Acceptance and Deference: The Case for Epistemic Discipline

Pessimists about moral deference argue there is something problematic about deferential moral beliefs, while optimists contend deference can be justified or even uniquely valuable. We are confronted with the problem of deference in opaque conditions: those in which understanding is costly or impossible. The best strategy in such conditions is to accept some relevant proposition(s) as premises in practical reasoning without believing them in the normal sense. Deferential beliefs run risks in our subsequent reasoning on related topics; acceptance is a form of dependence on testimony that mitigates these problems.