Maybe some of these commenters have reasons for their vehemence and dismissiveness that Iām missing?
Yes, I have academic expertise in (and adjacent to) the field, and was sharing my academic opinion of the quality of reasoning that Iāve come across in published work defending one of the views in question (which Iām very familiar with because I published a paper on that very topic in the leading Bioethics journal).
surely after seeing that a group of people holds substantially different views to your own, your all-things-considered belief should shift at least somewhat towards those views
Not if theyāre clearly mistaken. For example, when geologists come across young-earth creationists, or climate scientists come across denialists, they may well be able to identify that the other group is mistaken. If so, there is no rational pressure for clear thinkers to āshiftā in the direction of those that they correctly recognize to be incompetent.
It really just comes down to the first-order question of whether or not we are correct to judge many bioethicists to be incompetent. It would be obviously question-begging for you to assume that weāre wrong about this, and downgrade your opinion of our epistemics on that basis. You need to look at the arguments and form a first-order judgment of your own. Otherwise youāre just confidence-policing, which is itself a form of epistemic vice.
Yes, I have academic expertise in (and adjacent to) the field, and was sharing my academic opinion of the quality of reasoning that Iāve come across in published work defending one of the views in question (which Iām very familiar with because I published a paper on that very topic in the leading Bioethics journal).
Not if theyāre clearly mistaken. For example, when geologists come across young-earth creationists, or climate scientists come across denialists, they may well be able to identify that the other group is mistaken. If so, there is no rational pressure for clear thinkers to āshiftā in the direction of those that they correctly recognize to be incompetent.
It really just comes down to the first-order question of whether or not we are correct to judge many bioethicists to be incompetent. It would be obviously question-begging for you to assume that weāre wrong about this, and downgrade your opinion of our epistemics on that basis. You need to look at the arguments and form a first-order judgment of your own. Otherwise youāre just confidence-policing, which is itself a form of epistemic vice.
That all seems fair /ā I agree.