our findings to an analysis of the impact of social network structures on group deliberation processes, and we demonstrate their stability with the help of numerical simulations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Episteme , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , June 2009 , pp. 110 - 129
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Aumann, Robert. 1976. “Agreeing to Disagree.” Annals of Statistics 4: 1236–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bradley, Richard. 2006. “Taking Advantage of Difference of Opinion.” Episteme: A Journal of Social Epistemology 3(3): 141–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christensen, David. 2007. “Epistemology of Disagreement: The Good News.” Philosophical Review 116: 187–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeGroot, Morris. 1974. “Reaching a Consensus.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 69: 118–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeMarzo, Peter, Vayanos, Dimistri and Zwiebel, Jeffrey. 2003. “Persuasion Bias, Social Influence, and Unidimensional Opinions.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 118(3): 909–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elga, Adam. 2007. “Reflection and Disagreement.” Noûs 41: 478–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elga, Adam. 2009. “How to Disagree About How to Disagree.” In Feldman, R. and Warfield, T. (eds.), Disagreement. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Feldman, Richard. 2007. “Reasonable Religious Disagreements.” In Antony, L. (eds.), Philosophers Without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life, pp. 194–214. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Golub, Benjamin and Jackson, Matthew O.. 2007. “Naïve Learning in Social Networks: Convergence, Influence, and the Wisdom of Crowds.” Working Papers Series FEEM Working Paper No. 64.2007.Google Scholar
Gutting, Gary. 1982. Religious Belief and Religious Skepticism. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Hegselmann, Rainer and Krause, Ulrich. 2002. “Opinion Dynamics and Bounded Confidence: Models, Analysis, and Simulation.” Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 5(3).Google Scholar
Jackson, Matthew O. 2008. Social and Economic Networks. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, Thomas. 2005. “The Epistemic Significance of Disagreement.” In Hawthorne, J. and Szabo, T. (eds.), Oxford Studies in Epistemology 1, pp. 167–96. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, Thomas. 2009. “Peer Disagreement and Higher Order Evidence.” In Feldman, R. and Warfield, T. (eds.), Disagreement. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lehrer, Keith. 1976. “When Rational Disagreement is Impossible.” Noûs 10: 327–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lehrer, Keith and Wagner, Carl. 1981. Rational Consensus in Science and Society. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milgrom, Paul. 1981. “An Axiomatic Characterization of Common Knowledge.” Econometrica 49: 219–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Regan, Helen, Colyvan, Mark and Markovchick-Nicholls, Lisa. 2006. “A Formal Model for Consensus and Negotiation in Environmental Management.” Journal of Environmental Management 80: 167–76.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Steele, Katie, Regan, Helen, Colyvan, Mark and Burgman, Mark A.. 2007. “Right Decisions or Happy Decision-Makers?” Social Epistemology: A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy 21: 349–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wagner, Carl. 1978. “Consensus Through Respect: A Model of Rational Group Decision-Making.” Philosophical Studies 34: 335–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zollman, Kevin. 2007. “The Communication Structures of Epistemic Communities.” Philosophy of Science 74: 574–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar