CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2022
| Author | Thomas, Swithin |
|---|---|
| Title | What's So Deep about Deep Disagreement? |
| Summary | Much attention has been given recently to what has been termed “deep disagreement”. The primary questions raised have been concerning what deep disagreements consist in and whether they are resolvable by rational means. However, these questions presuppose that there is a unified phenomenon here in the first place, something that I cast doubt on here – what distinguishes a deep disagreement from any other ordinary disagreement? Deep disagreements are thought to be disagreements over or conflicts between our most fundamental commitments. I identify two features that have been taken to be the hallmark of fundamental commitments: (1) Disagreement over a fundamental commitment generates and hence explains disagreement over a wide range of issues. (2) Fundamental commitments are where our reasons come to an end. I argue that both these claims are false in the paradigm cases of deep disagreement and so, they fail to properly distinguish fundamental commitments from any other commitment. Contra (1), I argue that while disagreeing parties might each justify a wide range of their conflicting beliefs on the basis of some fundamental commitment, this fundamental commitment neither necessitates nor makes it more likely that they will have a wide-ranging disagreement. Contra (2), I argue that, depending on how it is understood, it either cannot be true if the disagreement is to be genuine, or if true, it fails to distinguish fundamental commitments from any other commitment. On the basis of this, I conclude that although we might ordinarily refer to a variety of controversial and complicated disagreements as “deep” in various senses, we should abandon the notion used as a term of art entirely because there is no unified class of “deep disagreements” that merits treatment in such general terms. |
| Supervisor | Farkas, Katalin |
| Department | Philosophy MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2022/thomas_swithin.pdf |
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