Understanding Deep Disagreement

ABSTRACT

The axiological account of deep disagreements is described and defended. This proposal understands this notion in terms of the existential importance of the topic of disagreement. It is argued that this account provides a straightforward explanation for the main features of deep disagreements. This proposal is then compared to the contemporary popular view that deep disagreements are essentially hinge disagreements – i.e. disagreements concerning clashes of one’s hinge commitments, in the sense described by the later Wittgenstein. It is claimed that hinge disagreements are only plausibly deep disagreements insofar as there can be a specific class of hinge commitments that are axiological in nature, thereby lending further support to the axiological account of deep disagreement.

KEYWORDS:

• Deep disagreement
• epistemology
• epistemology of disagreement
• hinge epistemology
• Wittgenstein

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. For discussion of this general idea, see Fogelin (1985), Brenner and Godden (2010), Pritchard (2018c), Lavorerio (2020), Ranalli (2020), and Siegel (2021). See also the related discussion of epistemic relativism in the context of hinge epistemology, such as Williams (2007), Coliva (2010), Pritchard (2010, 2018c), Kusch (2016), and Carter (2017). For two recent critical discussions of the relationship between hinge disagreements and deep disagreements, see Ranalli (2021) and Pritchard (forthcoming-a).

2. There is, of course, a wealth of philosophical material on the question of what, if anything, could appropriately perform the role of being of fundamental value in the sense that we are interested in. For a recent work that usefully engages with questions of this general kind, see Tiberius (2018).

3. See Pritchard (2018a).

4. The case is due to Christensen (2007, 193) and is widely discussed in the epistemology of peer disagreement literature.

5. For some prominent defences of (versions of) conciliationism, see Christensen (2007), Elga (2007), Feldman (2007), and Cohen (2013).

6. I explore this point about reflection and non-conciliationism, along with some of its implications for the epistemology of disagreement, in Pritchard (2018b, 2019). See also Pritchard (2020, 2022c).

7. Interestingly, this high level of conviction can go hand-in-hand with periods of anxiety about whether such conviction is warranted. I discuss this phenomenon as it manifests itself in the religious case in Pritchard (forthcoming-b, forthcoming-c).

8. I offer my own reading of On Certainty in a number of places, but see especially Pritchard (2015, part 2). For some of the main texts in this regard, see Strawson (1985), McGinn (1989), Williams (1991), Moyal-Sharrock (2004), Wright (2004), Coliva (2015), and Schönbaumsfeld (2016). For a recent survey of this literature, see Pritchard (2017b).

9. The mention of differing epistemic frameworks naturally raises the specter of epistemic relativism. Although it would take us too far afield to get into this issue here, my own view is that the possibility of divergence in hinge commitments needn’t lead to epistemic relativism, at least of a problematic kind that entails incommensurable epistemic systems. See Pritchard (2010, 2018c). For discussion of the related idea that deep disagreements turn on the employment of distinct fundamental epistemic principles, see Lynch (2010) and Kappel (2012).

10. This way of thinking about hinge commitments is most associated with the entitlement account offered by Wright (e.g. 2004) and the related extended rationality account offered by Coliva (e.g. 2015).

11. See, for example, Williams (2004) and Pritchard (2015, part 2).

12. Indeed, one of the main themes in Wittgenstein’s discussion of hinge commitments is that one’s actions manifest this overarching certainty that underlies our system of rational evaluation. As he puts it, echoing Goethe: ‘In the beginning was the deed.’ (OC, §396).

13. Elsewhere, I have described this overarching certainty as the über hinge commitment. See, for example, Pritchard (2015, part 2).

14. Here is Wittgenstein.

‘It strikes me that a religious belief could only be something like a passionate commitment to a system of reference. Hence, although it’s belief, it’s really a way of living, or a way of assessing life. It’s passionately seizing hold of this interpretation’ (Wittgenstein 1977, §64e).

This remark by Wittgenstein has prompted a lot of critical discussion, but for a particularly helpful contemporary treatment of it, see Schönbaumsfeld (2014).

15. I have explored the application of the Wittgensteinian notion of a hinge commitment to the religious domain – what I term quasi-fideism – in a number of places. See, especially, Pritchard (2011, 2017a, 2022a). For specific discussion of clashes of worldview in the context of quasi-fideism, see Pritchard (2022b).

16. Thanks to Maria Baghramian and Rowland Stout. This paper was written while a Senior Research Associate of the African Centre for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science at the University of Johannesburg.