abstracts

Abstracts

Dominik Balg & Jan Constantin

"How to be satisfied with one’s Philosophy in a World of Disagreement"

The perceived threat from widespread philosophical disagreement seems to amount to the consequence that there can be no justified philosophical attitudes. This is because such disagreement appears to undermine philosophical beliefs so that suspension of judgement is rationally required, which has led many philosophers to either deny that this requirement follows from persistent disagreement or to claim that there is not the right kind of disagreement for it to follow. We argue that such controversial moves may not be necessary because THEY underestimate the epistemic significance of suspension of judgement. If suspension of judgment is considered a substantive doxastic attitude in its own right, drawing justified conclusions from philosophical debates is possible even in the face of widespread disagreement. The suspensions that many of these conclusions consist in are not merely frustrated “no-idea”-stances, as they would be in a problematic skeptical scenario, but justified, higher-order doxastic attitudes with varied content and different credences, as well as action-guiding potential. They can be contrasted with the epistemic prescriptions of skeptical scenarios, which are either blanket, single-content suspension or refrainment from any doxastic attitude. An example of a case in which this is fulfilled would be one where one has higher-order evidence that systematically undermines all (actual and possible) doxastic attitudes or in which one has a higher-order defeater for all doxastic attitudes. We aim to show that the situation in philosophy is not even close to such a case and that the suspensions required there are much richer, varied, better supported and more useful. Furthermore, the results of this discussion highlight the significance of higher order evidence in philosophy, specifically about the dialectical situation, for philosophical inquiry. As others have also pointed out, a requirement to suspend judgment is, even given current philosophical disagreement less ubiquitous than often suspected. We connect this result to typical higher-order evidential states and aim to show that justified philosophical belief or disbelief can be restored through careful consideration of higher-order evidence on the individual level and sorely needed meta-studies on the collective level.

Elke Brendel & Filippo Ferrari

"Disagreement about Liars"

We assume intuitive and general norms for acceptance, rejection, and suspension of judgement. We argue that for two subjects to be in a state of disagreement it is sufficient that they give differing verdicts (acceptance vs rejection or acceptance/rejection vs suspension of judgement) about the same proposition. However, for agreement compatibility of verdicts about the same proposition is not sufficient. What is also required is that the grounds that support the compatible verdicts are (at least partially) shared by the two subjects. We then show how a classical logician and a dialetheist ought to assess the Liar in using the norms for acceptance/rejection and suspension: for a classical logician, the presence of the Liar has unappealing normative consequences since she ought to suspend judgement with regard to any proposition whatsoever. A dialetheist, in contrast, just ought to accept the Liar. Furthermore, we claim that a dialetheist, just as a GAP-theorist, cannot assert her own view with regard to the Strengthened Liar – namely that the Strengthened Liar is untrue (and true). A dialetheist can only accept that the Strengthened Liar is not true if she weakens the norm of rational acceptance. However, we maintain that in weakening the norm of acceptance, a dialetheist and a GAP-theorist are neither disagreeing nor agreeing about whether the Strengthened Liar is a dialetheia. Last, we conclude by arguing that the weakened norm of acceptance leads to a revenge problem for a dialetheist.

Mariangela Zoe Cocchiaro

“The philosophical significance of (dis)agreement in the epistemology of disagreement”

Catarina Dutilh Novaes

"Argumentative adversariality in philosophy"

Argumentation is of course a key component of philosophical practice. But argumentative styles adopted by philosophers are often criticized as overly aggressive and adversarial. Is adversariality inherent to philosophical practice? If so, are there different ways of engaging in adversarial argumentation? In my talk, I contrast and discuss a number of different conceptions of argumentation, both in philosophy and more generally, and argue in favor of a model of argumentation as epistemic exchange. This model retains some of the epistemic advantages of argumentative adversariality while avoiding some of its pitfalls.

Anna-Maria Eder

"Rationality and Epistemic Pluralism"

In epistemology, we disagree a lot on how to characterise epistemic rationality, or epistemic justification. Such a characterisation is typically taken to be the result of a conceptual clarification. In epistemology, the standard method of conceptual clarification is the method of conceptual analysis. I suggest to characterise (epistemic) rationality by explicating the concept of rationality rather than analysing it. Since the standard conception of explication, which traces back to Carnap, is not entirely suitable for epistemological purposes, I improve it for such purposes. I thereby argue that it is essential that the normativity of rationality is taken into account when explicating the concept of rationality. That it is to be taken into account and how it is to be taken into account is due to the purpose for which the respective theory of rationality is proposed. Since there are different such purposes, the method of explication, which I am going to propose, leaves room for different characterisations of rationality. Since different purposes give rise to different characterisations the mentioned disagreement is less pressing. Different characterisations are important for serving different purposes. I conclude by drawing a pluralistic picture with respect to rationality.

