Disagreement

Sally is hiking in the forest with her dad. While she is about to pick what she takes to be a beautiful porcino mushroom, her dad warns her: “Careful, that is a poisonous boletus satanas!” Sally’s dad has decades of experience in picking mushrooms and is extremely skillful – much more skillful than Sally is – in recognizing edible ones. Sally is aware of this. She therefore readily comes to believe that what she was about to pick is a poisonous (...) mushroom and walks away. It is quite intuitive that Sally does the right thing. She behaves epistemically as she should, because her dad is better epistemically positioned than she is in the relevant domain. We might call him her epistemic authority as far as mushrooms are concerned. But what exactly does this involve? What makes Sally’s dad an epistemic authority for his daughter? Sally’s dad is certainly no disciplinary expert in the mushroom domain. And yet his word is authoritative, i.e., has special epistemic weight for Sally. How is epistemic authority different than expertise? Sally is no complete amateur as far as mushrooms are concerned. She probably had what she took to be very good reasons to believe that what she was about to pick was a porcino mushroom. When she aligns to her dad’s view, what happens (and what should happen) to her existing reasons and her take on the matter? The structure of this entry is the following. Section 2 gives a brief explication of the notion of epistemic authority. Section 3 clarifies the relation between epistemic authority and expertise. Section 4 tackles the question of how we should reasonably react in realizing that our epistemic authority holds a certain view. (shrink)

This paper critically examines Coliva and Palmira’s characterization of the disagreement between Humean skeptics and hinge epistemologists as a distinctive kind of conceptual disagreement. Humean skepticism requires evidential justification for all rational beliefs, presenting a narrower conception of rationality. This contrasts with constitutivist hinge epistemology, which posits that our unwarranted hinge propositions — the basic certainties which makes the justifications for ordinary empirical propositions possible — are constitutive of the concept of epistemic rationality, thus they are also rationally accepted by (...) us. Coliva and Palmira (2020, 2021) argue that this divergence reflects a conceptual disagreement over the conception of epistemic rationality, implying a dispute about how the concept of epistemic rationality should be understood. Their strategy is two-fold: they first mentioned Stroud’s (2019) categorization of conceptual disagreement, but contended that the disagreement between Humean skeptics and hinge epistemologists represents a novel kind of conceptual disagreement that Stroud’s categorization cannot encompass. They suggest this new framing allows for a rational resolution of the disagreement; second, they argue that the extended conception of rationality is superior because it coherently accounts for the rationality of our epistemic practices. However, I contend that both parts of their two-fold strategy fail. Even if the disagreement is conceptual, it can be understood as a type of disagreement within Stroud’s categorization; therefore, it does not represent a novel type of disagreement. Additionally, I argue that they misinterpret the skeptic’s stance. Skeptics do not assume that our epistemic practices are rational; rather, they doubt the rationality of these practices and the possibility of knowledge. Therefore, for a skeptic, there is no advantage from a conceptual proposal that makes a coherent account of the alleged rationality of our epistemic practices. (shrink)

What is the epistemic significance of higher-order evidence? Recently, philosophers have defended zetetic approaches to higher-order evidence, which appeal to factors related to inquiry. According to such views, in response to higher order evidence, one should open inquiry and deliberate on the question further. While it can often be productive to inquire in response to higher-order evidence, whether one should inquire is settled on primarily practical—not purely epistemic—grounds. I defend various cases where one can rationally respond to higher-order evidence without (...) engaging in zetetic activity of any kind. Zetetic responses to higher-order evidence are thus bound to be incomplete. Reflection on these cases suggests a deeper lesson: epistemic norms never require us to engage in inquiry or to perform any action whatsoever. Zetetic proposals give rise to an overly demanding and implausible picture of normative epistemology, according to which epistemic norms are in the business of helping us to settle the answers to our questions. However, epistemic norms do not—and importantly should not—be expected to fulfill this role. (shrink)

