Faultless Disagreement in Wolf’s Clothing

old_uid9237
titleFaultless Disagreement in Wolf’s Clothing
start_date2010/11/12
schedule11h-13h
onlineno
location_infoPavillon jardin
summaryOne of the attractive features of relativism is the possibility of making room for the intuition that, in some areas of discourse, the disagreement is faultless. Relativism contends that this intuition is possible only in so-called subjective disputes, e.g. aesthetics, ethics. In the paper I challenge these two claims by making sense of a faultless disagreement situation concerning set theory. I discuss the case of two people supporting two different axiomatizations of set theory proving the same theorems about sets. In primis, I describe in which sense the two disputants are not merely proposing two alternatives but really are in disagreement. I secondly explain why the antagonists can keep on sustaining their respective views by showing that the relevant reasons in favour of one party concern set theory in its use instead of set theory per se. I thirdly provide a non-relativist answer to Crispin Wright’s semi-formal proof (Simple Deduction) that given any dispute, either it is not faultless or it is not a disagreement: I argue that the notion of being at fault has not to be taken in an absolute sense and I then account for a difference between an epistemic sense and a pragmatic sense of being at fault. On this distinction hinges the possibility of accepting the upshot of the Simple Deduction, recognizing who is at fault and, at the same time, rescuing a sense in which there is faultless disagreement.
responsiblesSpector, Lesguillons, Tiziana +