Aligning frist order beliefs with second order beliefs

Cases abound in humans, in which rationality’s demand for some kind of fit between one’s beliefs (first-order beliefs) and one’s beliefs about one’s beliefs (second-order beliefs) can be seen in the breach - that gap in the mental wall.

Questions about epistemic (what we deem to be knowledge) self-doubt can be organized into five over-arching questions:

 1) Can the doubting itself, a state of having a belief state and doubting that it is the right one to have, be rational?

 2) What is the source of the authority of second-order beliefs?

 3) Are there general rules for deciding which level should win the tug of war? If so, what is their justification? 

4) What does the matching relation this adjudication is aiming at consist in? 

5) If mismatch between the levels can be rational when one first acquires reason to doubt, is it also rationally permitted to remain in a level-splitting state—also known as epistemic akrasia (Owens 2002)—in which the self-doubting conflict is maintained?