O objetivo deste artigo é oferecer um panorama da discussão sobre se o princípio Independência de Crença é verdadeiro e investigar se a deferência do novato a um especialista defensor da posição majoritária é racional. Para isso, apresentaremos, na primeira seção, o princípio Independência de Crença e algumas noções de epistemologia da expertise. Na segunda seção, explicaremos o argumento de Alvin Goldman (2001) a favor de uma versão do princípio Independência de Crença. Na terceira seção, explicaremos as críticas de David (...) Coady (2006, 2012) ao argumento de Goldman e o argumento de Jennifer Lackey (2013) contra aquele princípio. Na última seção, explicaremos o argumento de Zach Barnett (2019) contra a argumentação de Lackey e algumas de suas considerações sobre dependência de crença. (shrink)

Conversation, dialogue, reasonable disagreement, and the acquisition of knowledge through the words of others, all of this has always been at the center of philosophers’ concerns since the emergence of philosophy in Ancient Greece. It is also important to recognize that in contemporary philosophy, marked by the linguistic turn, there is a wealth of intellectual production on ethical, psycho-linguistic, logical-linguistic, and pragmatic aspects of the conversation. Despite all this, this is the first collection of texts dedicated exclusively to the strictly (...) epistemic aspects of this phenomenon which is so decisive for the very constitution of our humanity. This book brings together the contributions of fifteen leading philosophers on some of the most relevant issues of what we could call the Epistemology of Conversation. (shrink)

This paper attempts to develop a criterion for determining when one’s own opinion is incorrect. I first establish a Gadamerian critique of Enlightenment objectivism and continue by stating that neither radical objectivism nor radical relativism are applicable standards within epistemology. There must be both some valid and some invalid opinions. In dialogue with Georgia Warnke, the discussion of right and wrong perception is based on the minimums of immediate illegitimizing of certain prejudices: part-whole incongruity and dogmatic opinions. Further, in conjunction (...) with María Lugones’s theory of “world-traveling,” I state that one is unable to adequately dismiss an individual’s opinion on a phenomenon until they have “traveled” to the individual’s “world” and experienced the phenomenon through that individual’s personal epistemology. To get a proper and best-as-possible understanding of someone’s stance, especially a stance that opposes one’s own, one must address or interrogate the prejudices that are tied to the stance itself; and meaningfully investigating another person’s prejudices/perceptions requires traveling to their world. As this is incredibly difficult to do and requires high amounts of time and epistemic/hermeneutic labor, it becomes more efficient to be reflexive for only oneself than for others. I develop a criterion to determine such personal falsity, where first, building off Vrinda Dalmiya and Linda Alcoff, one must determine either propositional/theoretical or practical/educational expertise in the individual with the opposing opinion to one’s own. An expert’s differing stance is merely a signal to continue on with research into the relevant inquiry. Then one must enter the confirmation phase, in which one must confirm the expert’s opposing opinion with other experts in the relevant field. One must maintain the belief that opinions necessitate their own change, and expertise does not always stem from those with the most prestige behind their name. Humility is the crucial figure in the opinion-changing process that stands as the fountainhead of good knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide a characterisation of a neglected form of humility: magnanimous humility. Unlike most contemporary analyses of humility, magnanimous humility is not about limitations but instead presupposes that one possesses some entitlement in a context. I suggest that magnanimous intellectual humility (IH) consists in a disposition to appropriately refrain from exercising one’s legitimate epistemic entitlements because one is appropriately motivated to pursue some epistemic good. I then shown that Magnanimous IH has an important role to play in (...) contexts of disagreement and oppression. It calls on knowing parties to refrain from pressing their epistemic entitlements to facilitate mutual understanding. And it is a virtue that oppressed persons have good reason to cultivate to develop meta-lucidity in themselves and others. (shrink)

