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It has recently become popular to apply expressivism outside the moral domain, e.g., to truth and epistemic justification. This paper examines the prospects of generalizing expressivism to taste. This application has much initial plausibility. Many of the standard arguments used in favor of moral expressivism seem to apply to taste. For example, it seems conceivable that you and I disagree about whether chocolate is delicious although we don’t disagree about the facts, which suggests that taste judgments are noncognitive attitudes rather (...) than beliefs. However, there is also a striking difference between moral disagreements and disagreements about taste. Faced with a moraldisagreement, we intuit that either party is at fault. Disagreements about taste, by contrast, are occurrences where neither party intuitively is at fault. This leads to a dilemma. On the one hand, if adisagreement inattitude is not intuited as faultless, then it seems implausible if applied to taste. If, on the other hand, adisagreement inattitude is adisagreement that we intuit as faultless, then it seems implausible if applied to the moral domain. The aim of this paper is to examine how an expressivist can avoid this dilemma. (shrink)

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A well-known challenge for contextualists is to account fordisagreement. Focusing on moral contextualism, this paper examines recent attempts to address this challenge by using the standard expressivist explanation, i.e., explainingdisagreement in terms ofdisagreement inattitude rather thandisagreement in belief. Assuming that the moral disagreements can be explained in terms ofdisagreement inattitude, this may seem as a simple solution for contextualists. However, it turns out to be easier said (...) than done. This paper examines a number of different ways in whichdisagreement inattitude can be incorporated into a contextualist framework and argues that each suggestion is problematic. In particular, the purported explanations ofdisagreement fail to adequately explain intuitive occurrences ofdisagreement, the robustness ofdisagreement intuitions and/or locate thedisagreement in the intuitively right place. (shrink)

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If there is an area of discourse in whichdisagreement 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, thedisagreement 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 ofdisagreement 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 recalcitrantdisagreement 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 differentattitude. (shrink)

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Carnap’s 1931 attack against metaphysics notoriously utilises Heidegger’s work to exemplify the meaninglessness of metaphysical pseudo‐statements. This paper interprets Carnap’s metametaphysics as concerned with delimiting theoretical dialogue in such a manner as to exclude unresolvable disagreements. It puts forth a revised version of Carnap’s argument against the viability of metaphysics, by setting aside his stronger claims that rely on verificationism and focusing instead on his account of metaphysical claims as mere expressions of what he calls “Lebensgefühl,” or a general (...) class='Hi'>attitude towards life. Such attitudes, Carnap argues, are unsuitable objects of theoretical dialogue, insofar as disagreements that concern them are unresolvable. Carnap thus recommends abandoning the attempt to resolve metaphysical disagreements as if they were theoretical. As long as it does not enter into unresolvable disagreements, art, rather than theory, is the appropriate medium for expressing Lebensgefühl. (shrink)

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In this article I discuss David Shoemaker’s recently published piece “Responsibility: The State of the Question. Fault Lines in the Foundations.” While agreeing with Shoemaker on many points, I argue for a more unified diagnosis of the seemingly intractable debates that plague (what I call) “responsibility studies.” I claim that, of the five fault lines Shoemaker identifies, the most basic one is about the role that the notion of deserved harm should play in the theory of moral responsibility. I argue (...) that the deep divide between those theorists who affirm and those who deny that moral responsibility is essentially about the justification of desert thus understood can be traced to thedisagreement about whether the focus on the reactive attitudes by itself entails that moral responsibility has nothing to do with traditional questions about desert and free will. I then show that the seeming intractableness of the other four fault lines Shoemaker identifies is expectable and explicable in light of this more basicdisagreement. After this diagnostic work, I conclude by suggesting a solution to the “morass” that has taken over responsibility studies: theorists working in the field should acknowledge that it has effectively bifurcated into two discrete subareas, which I suggest calling “retribution studies” and “interpersonal studies.” -/- . (shrink)

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I argue against the claim that morally ignorant wrongdoers are open to blame only if they are culpable for their ignorance, and I argue against a version of skepticism about moral responsibility that depends on this claim being true. On the view I defend, the attitudes involved in blame are typically responses to the features of an action that make it objectionable or unjustifiable from the perspective of the one who issues the blame. One important way that an action can (...) appear objectionable to us is that it expresses a judgment with which we disagree about the significance of the interests of those affected by the action. A morally ignorant wrongdoer’s actions may express such judgments even if it is not her fault that she is unaware of the moral status of her behavior, and even if it would be unreasonable to expect her to be aware of its status. (shrink)

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This study examined the relation between professional affiliation and the framing of expert congressional testimony about nicotine's addictiveness. Experts were chosen from three different types of sponsoring organizations: the tobacco industry, government, and independent research organizations, both pro- and anti-tobacco. The study sought to identify common technical biases and policy concerns that could define an overall “expert”attitude, as well as differences where the experts’ framing of nicotine addiction would reveal attempts to favor their own institutions. Semantic network analysis (...) was applied to each group's discourse, thereby clustering associated words that represented major themes in each type of expert group. Clusters revealed a common preoccupation with narrowly defined, lab-based evidence, but more locally, each group framed the issues to support its sponsor's strategy. (shrink)

