Title
Disagreement, Certainties, Relativism
Author
Abstract
This paper seeks to widen the dialogue between the “epistemology of peer disagreement” and the epistemology informed by Wittgenstein’s last notebooks, later edited as On Certainty. The paper defends the following theses: (i) not all certainties are groundless; many of them are beliefs; and they do not have a common essence. (ii) An epistemic peer need not share all of my certainties. (iii) Which response (steadfast, conciliationist etc.) to a disagreement over a certainty is called for, depends on the type of certainty in question. Sometimes a form of relativism is the right response. (iv) Reasonable, mutually recognized peer disagreement over a certainty is possible.—The paper thus addresses both interpretative and systematic issues. It uses Wittgenstein as a resource for thinking about peer disagreement over certainties.
Keywords
DisagreementPeer disagreementCertaintiesWittgensteinRelativism
Object type
Language
English [eng]
Persistent identifier
phaidra.univie.ac.at/o:937440
Appeared in
Title
Topoi
Publication
Springer Nature
Version type
Date issued
2018
Access rights
Rights
Rights statement
© The Author(s) 2018
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