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The Appearance of Faultless Disagreement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 March 2011

Abstract

A common argument for relativism invokes the appearance of faultless disagreement. I contend that the appearance is possible only under conditions that disqualify it as evidence: gross ignorance or irrationality, or else a prior commitment to an especially crude and implausible form of relativism.

Résumé

L’un des arguments communément avancé en faveur du relativisme repose sur l’apparente possibilité que des jugements non erronés puissent être divergents. Je cherche à montrer qu’une telle observation n’est possible qu’à des conditions qui la rendent inadmissible à titre de preuve: l’acceptation d’une grossière ignorance, de l’irrationalité, ou encore un attachement préalable à une forme peu plausible de relativisme particulièrement extrême.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 2011

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References

Notes

1 See, for instance, Kölbel (2004, 2009), Lasersohn (2005), MacFarlane (2007).

2 Enoch (2009, 42) gives a convincing example of how prior realist intuitions make it intuitively plausible to assign fault in the case of disagreements over arithmetic, even when we have no idea which party is wrong or what exactly the fault might be. Surely this is true of many other subjects as well.