Bryan Frances

"Unreliable at Truth or Unreliable at Validity"

By considering the epistemology and structure of certain philosophical problems, I argue for a disjunctive thesis: either (1) it is highly probable that some philosophical reductios of highly commonsensical propositions are successful, or (2) there is enough hidden semantic structure in even very simple sentences of natural language to make philosophers highly unreliable at spotting logical validity in even the simplest cases, no matter how carefully the arguments are constructed.

Sandy Goldberg

"Philosophical Champions"

In this paper I address a question that arises for those who take seriously the possibility that we can have little if any first-order knowledge on contested matters within philosophy. The question itself concerns the point of the practice of philosophy, on the two-fold assumption (i) that this practice aims at truth and (ii) that our knowledge of that truth is always in doubt (at least whenever there is widespread disagreement). The question I will address concerns the speech acts we perform when we present our views in philosophy: what’s the point of these speech acts given (i) and (ii)? After presenting why this is a problem, I build on the account I gave of philosophical assertions in my (2016). The key claim I make is that the assertoric speech acts we make as we articulate and defend our views constitute an activity that I call championing those views. After developing this idea, I suggest why such an activity can have a point even if (i) and (ii) are true.

Ole Thomassen Hjortland

"Disagreement about logic"

According to an argument made famous by Quine, apparent logical disagreements between, say, the classical and paraconsistent logicians are mere verbal disputes. The argument, sometimes called the meaning variance argument, has produced a number of replies in the subsequent literature. In the paper I reject some attempts at blocking Quine's argument, and go on to make the case for genuine disagreement about logic by endorsing another Quinean inheritance: anti-exceptionalism about logic.

Luca Incurvati

"Overgeneration in the Higher Infinite"

A prominent objection against the logicality of second-order logic is the so-called Overgeneration Argument. However, it is far from clear how this argument is to be understood. In the first part of the talk, we present a reconstruction of the argument which locates its source in the conflict between the neutrality of second-order logic and its alleged entanglement with mathematics. In the second part of the talk, we provide evidence that this conflict can be resolved by moving from the standard set-theoretic semantics for second-order logic to a semantics which makes use of higher-order resources. This is joint work with Salvatore Florio.

Nathan Kellen

“Adjudicating Disagreement about Logic via Logical Functionalism”

Disagreement in logic presents a special problem for philosophers: how is it that we can reasonably disagree about logic, where the ground level facts are deductively provable and seemingly set in stone? Despite this puzzle, we philosophers find plenty of room to disagree in logic. In this talk I try to show how we can reasonably disagree about logic, despite its seemingly inscrutable facts. In order to capture these disagreements I introduce a way to think about logics (logical functionalism) and show how disagreement about logics can be understood as disagreement about how to best characterise logic’s functional role.

Jonathan Matheson

"Disagreement & Moral Deference"

In this paper, I make the case that the distribution of expert opinion on a matter can determine what it is rational to believe about that matter. I argue that many moral disagreements have the result that we should suspend judgment about the relevant moral proposition. While this consequence may be thought to be merely theoretical, I show that it has some important normative implications. In particular, these epistemic conclusions have implications for what it is morally permissible to do. in the paper I examine 3 significant consequences and defend the argument from objections concerning moral deference.

Sebastiano Moruzzi

"Diaphonic Pluralism - How to Be Pluralist About Disagreement"

In this paper I argue that pluralism about disagreement -diaphonic pluralism- can be motivated by an endorsement alethic pluralism. I first formulate a set of core principles meant to provide a network analysis of the concept of disagreement. This network analysis is coupled with the thesis that different relations of incompatibility among cognitive mental attitudes can realize the disagreement relation. Diaphonic pluralism thus consists in the conjunction of the network analysis of the concept of disagreement with the variability thesis about the realization of the disagreement relation. I argue that diaphonic pluralism is derivable from truth pluralism both at the conceptual and at the metaphysical level. As for the concept of disagreement, I argue that the core principles for disagreement are conceptually derivable from the core principles for truth. As for the metaphysics of disagreement, I argue that different properties realizing truth in different domains suffice for having different relations realizing disagreement in the domains. This framework offers a pluralistic analysis of disagreement along the same model of truth pluralism. This has important consequences for the analysis of the nature of disagreement, as it paves the way for a pluralist understanding of disagreement: there is one concept of disagreement that is variably realized in different domains by different disagreement relations. It is one because there is a set of core principles that fixes a single concept of disagreement. At the same time, it is many because this concept is realized by different relations.