The fact that philosophy has not made much progress in finding answers to its big questions is often demonstrated with a comparison to natural sciences. Some have recently argued that the state of progress in philosophy is not so different than the sciences: there are many unresolved big questions in the sciences too, and philosophy has made progress on its smaller questions just like the sciences. I argue that this comparison is misleading: the situation in the two fields looks similar (...) only if we focus on unresolved scientific questions that have philosophical import. The sciences have made progress on many questions that are significant but that are not ‘big’ in a philosophical sense, while philosophy has made less progress on its own significant questions. Moreover, ‘smaller’ questions in the sciences are significant in themselves, while smaller questions in philosophy do not have much significance beyond their contribution to the bigger debates. I conclude with brief remarks about what underlies the disparity between the two fields: to understand the slow pace of progress in philosophy we should pay attention to factors that are at the intersection of the nature of philosophical questions, current philosophical methodology and the sociology of academic philosophy. (shrink)

In situations of disagreement in a polarized social world, rational argument is not always successful in persuading those who do not share our beliefs. Narratives of personal experiences have empirically shown to help bridge divides between disagreeing interlocutors, though this raises the question of how particular, personal narratives relate to the universal appeal of argumentation. It also leads us to reflect upon the dangers of these narratives functioning as a type of propaganda that bypasses reason. In this paper, I discuss (...) how understanding narratives as ways to build common ground using standpoint-informed knowledge (hereafter: standpoint knowledge) can explain the empirical belief-changing potential of narratives. Additionally, viewing deliberation in the public sphere as a communal constitution of common ground may alleviate worries of narratives functioning as propaganda and explain how narratives foster perceived rationality, respect and humanity. On this account, our shared history is constantly shaped by narratives that we build together, which also allows for criticism of these narratives in a pluralist public sphere. (shrink)

Veltman’s test semantics and developments thereof reject the canon about semantic contents and attitude ascriptions in favor of dynamic alternatives. According to these theories the semantic content of a sentence is not a proposition, but a context change potential (CCP). Similarly, beliefs are not taken to be relations between agents and propositions, but agents and CCPs. These deviations from the canon come at the cost of an elegant explanation about the correctness of belief. Standardly, it is taken that the content (...) of a belief is correct just in case the content of that belief is true. The proponent of the test semantics cannot appeal to this explanation since they hold that certain contents, namely epistemically modalized contents, do not express propositions, and are neither true nor false. After motivating the need for an account of the correctness of belief within the dynamic framework, I argue that the few extant accounts in the literature are unsatisfactory. A novel account is proposed that avoids the problems of competing views. (shrink)

A wide range of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) have been introduced to stop or slow down the COVID-19 pandemic. Examples include school closures, environmental cleaning and disinfection, mask mandates, restrictions on freedom of assembly and lockdowns. These NPIs depend on coercion for their effectiveness, either directly or indirectly. A widely held view is that coercive policies need to be publicly justified—justified to each citizen—to be legitimate. Standardly, this is thought to entail that there is a scientific consensus on the factual propositions (...) that are used to support the policies. In this paper, we argue that such a consensus has been lacking on the factual propositions justifying most NPIs. Consequently, they would on the standard view be illegitimate. This is regrettable since there are good reasons for granting the state the legitimate authority to enact NPIs under conditions of uncertainty. The upshot of our argument is that it is impossible to have both the standard interpretation of the permissibility of empirical claims in public justification and an effective pandemic response. We provide an alternative view that allows the state sufficient room for action while precluding the possibility of it acting without empirical support. (shrink)

In the flow of information concerning Peer-to-Peer, it is difficult to get away from the apparently inexhaustible topic of music file sharing. This article invites us to refocus our attention towards the vast diversity of possible uses of the P2P technologies. After a survey of a few examples, the article denounces the ongoing confusion between an innovative and promising technology and the uses to which it can be subjected.

