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!)
· Student presentations