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Background Contemporary societies are rife with moraldisagreement, resulting in recalcitrant disputes on matters of public policy. In the context of ongoing bioethical controversies, are uncompromising attitudes rooted in beliefs about the nature of moral truth?Methods To answer this question, we conducted both exploratory and confirmatory studies, with both a convenience and a nationally representative sample (total N = 1501), investigating the link between people’s beliefs about moral truth (their metaethics) and their beliefs about moral value (their normative ethics).Results (...) Across various bioethical issues (e.g., medically-assisted death, vaccine hesitancy, surrogacy, mandatory organ conscription, or genetically modified crops), consequentialist attitudes were associated with weaker beliefs in an objective moral truth. This association was not explained by domain-general reflectivity, theism, personality, normative uncertainty, or subjective knowledge.Conclusions We find a robust link between the way people characterize prescriptive disagreements and their sensibility to consequences. In addition, both societal consensus and personal conviction contribute to objectivist beliefs, but these effects appear to be asymmetric, i.e., stronger for opposition than for approval. (shrink)

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In this study we compared the ethical attitudes of a group of experienced, predominantly female, registered nurses (n = 67) with those of a group of final year, mixed sex, medical students (n = 125). The purpose was to determine the basis of differences in attitudes that could lead to ethical disagreements between these two groups when they came to work together. A questionnaire developed to explore ethical attitudes was administered and the responses of the two groups were compared using (...) t-tests. Because of the preponderance of females among the nurses an analysis of variance of the gender-adjusted scores for each group was also carried out. On comparing the responses, the nurses differed significantly from the medical students in a number of ethical domains. A potential source of conflict between these two groups is that the nurses were inclined to adopt the perspective of patients but the medical students identified with their profession. When corrected for the effects of gender, the differences persisted, indicating that it was discipline that determined the differences. We recommend that students of nursing and medicine receive ethics education together, and that more open dialogue between doctors and nurses with respect to their different ethical viewpoints is needed in the work setting. This article will be of interest to educators of students of medicine and nursing, as well as to doctors and nurses who are eager to improve their professional relations and thereby improve patient care. (shrink)

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Background Research on the impact of ethics reflection groups (ERG) (also called moral case deliberations (MCD)) is complex and scarce. Within a larger study, two years of ERG sessions have been used as an intervention to stimulate ethical reflection about the use of coercive measures. We studied changes in: employees’ attitudes regarding the use of coercion, team competence, user involvement, team cooperation and the handling ofdisagreement in teams. Methods We used panel data in a longitudinal design study to (...) measure variation in survey scores from multidisciplinary employees from seven departments within three Norwegian mental health care institutions at three time points (T0–T1–T2). Mixed models were used to account for dependence of data in persons who participated more than once. Results In total, 1068 surveys (from 817 employees who did and did not participate in ERG) were included in the analyses. Of these, 7.6% (N = 62) responded at three points in time, 15.5% (N = 127) at two points, and 76.8% (N = 628) once. On average, over time, respondents who participated in ERG viewed coercion more strongly as offending (p< 0.05). Those who presented a case in the ERG sessions showed lower scores on User Involvement (p< 0.001), Team Cooperation (p< 0.01) and ConstructiveDisagreement (p< 0.01). We observed significant differences in outcomes between individuals from different departments, as well as between different professions. Initial significant changes due to frequency of participation in ERG and case presentation in ERG did not remain statistically significant after adjustment for Departments and Professions. Differences were generally small in absolute terms, possibly due to the low amount of longitudinal data. Conclusions This study measured specific intervention-related outcome parameters for describing the impact of clinical ethics support (CES). Structural implementation of ERGs or MCDs seems to contribute to employees reporting a more criticalattitude towards coercion. Ethics support is a complex intervention and studying changes over time is complex in itself. Several recommendations for strengthening the outcomes of future CES evaluation studies are discussed. CES evaluation studies are important, since—despite the intrinsic value of participating in ERG or MCD—CES inherently aims, and should aim, at improving clinical practices. (shrink)

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In a narrow sense of ‘disagreement,’ you and I disagree iff we believe inconsistent propositions. But there are numerous cases not covered by this definition that seem to constitute disagreements in a wider sense: disagreements about what to do, disagreements inattitude, disagreements in credence, etc. This wider sense ofdisagreement plays an important role in metaethics and epistemology. But what is it to disagree in the wider sense? On the view I’ll defend, roughly, you and I (...) disagree in the wide sense iff we hold attitudes that it would be incoherent for a single individual to hold. I’ll argue that this captures the relevant cases, and explore the consequences for metaethical debates between expressivists and contextualists. My view has two broader upshots: that coherence is a theoretically important property, and that an apparently descriptive question—are two subjects disagreeing?—turns on a normative one—are their attitudes jointly incoherent? (shrink)

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In this short paper I survey recent contextualist answers to the challenge fromdisagreement raised by contemporary relativists. After making the challenge vivid by means of a working example, I specify the notion ofdisagreement lying at the heart of the challenge. The answers are grouped in three categories, the first characterized by rejecting the intuition ofdisagreement in certain cases, the second by conceivingdisagreement as a clash of non-cognitive attitudes and the third by relegating (...)disagreement at the pragmatic level. For each category I present several important variants and raise some (general) criticisms. The paper is meant to offer a quick introduction to the current contextualist literature ondisagreement and thus a useful tool for further research. (shrink)