Ce texte traite de piratage en ligne à travers la pratique du peer-to-peer au Québec, c’est-à-dire une forme d’échange non autorisé de produits culturels sur Internet (pratique appelée « piratage culturel »). Une approche strictement juridique de la pratique y voit un simple détournement de copyright, tandis que d’autres approches (mouvement Copyleft, Parti pirate, etc.) postulent qu’un gain social est généré par une telle circulation de l’information à grande échelle. Peu de recherches empiriques ont documenté toutefois les contenus circulant réellement (...) dans ces réseaux de piratage culturel. Une première étude canadienne utilisant l’observation directe amène donc un éclairage nouveau. L’étude montre que le peer-to-peer est régulièrement utilisé au Québec pour transmettre des œuvres du patrimoine national (musique, films, livres, émissions de télévision, etc.), dont plusieurs sont non disponibles autrement. Cela suggère que le piratage culturel ne se limite pas à l’acquisition gratuite ou au « vol » de produits culturels (plusieurs produits n’existent pas en magasin), ni ne dessert en soi la diversité culturelle (des produits québécois y sont largement échangés). La réflexion éthique sur le phénomène se situe dès lors sur deux plans : au plan individuel (avec l’ethos des « pirates ») et au plan collectif (avec le rôle du piratage culturel dans la circulation du patrimoine québécois). Enfin, la pratique pourrait contribuer à la constitution et à la circulation d’archives nationales accessibles sur Internet, dans le contexte d’une migration généralisée des produits culturels du format physique au format numérique. (shrink)

(1) Rupert Read charges that Rawls culpably overlooks the politicized Euthyphro: Do we accept our political perspective because it is right or is it right because we accept it? (2) This charge brings up the question of the deficiency dilemma: Do others disagree with us because of our failures or theirs? —where the two dilemmas appear to be independent of each other and lead to the questions of the logic of deficiency, moral epistemic deficiency, epistemic peers, and the hardness of (...) philosophy. (3) In reply, on an expanded principle of charity Rawls does not overlook the Euthyphro but rather offers ground-breaking solutions to it, (4) that nonetheless trip on the independent bootstrap (5)—as also do Dreben and Nussbaum. (6) Furthermore, Rawls's ' burdens of judgment' seek to bypass the necessity of moral epistemic deficiency and (7) suggest a wider framework for understanding disagreement that sees disagreement as arising from inquiry being in development, unpredictable and uncertain. (8) This wider framework entails that disagreement does not mean moral epistemic deficiency and (9) that our responses to the Euthyphro are 'too soon to say'. (shrink)

Following Robert Fogelin’s work, philosophers have traditionally analysed deep disagreements in Wittgenstein’s thought through the lens of “On Certainty.” This paper explores another fruitful avenue for understanding Wittgenstein’s views on deep disagreements: this avenue lies in examining the form of disagreement that arises between believers and non-believers, as documented in his “Lectures on Religious Belief”. Drawing on this text and others, I will try to demonstrate how deep disagreement, starting from a situation of incompatibility and mutual non-persuasiveness between the parties, (...) can, through the intermediary stage of mutual partial emotive understanding, lead sometimes to an extreme form of resolution: the conversion of one’s own way of seeing things to that of the other party. This conversion, however, does not rely on an appeal to explanations, reasons, or rationality. Instead, it appeals to the overcoming of a blockage by the will. This concept of a complete reorientation of one’s own perspective is central to Wittgenstein’s later philosophy and may even be considered the ultimate goal of his mature work. (shrink)

What can we learn from Lyotard’s reading of Wittgenstein regarding contemporary debates around deep disagreement? It has been shown that Lyotard’s notion of differend can offer a new perspective on deep disagreement, and I expand on this idea by looking at what we can take from Lyotard’s reading of Wittgenstein to reconsider the notion of hinge commitments or propositions. Rather than considering the way Lyotard misreads some of Wittgenstein’s ideas, as many scholars have shown, I focus on the positive dimension (...) of Lyotard’s reading, investigating what he does with Wittgenstein’s ideas, and perhaps also what he does _to_ Wittgenstein’s ideas. In _The Differend_, Lyotard brings Wittgenstein on a political terrain with which he is quite unfamiliar. I argue that Lyotard’s reading offers a specific interpretation of the notion of form of life, and that insisting on this notion shifts the focus from the epistemological dimension of hinges to the moral dimension of life—existential, political, and even aesthetic. To do so, it is necessary to understand how Lyotard reshapes Wittgenstein’s thought, and how the notions of _phrase_, _phrase regimen_, and _genre of discourse_ relate to Wittgenstein’s language-games and forms of life. (shrink)

