Whose Beliefs Count?

Whose Beliefs Count is the third in a trilogy of books exploring the nature of belief, justification and epistemic privilege. It assumes a contemporary situation in which, rather as in a Kuhnian ‘scientific revolution’, there is no assumed hegemonic principle of method or reason but rather a series of radical discourses and reactionary counter-discourses. There are people who question the legitimacy of science and the institutions of liberalism and people who loudly and aggressively defend these things. The result of these kinds of exchanges is often heat rather than light. Whose Beliefs Count tackles these issues and others on the assumption that conversation between apparently incommensurate narratives is both necessary and achievable under the right conditions. Of course, this does not make such conversations easy or comfortable. Sometimes they may leave us puzzled and at sea as to how to address the ‘other’. One crucial element of them is what we now call ‘social justice: the conditions of basic equality under which one position can address another in the absence of implied threat.