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This chapter focuses on the connection between moraldisagreement and moral relativism. Moral relativists, generally speaking, think both (i) that there is no unique objectively correct moral standard and (ii) that the rightness and wrongness of an action depends in some way on a moral standard accepted by some group or an individual. This chapter will first consider the metaphysical and epistemic arguments for moral relativism that begin from the premise that there is considerable amount of moraldisagreement (...) both within individual societies and between them. The second half of the chapter, by contrast, focuses on the objection that moral relativism threatens to make us unable to have moral disagreements because it seems to make us speak past one another. This part of the chapter also evaluates relativist responses to thisdisagreement problem that rely on semantic opacity,disagreement inattitude, metalinguistic negotiations, and truth relativism. The chapter finally concludes by considering future directions of research in this area. (shrink)

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While the epistemic significance ofdisagreement has been a popular topic in epistemology for at least a decade, little attention has been paid to logicaldisagreement. This monograph is meant as a remedy. The text starts with an extensive literature review of the epistemology of (peer)disagreement and sets the stage for an epistemological study of logicaldisagreement. The guiding thread for the rest of the work is then three distinct readings of the ambiguous term ‘logical (...)disagreement’. Chapters 1 and 2 focus on the Ad Hoc Reading according to which logical disagreements occur when two subjects take incompatible doxastic attitudes toward a specific proposition in or about logic. Chapter 2 presents a new counterexample to the widely discussed Uniqueness Thesis. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the Theory Choice Reading of ‘logicaldisagreement’. According to this interpretation, logical disagreements occur at the level of entire logical theories rather than individual entailment-claims. Chapter 4 concerns a key question from the philosophy of logic, viz., how we have epistemic justification for claims about logical consequence. In Chapters 5 and 6 we turn to the Akrasia Reading. On this reading, logical disagreements occur when there is a mismatch between the deductive strength of one’s background logic and the logical theory one prefers (officially). Chapter 6 introduces logical akrasia by analogy to epistemic akrasia and presents a novel dilemma. Chapter 7 revisits the epistemology of peerdisagreement and argues that the epistemic significance of central principles from the literature are at best deflated in the context of logicaldisagreement. The chapter also develops a simple formal model of deepdisagreement in Default Logic, relating this to our general discussion of logicaldisagreement. The monograph ends in an epilogue with some reflections on the potential epistemic significance of convergence in logical theorizing. (shrink)

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Eriksson thinks that moral disagreements are intuitively faulty whereas disagreements about taste are intuitively faultless. He attempts to account for this difference by arguing, first, that moral judgements and taste judgements differ with regard to the presence of a disposition to challenge conflicting judgements and, second, that the intuition that a judgement is mistaken consists in the disposition to challenge it. In this article, I focus on the reasons given to support the first claim and argue that they are not (...) sufficient. First, I assess the thesis that a taste judgement is only contingently connected with a disposition to challenge conflicting judgements. Second, I focus on the claim that a moral judgement is in part a disposition to challenge conflicting judgements. In both cases, I argue that the reasons given fail to disclose any substantial difference between the two domains. (shrink)

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Moral non-cognitivists hope to explain the nature of moral agreement anddisagreement as agreement anddisagreement in non-cognitive attitudes. In doing so, they take on the task of identifying the relevant attitudes, distinguishing the non-cognitive attitudes corresponding to judgements of moral wrongness, for example, from attitudes involved in aesthetic disapproval or the sports fan’s disapproval of her team’s performance. We begin this paper by showing that there is a simple recipe for generating apparent counterexamples to any informative specification (...) of the moral attitudes. This may appear to be a lethal objection to non-cognitivism, but a similar recipe challenges attempts by non-cognitivism’s competitors to specify the conditions underwriting the contrast between genuine and merely apparent moraldisagreement. Because of its generality, this specification problem requires a systematic response, which, we argue, is most easily available for the non-cognitivist. Building on premisses congenial to the non-cognitivist tradition, we make the following claims: (1) In paradigmatic cases, wrongness-judgements constitute a certain complex but functionally unified state, and paradigmatic wrongness-judgements form a functional kind, preserved by homeostatic mechanisms. (2) Because of the practical function of such judgements, we should expect judges’ intuitive understanding of agreement anddisagreement to be accommodating, treating states departing from the paradigm in various ways as wrongness-judgements. (3) This explains the intuitive judgements required by the counterexample-generating recipe, and more generally why various kinds of amoralists are seen as making genuine wrongness-judgements. (shrink)

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Background: Patients in different countries have different attitudes toward self‐determination and medical information. Little is known how much respect Japanese patients feel should be given for their wishes about medical care and for medical information, and what choices they would make in the face ofdisagreement. Methods: Ambulatory patients in six clinics of internal medicine at a university hospital were surveyed using a self‐administered questionnaire. Results: A total of 307 patients participated in our survey. Of the respondents, 47% would (...) accept recommendations made by physicians, even if such recommendations were against their wishes; 25% would try to persuade their physician to change their recommendations; and 14% would leave their physician to find a new one. Seventy‐six percent of the respondents thought that physicians should routinely ask patients if they would want to know about a diagnosis of cancer, while 5% disagreed; 59% responded that physicians should inform them of the actual diagnosis, even against the request of their family not to do so, while 24% would want their physician to abide by their family's request and 14% could not decide. One‐third of the respondents who initially said they would want to know the truth would yield to the desires of the family in a case ofdisagreement. Interpretations: In the face ofdisagreement regarding medical care and disclosure, Japanese patients tend to respond in a diverse and unpredictable manner. Medical professionals should thus be prudent and ask their patients explicitly what they want regarding medical care and information. (shrink)