This chapter details three sources of normative moral disagreement and surveys 11 approaches to understanding its implications for normative ethics. Section 2 explains how normative moral disagreement can emerge from first-order commonsense moral disagreement, second-order metaethical disagreement over moral concepts and methods of ethics, and third-order metaphilosophical disagreement over the merits of different philosophical methods. Section 3 then details how moral disagreement has been argued to support either moral error theory (Section 3.1), moral skepticism (Section 3.2), moral relativism (Section 3.3), (...) common moral foundations beneath areas of disagreement (Section 3.4), empirical approaches to ethics (Section 3.5), considerations of peer-disagreement (Section 3.6), convergence of moral frameworks (Section 3.7), moral compromise (Section 3.8), moral pluralism (Section 3.9), moral pragmatism (Section 3.10), or metaphilosophical examination of the epistemic merits of different philosophical methods (Section 3.11). (shrink)

Este capítulo constituye una revisión crítica de “La lógica de los desacuerdos profundos” de Robert Fogelin, artículo fundante en la discusión contemporánea sobre desacuerdos profundos. Se discutirán las tesis de este artículo que han generado mayor discusión, controversia y, a mi entender, también mayor confusión en los casi cuarenta años desde su publicación. Me refiero a la concepción de Fogelin acerca de la argumentación, la naturaleza de los desacuerdos profundos y la posibilidad de su resolución racional.

When you learn that you disagree with an epistemic peer, what should you believe about the proposition you disagree about? The epistemology of peer disagreement has made considerable progress in answering this question. But to this point, we have largely neglected a significant resource which can help us to determine how peers who disagree can rationally respond to their disagreement. Closely examining actual disagreements in scientific and nonscientific contexts can help us to understand why peers find themselves in disagreement. And (...) knowing why you disagree with your peer can help you to understand how you can rationally respond to your disagreement. Examining specific scientific and nonscientific disagreements shows us that some peers disagree because they disagree about what evidence is relevant to the proposition they disagree about. Dual disagreements about propositions and evidence can be found in numerous areas of disagreement, including ethical, political, philosophical, and scientific arenas. When you find yourself in these dual disagreements, you can rationally believe that your belief is rational and that your peer’s belief, though it diverges from yours, is also rational. But some philosophers have suggested that this situation in which you and your peer have rational beliefs and recognize each other as holding rational beliefs is impossible. A primary motivation for thinking that at least one of you must be believing irrationally is the thesis of Uniqueness about rationality, which states that at most one doxastic attitude can be rationally held given a body of evidence. However, when you consider the epistemic context of your actual disagreements with your peer carefully, you need not think that at least one of you is believing irrationally, even if Uniqueness is true. In response to your disagreement with a peer who disagrees with you both about what evidence is relevant to the proposition you disagree about and the proposition itself, you can even rationally hold a belief which splits the connection between your evidence and your evidence about your evidence. When we consider their epistemic contexts in full relief, peers in disagreement can simultaneously be believing rationally, even if only one of them is right. -/- . (shrink)

Discovering someone disagrees with you is a common occurrence. The question of epistemic significance of disagreement concerns how discovering that another disagrees with you affects the rationality of your beliefs on that topic. This book examines the answers that have been proposed to this question, and presents and defends its own answer.

That bootstrapping and Moorean reasoning fail to instantiate persuasive argumentation is an often informally presented but not systematically developed view. In this paper, I will argue that this unpersuasiveness is not determined by principles of justification transmission but by two straightforward principles of rationality, understood as a concept of internal coherence. First, it is rational for S to believe the conclusion of an argument because of the argument, only if S believes sufficiently many premises of the argument. Second, if S (...) doubts that a source O is reliable and believes that information i is delivered by O, then S rationally suspends judgment about the truth of i. This paper aims to accomplish two tasks. First, it provides a thorough analysis of why bootstrapping argumentation is not an instance of rational persuasion. Second, it contains a more general theory about preconditions and limits of persuasive argumentation. (shrink)

