The Cognition of Conflict: Ontology, Dynamics, and Ideology - Conflict and Multimodal Communication: Social Research and Machine Intelligence - page 10

- we have/want to agree (goal) ( societal level) or

- I must “decide” what to believe (goal).

The epistemic conflict might be considered a subtype of metacognitive conflicts :
the conflict is in fact between the goal/decision of believing P and the goal of
not believing P (or believing Not P). There is such a conflict between the belief
that P and the belief that Not P only because there is a meta-goal of having
coherent/consistent beliefs (see below).
Any new information must be integrated with our previous knowledge/beliefs in
that context. Such information might even be rejected, not believed.
To be accepted, it must be compatible with previous knowledge, that is, at least
noncontradictory. If there is an epistemic conflict, then I must revise my previous
incompatible beliefs if the new information is much more credible (thanks to its
sources). Hopefully it should not just be noncontradictory but supported by or
supporting the other beliefs, in other words, well integrated: this is expressed by
words like in fact , since , obviously , and so on.
However, what is the basis of the strength of possible conflicting beliefs?
What determines the strength of the opposers of the new information? Clearly
their certainty is due to their own sources and the reliability and convergence of
those sources. It is also due to the degree of integration and reciprocal support
among previous beliefs, but this is a source, too, since those beliefs consti-
tute inferential links: I can “derive” (support) a given assumption from other
assumptions.
This is in fact an additional reason for our good memory for the sources and
origins of our beliefs. Sometimes, when we have a problem, we even try to explicitly
retrieve the source of some knowledge item: Who told me this? Where did I read
this? .
This is very important since it means that in fact usually a conflict between
a previous belief and a new candidate belief represents a contest between their
sources : what are the most reliable sources, and how many are in favor of or opposed
to the old and new beliefs?
As stated earlier, memorized or retrieved sources can be of any type: perception
and direct experience, communication (something heard or read), or one's own
reasoning (inferences).
Given the preceding statements, a knowledge conflict is in fact a contest over
sources ; that is why arguing against or in favor of or about a source will constitute
a major argument: “ But Encyclopedia Britannica is much more credible and
serious ::: ”“ You cannot believe that; they are interested in selling a drug and are
not a serious company. ”“ You can believe that, it is a medical network. ”“ You cannot
believe that; they are just laypeople and emotionally involved in this disease ::: ”