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Many domains, notably the one involving predicates of personal taste, present the phenomenon of apparent faultlessdisagreement. Contextualism is a characteristically moderate implementation of the relativistic attempt to endorse such appearances. According to an often-voiced objection, although it straightforwardly accounts for the faultlessness, contextualism fails to respect “facts aboutdisagreement.” With many other recent contributors to the debate, I contend that the notion ofdisagreement—“genuine,” “real,” “substantive,” “robust”disagreement—is indeed very flexible, and in particular can be (...) constituted by contrasting attitudes. As such, contextualism is clearly straightforwardly compatible with facts about the existence ofdisagreement. There is, however, a genuine prima facie worry for contextualism involving facts about the expression ofdisagreement in ordinary conversations. Elaborating on a suggestion by Lewis :113–138, 1989), I argue that the presupposition of commonality approach in López de Sa shows that there are versions of contextualism that are in good standing vis-à-vis such facts about the expression ofdisagreement. (shrink)

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O debate epistemológico ocorrido recentemente sobre o que veio a ser chamado de "o problema do desacordo racional" retomou a discussão, presente no ceticismo antigo, relativa ao significado epistêmico do desacordo. Similar ao cético pirrônico, alguns autores envolvidos no debate contemporâneo argumentaram que em contextos controversos, onde há desacordo sobre alguma questão específica, a atitude racional de ambos os lados do debate é a suspensão do juízo. Para esses autores, tal veredito deve ser estendido a diversas áreas do conhecimento humano, (...) resultando num ceticismo local relativo a tópicos controversos. Este artigo trata dessa problemática no campo científico. Em diversos episódios de controvérsia científica, cientistas exibem desacordos persistentes em que cada lado do debate mantém sua posição em face do desacordo. Nesse contexto, coloca-se a pergunta pela possibilidade do desacordo racional entre cientistas considerados pares epistêmicos. A partir da característica estrutural e dinâmica da ciência, argumenta-se que o desacordo racional entre cientistas é possível. Ou seja, diferente do que sustentam autores contemporâneos, no contexto científico o significado epistêmico do desacordo não é, necessariamente, o agnosticismo. Recent epistemological debate about what came to be called "the problem of rationaldisagreement" resumed the discussion, present among the ancient skeptics, on the epistemic significance ofdisagreement. Similar to the Pyrrhonian skeptic, some authors involved in the contemporary debate argued that in controversial contexts, where there isdisagreement on some specific matter, the rationalattitude of both sides of the debate is the suspension of judgment. For these authors, such a verdict should be extended to several fields of human knowledge, resulting in local skepticism regarding controversial topics. This article addresses this problematic in the scientific field. In several episodes of scientific controversy, scientists exhibit persistent disagreements where each side of the debate maintains his position in the face ofdisagreement. In this context, the question of the possibility of rationaldisagreement among scientists considered epistemic peers arises. From the structural and dynamic characteristics of science, it is argued that rationaldisagreement between scientists is possible. In other words, unlike the claims of contemporary authors, in the scientific context the epistemic significance ofdisagreement is not, necessarily, agnosticism. (shrink)

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The idea that there can be cases of faultlessdisagreement, cases ofdisagreement in which neither party is making a mistake, is frequently discussed in connection with relativist views in philosophy of language. My goal is to argue that we can make sense of faultlessdisagreement without being committed to any form of relativism if we recognise thatdisagreement sometimes involves attitudes other than belief, such as desires or preferences. Furthermore, this way of making sense of (...) faultlessdisagreement allows us to avoid some of the problems that have been raised in connection with relativist accounts of faultlessdisagreement. (shrink)

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Disagreement is a hot topic in epistemology. A fast-growing literature centers around a dispute between the ‘steadfast’ view, on which one may maintain one’s beliefs even in the light ofdisagreement with epistemic peers who have all the same evidence, and the ‘conciliationist’ view, on which suchdisagreement requires a revision of attitudes. In this paper, however, I argue that there is less separating the main rivals in the debate about peerdisagreement than is commonly thought. (...) The extreme versions of both views are clearly indefensible, while more moderate versions of the views converge on the idea that how much revision of belief is called for by an instance of peerdisagreement varies from case to case. Those tempted by this diagnosis are sometimes pessimistic about the prospects for giving a unified account which clearly predicts when more or less extensive revisions will be called for. By contrast, in this paper I give an account that aspires to such unity and predictive power, centering on the notion of the net resilience of your estimate of your own reliability against your estimate of your interlocutor’s reliability. The view I present thus amounts to a new, moderate theory of how one should respond todisagreement. I argue that ultimately, when we weaken conciliationism and the steadfast view to account for exception cases and to make them adequately plausible, they end up converging on the moderate view I present. Much of the seemingdisagreement aboutdisagreement is, then, illusory. (shrink)

