Basic concepts related to peer-disagreement debate are analyzed, main related problems are introduced, and the existing views are examined. Two related questions are discussed: first, "is it ever epistemologically possible for epistemic peers to rationally sustain their disagreement?" and, second, "what is the epistemic duty of disagreeing peers?".
The paper shows how the possibility of rational disagreement requires a revision in our view on epistemic rationality. For one thing, our view on epistemic rationality should consider the fact that our epistemic efforts are not individualistic acts to be done by epistemic agents in isolation but they are collectivistic labors shared somehow between different epistemic agents even when they are done by one single agent. For another thing, our view on epistemic rationality shouldn't lose sight of the dynamics of human epistemic affairs, i.e., the fact that each person's epistemic status constantly changes.
Since such conditions are properly met through dialogue-based epistemic relations (with dialogue being taken in its wide sense), the paper concludes, first, that a peer-disagreement is rational as long as the relevant dialogue is going on, and, second, that, as there is thus a sense in which peer-disagreement can be rational, the epistemic duty of disagreeng peers is not to suspend their judgments but, instead, to moderate them.
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