I think this article makes its case compellingly, and appreciate that you spell-out the sometimes subtle ways uncertainty gets handled.
Did the question “Why should justification standards be the same?” arise in a sociological / EA movement context? My interpretation (from the question wording alone) would be more epistemic, along the lines of the unity of science. In my view, standards for justification have to be standardized, otherwise they wouldn’t be standards; one could just offer an arbitrary justification to any given question.
Yeah, I could have made that more clear—I am more focused on the sociology of justification. I supposed if you’re talking pure epistemics, it depends whether you’re constructivist about epistemological truth. If you are, then you’d probably have a similar position—that different communities can reasonably end up with justification standards, and no one community have more claim to truth than the other.
I suspect, though, that most EAs are not constructivists about epistemology, and so vaguely think that some communities have better justification standards than others. If that’s right, then the point is more sociological: that some communities are more rigorous about this stuff than others, or even that they might use the same justification standards but differ in some other way (like not caring about animals) that means the process looks a little different. So the critic I’m modeling in the post is saying something like: “sure, some people do justification better than others, but these are different communities so it makes sense that some communities care more about getting this right than others do.”
I guess another angle could be from meta-epistemic uncertainty. Like if we think there is a truth about what kinds of justification practices are better than others, but we’re deeply uncertain about what it is, it may then still seem quite reasonable that different groups are trying different things, especially if they aren’t trying to participate in the same justificatory community.
Not entirely sure I’ve gotten all the philosophical terms technically right here, but hopefully the point I’m trying to make is clear enough!
I think this article makes its case compellingly, and appreciate that you spell-out the sometimes subtle ways uncertainty gets handled.
Did the question “Why should justification standards be the same?” arise in a sociological / EA movement context? My interpretation (from the question wording alone) would be more epistemic, along the lines of the unity of science. In my view, standards for justification have to be standardized, otherwise they wouldn’t be standards; one could just offer an arbitrary justification to any given question.
Yeah, I could have made that more clear—I am more focused on the sociology of justification. I supposed if you’re talking pure epistemics, it depends whether you’re constructivist about epistemological truth. If you are, then you’d probably have a similar position—that different communities can reasonably end up with justification standards, and no one community have more claim to truth than the other.
I suspect, though, that most EAs are not constructivists about epistemology, and so vaguely think that some communities have better justification standards than others. If that’s right, then the point is more sociological: that some communities are more rigorous about this stuff than others, or even that they might use the same justification standards but differ in some other way (like not caring about animals) that means the process looks a little different. So the critic I’m modeling in the post is saying something like: “sure, some people do justification better than others, but these are different communities so it makes sense that some communities care more about getting this right than others do.”
I guess another angle could be from meta-epistemic uncertainty. Like if we think there is a truth about what kinds of justification practices are better than others, but we’re deeply uncertain about what it is, it may then still seem quite reasonable that different groups are trying different things, especially if they aren’t trying to participate in the same justificatory community.
Not entirely sure I’ve gotten all the philosophical terms technically right here, but hopefully the point I’m trying to make is clear enough!