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Disagreement is a pervasive feature of human discourse and a crucial force in shaping our social reality. From mundane squabbles about matters of taste to high-stakes disputes about law and public policy, the way we express and navigatedisagreement plays a central role in both our personal and political lives. Legal discourse, in particular, is rife withdisagreement - it is the very bread and butter of courtroom argument and legal scholarship alike. Consider a debate between two (...) legal philosophers, Ronald and Herbert, about the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits ‘cruel and unusual punishment’. Ronald asserts: ‘It is the law that capital punishment is prohibited’. In response, Herbert states: ‘It is not the law that capital punishment is prohibited’. We intuitively think Ronald and Herbert are disagreeing, which reveals in the fact that they are licensed to use ex¬pressions like no (it isn’t) and nuh-uh when responding to their opponent’s claim. But despite the ubiquity and significance of legaldisagreement, its precise nature remains elusive. This chapter discusses what exactly is going on when two people disagree about what the law requires, and how can hybrid theory may answer this question. (shrink)

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Objective: The purpose of this study was to demonstrate how educators involved in the teaching of bioethics to healthcare university students in Japan would cope with ethicaldisagreement in the classroom, and to identify factors influencing them.Methods: A cross sectional survey was conducted using self administered questionnaires mailed to a sample of university faculty in charge of bioethics curriculum for university healthcare students.Results: A total of 107 usable questionnaires were returned: a response rate of 61.5%. When facing ethical (...) class='Hi'>disagreement in the classroom, coping behaviour differed depending on the topic of discussion, was influenced by educators’ individual clear ethical attitudes regarding the topic of discussion, and was independent of many respondents’ individual and social backgrounds. Among educators, it was commonly recognised that the purpose of bioethics education was to raise the level of awareness of ethical problems, to provide information about and knowledge of those issues, to raise students’ sensitivity to ethical problems, and to teach students methods of reasoning and logical argument. Yet, despite this, several respondents considered the purpose of bioethics education to be to influence students about normative ethical judgments. There was no clear relationship, however, between ways of coping with ethicaldisagreement and educators’ sense of the purpose of bioethics education.Conclusions: This descriptive study suggests that educators involved in bioethics education for healthcare university students in Japan coped in various ways with ethicaldisagreement. Further research concerning ethicaldisagreement in educational settings is needed to provide better bioethics education for healthcare students. (shrink)

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Religious communities often discouragedisagreement with religious authorities, on the grounds that allowing it would be epistemically detrimental. I argue that thisattitude is mistaken, because any social position in a community—including religious authority—comes with epistemic advantages as well as epistemic limitations. I argue that religious communities stand to benefit epistemically by engaging indisagreement with people occupying other social positions. I focus on those at the community’s margins and argue that religious marginalization is apt to yield (...) religiously important insights; so theirdisagreement with religious authorities should be encouraged. (shrink)

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The problem ofdisagreement is one of the most important issues that have been debated in epistemology in recent years, and in particular the peerdisagreement. The main question of this problem is what kind ofattitude we should rationally adopt when we realize that someone who is an epistemic peer to us does not think the same. There are four main responses to this question: conciliationism, steadfastness, total evidence view, and justificationist view. In this article, first (...) I will briefly examine these four views and deal with the points where they fail to satisfy. Later, I will argue that resolution of thedisagreement should be case-based. And finally, I will present the evidence-based argument in peerdisagreement which is my own response to this problem and explain it with sample cases. (shrink)

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The paper confronts thedisagreement argument for relativism about matters of taste, defending a specific form of contextualism. It is first considered whether thedisagreement data might manifest an inviariantistattitude speakers pre-reflectively have. Semantic and ontological enlightenment should then make the impressions ofdisagreement vanish, or at least leave them as lingering ineffectual Müller-Lyer-like illusions; but it is granted to relativists that this does not fully happen. López de Sa’s appeal to presuppositions of commonality and (...) Sundell’s appeal to metalinguisticdisagreement are discussed, and it is argued that, although they help to clarify the issues, they do not fully explain why such impressions remain under enlightenment. To do it, the paper develops a suggestion that other writers have made, that the lingering impression ofdisagreement is a consequence of a practical conflict, appealing to dispositions to practical coordination that come together with presuppositions of commonality in axiological matters. (shrink)

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This paper argues for contextualism about predicates of personal taste and evaluative predicates in general, and offers a proposal of how apparently resilient disagreements are to be explained. The present proposal is complementary to others that have been made in the recent literature. Several authors, for instance (López de Sa, 2008; Sundell, 2011; Huvenes, 2012; Marques and García-Carpintero, 2014; Marques, 2014a), have recently defended semantic contextualism for those kinds of predicates from the accusation that it faces the problem of lost (...)disagreement. These authors have proposed that a proper account of the resilientdisagreement in the cases studied is to be achieved by an appeal to pragmatic processes, and to conflicting non-doxastic attitudes. It is argued here that the existing contextualist solutions are incomplete as they stand, and are subject to objections because of this. A supplementation of contextualism is offered, together with an explanation of why failed presuppositions of commonality (López de Sa), disputes over the appropriateness of a contextually salient standard (Sundell), and differences in non-doxastic attitudes (Sundell, Huvenes, Marques, and García-Carpintero) give rise to conflicts. This paper claims that conflicts of attitudes are the reason why people still have impressions ofdisagreement in spite of failed commonality presuppositions, that those conflicts drive metalinguistic disputes over the selection of appropriate standards, and hence conflicting non-doxastic attitudes demand an explanation that is independent of those context dependent pragmatic processes. The paper further argues that the missing explanation is 2-fold: first,disagreement prevails where the properties expressed by taste and value predicates are response-dependent properties, and, secondly, it prevails where those response-dependent properties are involved in evolved systems of coordination that respond to evolutionarily recurrent situations. (shrink)