This paper provides a thorough analysis of two often informally stated claims. First, successful argumentation in the sense of persuasive argumentation requires agreement between the interlocutors about the rationality of arguments. Second, a general agreement about rationality of arguments cannot itself be established via argumentation, since such an attempt leads to an infinite meta‐regress. Hence, agreement about the rationality of arguments is a precondition for successful argumentation. As the paper argues, these plausible claims hold under the assumption that interlocutors are (...) subjectively rational and follow their own standards of rationality when engaging in argumentation. (shrink)

Exploring the metaphysics of deep disagreements, Ranalli identifies several essential features shared by all such disputes. These very features constitute a set of adequacy conditions that any satisfactory theory of deep disagreements must meet. The paper explains how Coliva’s Wittgensteinian hinge theory can satisfy Ranalli’s persistence desideratum. According to this condition, any appropriate theory must explain why deep disagreements tend to be persistent and thus unresolved without presupposing that they are rationally irresolvable. First, the work critically discusses how Coliva utilizes (...) her proposed view to account for this desideratum. Second, the paper points out that Coliva’s response is partly problematic because of Ranalli’s definition of deep disagreements for Wittgensteinian hinge theories, which over-generates instances of genuine deep disagreements. Third, the work argues that Coliva’s theory can satisfy Ranalli’s persistence desideratum by resolving a deep disagreement between an anti-vaccination advocate and a proponent of vaccination using an expanded version of Pritchard’s side-on approach. Finally, the paper critically engages with Coliva on the solvability of deep disagreements. (shrink)

Questions surrounding deep disagreement have gained significant attention in recent years. One of the central debates is metaphysical, focusing on the features that make a disagreement deep. Proposals for what makes disagreements deep include theories about hinge propositions and first epistemic principles. In this paper, I criticize this metaphysical discussion by arguing that it is methodologically flawed. Deep disagreement is a technical or semi-technical term, but the metaphysical discussion mistakenly treats it as a common-sense concept to be analyzed and captured (...) by our pre-theoretical intuitions. Since the literature on deep disagreement is subject to this fundamental confusion and deep disagreement is not a helpful umbrella term either, I propose eliminating the notion of deep disagreement from the philosophical discourse. Instead of analyzing the nature of deep disagreement, we should develop theories about different forms of disagreement, including disagreement about hinge propositions and disagreement about epistemic principles, and, in particular, a theory of rationally irresolvable disagreement. (shrink)

.Deep disagreements are those involving a disagreement about (relatively) fundamental epistemic principles. This paper considers the bearing of testimonial injustice, in Miranda Fricker’s sense, on the depth of disagreements, and what this can teach us about the nature and significance of deep disagreements. I start by re-evaluating T. J. Lagewaard’s recent argument that disagreements about the nature, scope, and impact of oppression will often be deepened by testimonial injustice, since the people best placed to offer relevant testimony will be subject (...) to testimonial injustice, pushing the disagreement into one about the bearing of certain epistemic sources on the original debate. I take issue with this last step, but I build on the argument to bring attention to unappreciated and worrying ways in which prejudices can make a disagreement deep in ways that can be hidden from one or more of the participants and from observers. Finally, I revisit some of the ways that deep disagreement has been thought to be problematic for the proper functioning of a democracy, and I examine whether the kinds of hidden deep disagreements I argue for in the paper make these problems any worse, concluding that they likely do. (shrink)

This paper explores taste fragmentalism, a novel approach to matters of taste and faultless disagreement. The view is inspired by Kit Fine’s fragmentalism about time, according to which the temporal dimension can be constituted—in an absolute manner—by states that are pairwise incompatible, provided that they do not obtain together. In the present paper, we will apply this metaphysical framework to taste states. In our proposal, two incompatible taste states (such as the state of rhubarb’s being tasty and the state of (...) rhubarb’s being distasteful) can both constitute reality in an absolute manner, although no agent can have joint access to both states. We will then develop a formalised version of our view by means of an exact truthmaker semantics for taste assertions. Within this framework—we argue—our linguistic and inferential practices concerning cases of faultless disagreement are elegantly vindicated, thus suggesting that taste fragmentalism is worth of further consideration. (shrink)

This paper discusses the Uniqueness Thesis, a core thesis in the epistemology of disagreement. After presenting uniqueness and clarifying relevant terms, a novel counterexample to the thesis will be introduced. This counterexample involves logical disagreement. Several objections to the counterexample are then considered, and it is argued that the best responses to the counterexample all undermine the initial motivation for uniqueness.