Diogo Santos

"No Moral Disagreement with the Amoralist"

By adapting the famous Smith (1994)’s amoralist case, Copp (2001) stresses that conventional expressivist views – such as Hare (1952)’s – cannot capture the possibility of disagreeing with the amoralist on moral grounds and that such consequence is untenable. I argue that Hybrid Expressivism (HE) has the same consequence. The dialectics of my talk will involve two main moments. The first: adapting an idea from Tersman (2006), I argue that a more detailed characterization of HE is necessary. The second: given its improved characterization, I show that HE generates the same “untenable” consequence.

Elena Tassoni

"Indeterminacy Pluralism, Collapses, and Disagreement"

Logical pluralism promises to dissolve long-standing disputes in the philosophy of logic because, if one admits of different and equally correct logics, then some logical disputes do not amount to genuine disagreements. The most discussed version of logical pluralism is Beall and Restall’s indeterminacy pluralism (2006). Priest (2006) argues that logical pluralism is threatened to collapse into monism. If that is so, it seems that indeterminacy pluralism lacks the resources to dissolve logical disputes. In this talk, I distinguish between three different kinds of logical disputes and I argue that indeterminacy pluralism can be employed to dissolve at least two kinds of logical disputes without the threat of collapse.

Marc Andree Weber

"Unknown Peers"

My epistemic peers concerning a specific subject matter are, roughly, those people who are as competent and well-informed as I am with regard to this subject matter. Some of these peers I have met and talked to, or at least heard of; but many others are completely unknown to me. This raises the question of whether we should, when analysing the epistemic significance of peer disagreement, focus exclusively on peers who are known to us or take into account unknown peers as well. While most philosophers in the debate take it for granted that we can safely ignore unknown peers, I will argue the converse.

Jack Woods

"How to disagree about logic and when not to"

Looking at recent work in the philosophy of logic, there seems to be rampant and substantive disagreement about what the correct logic is. Yet there have always been worries about how we can disagree about logic at all; after all, logic is the field on which disagreement plays, so where could we find suitably neutral ground on which to disagree about logic itself. In this talk, I’ll explore different ways in which we could disagree about logic, such as whether we’re disagreeing about what logic we actually use (as with the Relevantists), which logic we should use (as with the Intuitionists), or some unholy hybrid of these (as with many recent forays into extremely weak logics.) I’ll then discuss the problems for logical disagreement which arise for each way, focusing on the limits of comparing and disagreeing about logic that arise from the fact that our evaluations of a logic may shift depending on which logic we currently accept.

Elia Zardini

"Generalised Tarski’s Thesis Hits Substructure"

At the core of JC Beall and Greg Restall’s brand of logical pluralism is “Generalised Tarski’s Thesis”, according to which a relation of logical consequence is characterised by the fact that, in every “case” where every premise is true, so is the conclusion (with different specifications of “case” yielding different relations of logical consequence). I argue that the thesis implies that many philosophically interesting substructural logics (non-reflexive, non-monotonic, non-transitive, non-contractive and non-commutative ones) are not relations of logical consequence. I then diagnose the clash as due to the fact that the thesis is not sensitive to plurality in designated value, in connection between premises and conclusion, in premise occurrences and in models. I then extend the argument to the effect that the more general conception of logical consequence as necessary truth preservation clashes with substructurality. I conclude by sketching a proposal as to how we can still uphold a broadly semantic conception of logical consequence. Basically, given a substructural logic L, we can reinterpret truth-preservation conditionals with the notions of conjunction and implication available in L, and say that the fact that, in L, P,Q,R…S logically entail T is grounded in the fact that, in L, the conditional ‘If ‘P’ is true and ‘Q’ is true and ‘R’ is true… and ‘S’ is true, then ‘T’ is true’ is valid. On this proposal, contrary to the contemporary vulgate, it is logical consequence that is grounded in logical truth rather than vice versa.