Consensual Decision-Making Among Epistemic Peers

Hartmann, Stephan and Martini, Carlo and Sprenger, Jan (2009) Consensual Decision-Making Among Epistemic Peers.

Full text available as:
PDF - Requires a viewer, such as Adobe Acrobat Reader or other PDF viewer.

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.

Keywords:Formal social epistemology, consensus, disagreement, epistemic peers, equal weight view, social networks
Subjects:Specific Sciences: Probability/Statistics
General Issues: Decision Theory
General Issues: Confirmation/Induction
Specific Sciences: Sociology
Specific Sciences: Economics
ID Code:4491
Deposited By:Hartmann, Stephan
Deposited On:06 March 2009
Additional Information:The paper will appear in a special issue of the journal Episteme.