If there is an area of discourse in which disagreement is virtually absent, it is mathematics. After all, mathematicians justify their claims with deductive proofs: arguments that entail their conclusions. But is mathematics really exceptional in this respect? Looking at the history and practice of mathematics, we soon realize that it is not. First, deductive arguments must start somewhere. How should we choose the starting points (i.e., the axioms)? Second, mathematicians, like the rest of us, are fallible. Their ability to (...) recognize whether a putative proof is correct is not infallible. In most cases, disagreement over the correctness of a putative proof is, however, evanescent. Once an error is spotted and communicated, the disagreement disappears. But this is not always the case. Sometimes it is recalcitrant; that is, it persists over time. In order to zoom in on this type of disagreement and explain its very possibility, we focus on a single case study: a decades-long (1921-1949) controversy between Federigo Enriques and Francesco Severi, two prominent exponents of the Italian school of algebraic geometry. We suggest that the instability of the mathematical community to which they belonged can be explained by the gap between an abstract criterion of rigor and local criteria of acceptability. It is this instability that made the existence of recalcitrant disagreement over putative proofs possible. We do not condemn speculative mathematics but rather its pretense of being rigorous mathematics. In this respect, we show that the overly self-confident Severi and the more intuitive, visionary Enriques had a completely different attitude. (shrink)

The discussion about deep disagreement has gained significant momentum in the last several years. This discussion often relies on the intuition that deep disagreement is, in some sense, rationally irresolvable. In this paper, I will provide a theory of rationally irresolvable disagreement. Such a theory is interesting in its own right, since it conflicts with the view that rational attitudes and procedures are paradigmatic tools for resolving disagreement. Moreover, I will suggest replacing discussions about deep disagreement with an analysis of (...) rationally irresolvable disagreement, since this notion can be more clearly defined than deep disagreement and captures the basic intuitions underlying deep disagreement. I will first motivate this project by critically assessing the current debate about deep disagreement. I then detail the notions of rationality and resolvable disagreement which are crucial for a suitable theory of rationally irresolvable disagreement before sketching various instances of rationally irresolvable disagreement. Finally, I argue for replacing theories of deep disagreement with theories of rationally irresolvable disagreement, an approach that has significant advantages over existing theories of deep disagreement which focus on hinge propositions or fundamental epistemic principles. (shrink)

Some disagreements concern our most fundamental beliefs, principles, values, or worldviews, such as those about the existence of God, society and politics, or the trustworthiness of science. These are ‘deep disagreements’. But what exactly are deep disagreements? This paper critically overviews theories of deep disagreement. It does three things. First, it explains the differences between deep and other kinds of disagreement, including peer, persistent, and widespread disagreement. Second, it critically overviews two mainstream theories of deep disagreement, the Wittgensteinian account and (...) the Fundamental Epistemic Principle account, before introducing a Hybrid account. Finally, it explores the notion that deep disagreements can be deeper than others. (shrink)

Political epistemology is the intersection of political philosophy and epistemology. This paper develops a political 'hinge' epistemology. Political hinge epistemology draws on the idea that all belief systems have fundamental presuppositions which play a role in the determination of reasons for belief and other attitudes. It uses this core idea to understand and tackle political epistemological challenges, like political disagreement, polarization, political testimony, political belief, ideology, and biases, among other possibilities. I respond to two challenges facing the development of a (...) political hinge epistemology. The first is about nature and demarcation of political hinges, while the second is about rational deliberation over political hinges. I then use political hinge epistemology to analyze ideology, dealing with the challenge of how an agent's ideology 'masks' or distorts their understanding of social reality, along with the challenge of how ideology critique can change the beliefs of agents who adhere to dominant ideologies, if agents only have their own or the competing ideology to rely on (see Haslanger 2017). I then explore how political hinge epistemology might be extended to further our understanding of political belief polarization. (shrink)

