KEVIN DORST
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The Epistemology of Controversy (Graduate seminar, Fall 2022)
Kevin Dorst & Roger White
Syllabus
I. Disagreement
Sept 12 (Both)
  • ​​Kelly 2005, The Epistemic Significance of Disagreemeent (Roger)
  • Primer on probability (Kevin)
    No reading. If you’d like more, the first two chapters of this textbook are fantastic.
Sept. 19 (Roger)
  • Elga 2007, Reflection and Disagreement
  • McGrath 2008, Moral Disagreement and Moral Expertise
Sept. 26 (Roger)
  • Elga 2010, How to Disagree about How to Disagree
  • Pittard 2015, Resolute Conciliationism ​

​​II. Irrelevant Influences
Oct. 3 (Kevin)   [Handout]
  • White 2010, You Just Believe That Because...
  • Schoenfield 2017, Meditations on Beliefs Formed Arbitrarily
Oct. 10: No Class
Oct. 17 (Roger)
  • Mogensen 2016, Contingency Anxiety and the Epistemology of Disagreement
  • Paul 2021, The Paradox of Empathy​

​III. Permissivism
Oct. 24 (Both)
  • White 2005, Epistemic Permissiveness (Kevin)
  • Schoenfield 2014, Permission to Believe (Roger)
Oct. 31 (Roger)
  • Schoenfield, Horowitz, and Dogramaci MS, Are you now, or have you ever been, an impermissivist
  • Christensen 2016, Conciliationism, Uniqueness, and Rational Toxicity ​

IV. Bias and Polarization
Nov. 7 (Roger)
  • Rini 2017, Fake News and Partisan Epistemology
  • Worsnip 2019, The obligation to diversify one’s sources
Nov. 14 (Kevin)
  • Kelly 2008, Disagreement, Dogmatism, and Belief Polarization
  • McWilliams 2019, Evidentialism and Belief Polarization 
Nov. 21 (Kevin)
  • Henderson and Gebharter 2021, The role of source reliability in belief polarisation
  • Salow 2019, The Externalists Guide to Fishing for Compliments (Focus on §1 and §3)
Nov. 28 (Kevin)
  • Kamenica and Gentzkow 2011, Bayesian Persuasion
  • Little 2022, Bayesian Explanations for Persuasion
  • [Never mind, don't read this one:] Kamenica 2019, Bayesian Persuasion and Information Design
Dec. 5 (Kevin)
  • Wilson 2014, Bounded Memory and Biases in Information Processing
  • Dallmann 2017, When obstinacy is the best policy
Dec. 12 (You!)
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