NDLI: Do computer simulations support the Argument from Disagreement?

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Vallinder, Aron Olsson, Erik J.
Copyright Year	2012
Abstract	According to the Argument from Disagreement (AD) widespread and persistent disagreement on ethical issues indicates that our moral opinions are not influenced by moral facts, either because there are no such facts or because there are such facts but they fail to influence our moral opinions. In an innovative paper, Gustafsson and Peterson (Synthese, published online 16 October, 2010) study the argument by means of computer simulation of opinion dynamics, relying on the well-known model of Hegselmann and Krause (J Artif Soc Soc Simul 5(3):1–33, 2002; J Artif Soc Soc Simul 9(3):1–28, 2006). Their simulations indicate that if our moral opinions were influenced at least slightly by moral facts, we would quickly have reached consensus, even if our moral opinions were also affected by additional factors such as false authorities, external political shifts and random processes. Gustafsson and Peterson conclude that since no such consensus has been reached in real life, the simulation gives us increased reason to take seriously the AD. Our main claim in this paper is that these results are not as robust as Gustafsson and Peterson seem to think they are. If we run similar simulations in the alternative Laputa simulation environment developed by Angere and Olsson (Angere, Synthese, forthcoming and Olsson, Episteme 8(2):127–143, 2011) considerably less support for the AD is forthcoming.
Starting Page	1437
Ending Page	1454
Page Count	18
File Format	PDF
ISSN	00397857
Journal	Synthese
Volume Number	190
Issue Number	8
e-ISSN	15730964
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Netherlands
Publisher Date	2012-05-04
Publisher Place	Dordrecht
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Argument from Disagreement Computer simulation Formal epistemology Bayesianism Probability Trust Philosophy of Science Epistemology Logic Philosophy of Language Metaphysics
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Philosophy Social Sciences

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