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This paper introduces and motivates a solution to a dilemma from peerdisagreement. Following Buchak (2021), I argue that peerdisagreement puts us in an epistemic dilemma: there is reason to think that our opinions should both change and not change when we encounterdisagreement with our epistemic peers. I argue that we can solve this dilemma by changing our credences, but not our beliefs in response todisagreement. I explain how my view solves the dilemma (...) in question, and then offer two additional arguments for it: one related to contents and attitudes, and another related to epistemic peerhood. (shrink)

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This paper addresses a largely neglected question in ongoing debates overdisagreement: what is the relation, if any, between disagreements involving credences and disagreements involving outright beliefs? The first part of the paper offers some desiderata for an adequate account of credal and fulldisagreement. The second part of the paper argues that both phenomena can be subsumed under a schematic definition which goes as follows: A and B disagree if and only if the accuracy conditions of A's (...) doxasticattitude are such that, if they were fulfilled, this would ipso facto make B's doxasticattitude inaccurate, or vice-versa. (shrink)

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In the conceptual preliminaries of his philosophical Encyclopedia Hegel discusses three approaches to epistemology under the headings of three ‘Attitudes of Thought Toward Objectivity’. The third of these is Jacobi’s doctrine of ‘immediate’ or intuitive knowledge. Hegel’s discussion presumes great familiarity with Jacobi’s highly polemical and now seldom read texts. In this essay I disambiguate and reconstruct Hegel’s discussion of Jacobi, in close consideration of Jacobi’s texts, showing why Hegel finds him important and what Hegel’s objections to his doctrines are. (...) Jacobi’s importance for Hegel lies in three points. First, Hegel agrees with Jacobi’s claim, against Kant, that God and the world are themselves knowable. Second, Hegel must answer Jacobi’s charge that discursive thinking ineluctably leads to determinism and ultimately to nihilism. Third, Hegel’s analysis of Jacobi’s doctrine of ‘immediate knowledge’ reveals some points that are important to Hegel’s metaphysics. Hegel mounts five objections to Jacobi’s doctrine. First, Jacobi’s key term ‘immediacy’ illicitly equivocates among the rejection of three different kinds of ‘mediation’: syllogistic inference, the application of concepts, and representational accounts of perception. Second, Jacobi’s doctrine of a-conceptual knowledge is untenable because one must apply concepts to objects in order identify objects and thus to know what kinds of things known objects are. Third, if a fundamental point of Hegel’s holistic ontology (explained in the essay) is correct, then the identity conditions of things are interdependent, and this interdependence would render ‘immediate’ knowledge impossible. Fourth, Jacobi’s doctrine is self-referentially inconsistent: it is possible on his doctrine to prove that his doctrine is false. Finally, Jacobi’s doctrine licenses question-begging and is in principle unable to address or to settle disagreements among divergent intuitions. (shrink)

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Disagreement plays an important role in several philosophical debates, with intuitions about ordinary or exotic cases of agreement anddisagreement being invoked to support or undermine competing semantic, epistemological and metaphysical views. In this paper we discuss cases of interworld doxasticdisagreement, that is to say, cases of doxasticdisagreement supposedly obtaining between individuals inhabiting different possible worlds, in particular between an individual inhabiting the actual world and his/her counterpart in another possible world. We draw a (...) distinction between propositional and attitudinaldisagreement, bring it to bear on the issue of the conditions of this kind ofdisagreement, and raise some metaphysical and epistemological worries about the claim that an individual inhabiting the actual world can disagree with anattitude or a speech act of his/her own counterpart, or of another individual, in a different possible world. (shrink)

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It is common to distinguish betweendisagreement in the state sense (being indisagreement) anddisagreement in the activity sense (having adisagreement). This paper deals with the question of what it is for two people to have adisagreement. First, I present and reject the thesis according to which having adisagreement is a matter of expressing conflicting attitudes. I argue that this is not sufficient for having adisagreement: two people can (...) express conflicting attitudes without having adisagreement. Second, I present and reject the thesis according to which having adisagreement involves not only the expression of conflicting attitudes, but also the persuasive attempt to bring the other around to one’s view. I argue that this is not necessary for having adisagreement: two people can have adisagreement without trying to change each other’s minds. Finally, I put forward an alternative account that goes beyond the mere expression of conflicting attitudes, but that does not go as far as to posit the attempt to change someone’s mind. Having adisagreement, I submit, is a matter of expressing conflicting attitudes and demanding agreement, that is, advancing the normative claim that the other should share one’sattitude. (shrink)

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Metaethical absolutism is the view that moral concepts have non-relative satisfaction conditions that are constant across judges and their particular beliefs, attitudes, and cultural embedding. If it is correct, there is an important sense in which parties of moral disputes are concerned to get the same things right, such that their disputes can be settled by the facts. If it is not correct, as various forms of relativism and non-cognitivism imply, such coordination of concerns will be limited. The most influential (...) support for absolutism comes from an argument with two related premises. According to the first premise, moral thinking and moral discourse display a number of features that are characteristically found in paradigmatically absolutist domains, and only partly in uncontroversially non-absolutist domains. According to the second, the best way of making sense of these features is to assume that absolutism is correct. This paper defends the prospect of a non-ad hoc, non-absolutist, explanation of these "absolutist" features, thus calling into question the second premise. But instead of attempting to directly explain why the moral domain displays these features, it attends to how they are partially displayed by paradigmatically non-absolutists judgments about taste and likelihood. Based on this, it proposes independently motivated general accounts of attributions of agreement,disagreement, correctness and incorrectness that can explain both why absolutist domains display all "absolutist" features and why these non-absolutist domains display some. Based on these accounts, it provides preliminary reasons to think that these features of moral discourse can be given a non-absolutist explanation. (shrink)