This paper examines the philosophy of Jean-Francois Lyotard in relation to the analytic philosophy of deep disagreement. It argues not just that his work has relevance for this debate, but that it offers a challenge to the ‘epistemic paradigm’ present in its academic literature, represented by the two most prominent sets of theories within it – the ‘fundamental epistemic principle’ and ‘hinge epistemology’ views, arguably most strongly represented by Michael Lynch and Duncan Pritchard, respectively. Focussing on Lyotard’s text ‘The Differend’, (...) I show how its conceptual framework and philosophy of language locates the cause of deep disagreement not in the epistemic realm, but in things which do not fully submit to epistemic evaluation: the radically incomplete and open nature of language, and our increasingly politically pluralistic world full of incommensurable differences that do not always admit of rational resolution. Lyotard’s work calls for us to conceptualize deep disagreements as problems of politics, not epistemology, and to find new ways of dealing with disagreements that do not force a solution on them (which often comes at the cost of one party being wronged, or worse) and to create new ways of speaking so that our collective conceptual resources can be increased to better deal with specific cases of dispute. Lyotard’s relevance for the philosophy of deep disagreement is also further discussed with references to Miranda Fricker’s work on ‘epistemic injustice’, which Lyotard, in a different vocabulary, is also concerned with and analyses in ‘The Differend’. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide an account of subjective epistemic obligations. In instances of peer disagreement, one possesses at least two types of obligations: objective epistemic obligations and subjective epistemic obligations. While objective epistemic obligations, such as conciliationism and remaining steadfast, have been much discussed in the literature, subjective epistemic obligations have received little attention. I develop an account of subjective epistemic obligations in the context of worldview disagreements. In recent literature, the notion of worldview disagreement has been receiving increasing (...) attention, and I discuss how understanding worldview disagreements through different classes of beliefs might clarify our understanding of subjective epistemic obligations. I first distinguish between three classes of beliefs, by virtue of their justificatory functions within worldviews: fundamental, crucial and incidental. I then discuss four kinds of worldview disagreements based on this account. Finally, I argue that each disagreement results in different subjective epistemic obligations for each disputant. I conclude by discussing some implications this analysis has for issues such as defeat, peerhood, and epistemic injustice. (shrink)

What can we know? How should we live? What is there? Philosophers famously diverge in the answers they give to these and other philosophical questions. It is widely presumed that a lack of convergence on these questions suggests that philosophy is not progressing at all, is not progressing fast enough, or is not progressing as fast as other disciplines, such as the natural sciences. Call the view that ideal philosophical progress is marked by at least some degree of convergence on (...) the core philosophical questions the pro-convergence thesis. I will argue that there is reason to reject the pro-convergence thesis in favor of the anti-convergence thesis, the view that significant viewpoint convergence is at odds with the aims of a philosophically ideal community. The argument centers on a thought experiment about two different philosophical communities. (shrink)

Disputational models of argumentation have been criticized as introducing adversariality into argumentation by mistakenly conceiving of it as minimally adversarial, and, in doing so, structurally incentivizing ancillary adversariality. As an alternative, non-adversarial models of argumentation like inquiry have been recommended. In this article I defend disputational, minimally adversarial models of disagreement-based argumentation. First, I argue that the normative kernel of minimal adversariality is properly located in the normative fabric of disagreement, not our practices of disputation. Thus, argumentation’s minimal adversariality is (...) a hereditary, rather than an acquired, trait. Second, I show how attempts to model disagreement-based argumentation non-adversarially, as co-inquiry, misrepresent the normative commitments of disagreers. Indeed, such attempts backfire in their efforts to make argumentation less adversarial, by removing the normative, discursive mechanisms by which we may hold each other to rational account for our commitments. Finally, I show how regulative models of disputation, like the Pragma-Dialectical critical discussion, are designed to minimize ancillary adversariality thereby preventing its escalation. (shrink)