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This chapter covers contemporary work ondisagreement, detailing both the conceptual and normative issues in play in the debates in mainstream analytic epistemology, and how these relate to religious diversity anddisagreement. §1 examines several sorts ofdisagreement, and considers several epistemological issues: in particular, what range of attitudes a body of evidence can support, how to understand higher-order evidence, and who counts as an epistemic “peer”. §2 considers how these questions surface when considering disagreements over religion, (...) including debates over the nature of evidence and truth in religion, epistemic humility, concerns about irrelevant influences and about divine hiddenness, and arguments over exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism. Finally, §3 summarizes the contributors’ essays in this volume. (shrink)

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When theorising aboutdisagreement, it is tempting to begin with a person's belief that p and ask what mental state one must have in order to disagree with it. This is the wrong way to go; the paper argues that people may also disagree with attitudes that are not beliefs. It then examines whether several existing theories ofdisagreement can account for this phenomenon. It argues that its own normative theory ofdisagreement gives the best account, and (...) so, given that there is good reason to believedisagreement without belief is possible, there is good reason to think thatdisagreement itself is normative. (shrink)

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Inconsistencies between scientific theories have been studied, by and large, from the perspective of paraconsistent logic. This approach considered the formal properties of theories and the structure of inferences one can legitimately draw from theories. However, inconsistencies can be also analysed from the perspective of modelling practices, in particular how modelling practices may lead scientists to form opinions and attitudes that are different, but not necessarily inconsistent. In such cases, it is preferable to talk aboutdisagreement, rather than inconsistency. (...)Disagreement may originate in, or concern, a number of epistemic, socio-political or psychological factors. In this paper, we offer an account of the ‘loci and reasons’ fordisagreement at different stages of the scientific process. We then present a controversial episode in the health sciences: the studies on hypercholesterolemia. The causes and effects of high levels of cholesterol in blood have been long and hotly debated, to the point of deserving the name of ‘cholesterol wars’; the debate, to be sure, isn’t settled yet. In this contribution, we focus on some selected loci and reasons fordisagreement that occurred between 1920 and 1994 in the studies on hypercholesterolemia. We hope that our analysis of ‘loci and reasons’ fordisagreement may shed light on the cholesterol wars, and possibly on other episodes of scientificdisagreement. (shrink)

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Given the importance that it has in almost any decision, understanding uncertainty and its possible variations is crucial in deciding effectively. I propose an account of uncertainty as based on adisagreement between reasons for and against alternative mental attitudes. Under this account, dealing with uncertainty means dealing withdisagreement; however, thisdisagreement can be radical, i.e., persistent under ideal cognitive and epistemic conditions. Thus, when this is the case, thedisagreement and therefore the uncertainty cannot (...) be resolved with an increase in evidence. I illustrate how this unitary notion can be used to derive different types of uncertainty proposing a possible typology that reflects the conditions that must obtain for radicaldisagreement, and I trace the role that each of the types identified plays in decision making. This application to decision making suggests that there are uncertainties that go beyond those modelled in mainstream decision theory. (shrink)

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In this paper I take up the question of the nature of the doxastic attitudes we entertain while inquiring into some matter. Relying on a distinction between two stages of open inquiry, I urge to acknowledge the existence of a distinctiveattitude of cognitive inclination towards a proposition qua answer to the question one is inquiring into. I call thisattitude “hypothesis”. Hypothesis, I argue, is a sui generis doxasticattitude which differs, both functionally and normatively, from (...) suspended judgement, full belief, credences, and acceptance. In closing, I point to the epistemological significance of hypothesis. More specifically, I contend that holding anattitude of hypothesis enables us to respond rationally to peerdisagreement, and I suggest that such anattitude offers a suitable articulation of the view, originally put forward by Philip Kitcher, that cognitive diversity in inquiry has epistemic benefits. (shrink)

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Why is it that some instances ofdisagreement appear to be so intractable? And what is the appropriate way to handle such disagreements, especially concerning matters about which there are important practical and political needs for us to come to a consensus? In this paper, I consider an explanation of the apparent intractability of deepdisagreement offered by hinge epistemology. According to this explanation, at least some deep disagreements are rationally unresolvable because they concern ‘hinge’ commitments that are (...) unresponsive to rational considerations. This explanation, if correct, seems to have troubling implications for how we should respond to deepdisagreement. If my position on a topic is not responsive to rational considerations, then what choice have I but to dogmatically hold to that position, and simply dismiss the views of those with whom I disagree? I address this problem by identifying anattitude of intellectual humility that is appropriate to have towards one's hinge commitments, and suggest that thisattitude provides the basis for a non-rational, constructive way to resolve deepdisagreement. (shrink)

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The Equal Weight View is a view about the epistemic significance ofdisagreement that is thought to have significant skeptical consequences. In this paper I do two things: (i) apply the Equal Weight View to cases of religiousdisagreement, and (ii) evaluate some consequences of that application for the rationality of religious beliefs. With regard to (i), I argue that the Equal Weight View implies that awareness of the current state ofdisagreement over religious propositions, such as (...) God exists or God doesn’t exist, gives us a defeater for any non-skepticalattitude toward such propositions. With regard to (ii), I examine what this entails about the rationality of religious beliefs. In particular, I examine how troubling the theist should find these consequences, and argue that they are not as troubling as is typically thought. -/- . (shrink)

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

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Some intentional attitudes (beliefs, fears, desires, etc.) have a common focus in spite of there being no object at that focus. For example, two beliefs may be about the same witch even when there are no witches, different astronomers had beliefs directed at Vulcan, even though there is no such planet. This relation of having a common focus, whether or not there is an actual concrete object at that focus, is called intentional identity. In the first part of this thesis (...) I develop a new theory of intentional identity, the triangulation theory, and argue that it has significant advantages over the extant theories of intentional identity in the literature. Empty attitudes (attitudes that are not, prima facie, about anything that exists) will serve as useful cases for testing theories of intentional identity. -/- In the second part, I put the theory developed in the first part to work. I use triangulation theoretic tools to shed light on other debates about intentional attitudes. Some issues to which intentional identity are relevant are the debate about the content of intentional attitudes, the issue of whether or not we need to appeal to external constraints on the content of intentional attitudes, how we should understand the agreement anddisagreement of attitudes, how we should construe communication and how we ought to solve Kripke’s puzzle about belief. The second part of this thesis also motivates a broadly internalist and individualistic approach to the con-tent of intentional attitudes; it turns out that if we take a closer look at the narrowly construed psychological states of agents we find materials that allow us to make sense of phenomena usually associated with externalist constraints on the content of attitudes (such as causal constraints and eligibility constraints) in a new way. (shrink)

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In this paper, I assess recent Stalnakerian views of communication in moral and normative domains. These views model context updates with normative claims. They also aim to explain how people disagree when they follow different norms or values. I present four problems for these Stalnakerian views. I conclude that the problems require a new conception of how common ground relates to illocutionary force andattitude mode, which is still lacking.

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Dialetheists believe some sentences are both true and false. Objectors have argued that this makes it unclear how people can disagree with each other because, given the dialetheist’s commitments, if I make a claim and you tell me my claim is false, we might both be correct. Graham Priest (2006a) thinks that people disagree by rejecting or denying what is said rather than ascribing falsehood to it. We build on the work of Julien Murzi and Massimiliano Carrara (2015) and show (...) that Priest’s approach cannot succeed: given the same dialetheist’s commitments you may be correct to reject a claim that I correctly believe. We argue further that any attempt to solve the problem by identifying a newattitude ofdisagreement will also fail. The culprit, we claim, is the attempt to find a pair of attitudes that satisfy ‘exclusivity’—that is, attitudes such that both cannot be simultaneously correct. Instead of identifyingdisagreement by the kinds of attitudes involved, we propose dialetheists focus on the normative landscape and identify it in part by whether parties have reasons to change their attitudes. We offer our own normative theory ofdisagreement to help dialetheists with this challenge. (shrink)

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There has been a growing interest within analytic philosophy in addressing political and social issues, which has been referred to as the “political turn” in the discipline. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it discusses the very characterization of the political turn. In particular, it introduces the definition proposed by Bordonaba-Plou, Fernández-Castro, and Torices, suggests that we should not consider the turn a form of activism, and explores an additional benefit of the ideal/nonideal distinction for characterizing the turn. (...) Second, it addresses the concern of whatattitude we should take in the face of the different sensitivities we might have with respect to what constitutes an injustice. Which philosophical works should count as part of the political turn? The paper explores three different attitudes toward this dilemma, and favors what it calls the revisionistattitude, which emphasizes the fact that our perception of injustice is subject to error. (shrink)

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Whenever A judges that x-ing is morally wrong and B judges that x-ing is not morally wrong, we think that they disagree. The two standard types of accounts of such moral disagreements both presuppose that the class of moral wrong-judgments is uniform, though in different ways. According to the belief account, thedisagreement is doxastic: A and B have beliefs with conflicting cognitive contents. This presupposes “belief-uniformity”: that the content of moral concepts is invariant in such a way that, (...) whenever A believes that x-ing is morally wrong and B believes that x-ing is not morally wrong, their beliefs have mutually inconsistent contents. According to theattitude account, moral disagreements are non-doxastic: A and B have clashing practical attitudes. This presupposes “attitude-uniformity”: that moral judgments are always accompanied by, or consist of, desire-like attitudes. Consequently, neither account is available if both uniformity-claims are rejected – as e.g., various forms of content-relativism do. This paper presents a new non-doxastic account of deontic moraldisagreement, consistent with the rejection of both uniformity-claims. I argue first, that even if deontic moral judgments are not desires, and are not always accompanied by desires, they have practical direction in the same sense as desires: they are attitudes that one can act in accordance or discordance with. Second: deontic moraldisagreement can be understood as clashes in practical direction: roughly, A and B morally disagree if, and only if, some way of acting is in accordance with A’s judgment but in discordance with B’s. (shrink)

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