THE RULES OF MATERIAL INFERENCE THEORY OF DEEP DISAGREEMENTS JASON SCHULTCHEN Bachelor of Arts, University of Lethbridge, 2016 A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in PHILOSOPHY Department of Philosophy University of Lethbridge LETHBRIDGE, ALBERTA, CANADA © Jason Schultchen, 2020 THE RULES OF MATERIAL INFERENCE THEORY OF DEEP DISAGREEMENTS JASON SCHULTCHEN Date of Defence: April 18, 2020 Dr. B. Brown Professor Ph.D. Thesis Supervisor Dr. K. Peacock Professor Ph.D. Thesis Examination Committee Member Dr. K. Stevens Assistant Professor Ph.D. Thesis Examination Committee Member Dr. S. Aikin Assistant Professor Ph.D. External Examiner Vanderbilt University Nashville, Tennessee Dr. J. Linville Associate Professor Ph.D. Chair, Thesis Examination Committee Abstract Robert Fogelin’s problem of deep disagreements is the existence of certain disagreements in which arriving at an agreement by way of argumentation can appear impossible, even if the disagreeing parties are mutually committed to achieving a resolution through earnest argumentation. The essential feature of a deep disagreement is a clash of “underlying principles” which leads the interlocutors to an impasse with respect to deciding upon a means of resolving their disagreement. How we answer the question of whether there is room for effective argumentation in deep disagreements turns upon our understanding of the aforementioned underlying principles. I offer one possible theory of deep disagreements wherein the underlying principles at issue are construed as Wilfrid Sellars’s rules of material inference. My claim is that this Sellarsian take on deep disagreements effectively captures Fogelin’s problem while leaving room for optimism about the various roles that argumentation might play in a deep disagreement. iii Acknowledgements I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Michaela, my family, my supervisory committee, and the many wonderful people I have had the good fortune to meet while attending the University of Lethbridge. iv Table of Contents Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................. iv List of Abbreviations .......................................................................................................... vi Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Deep Disagreements, Pragmatism and Sellars ................................................... 6 1.1 What is the problem of deep disagreements? ............................................................. 7 1.2 What is my understanding of pragmatism? .............................................................. 16 1.2.1 Concepts as Fundamentally Related to Actions ................................................ 18 1.2.2 The Social Nature of Belief Acquisition ........................................................... 22 1.2.3 Fallibilism .......................................................................................................... 26 1.3 What is Sellarsian Inferentialism? ............................................................................ 30 Chapter 2: The Rules of Material Inference Theory of Deep Disagreements ................... 44 2.1 Ranalli’s Project ....................................................................................................... 45 2.1.1 The WHC View ................................................................................................. 47 2.1.2 The FEP View.................................................................................................... 50 2.2 The RMI View and Ranalli’s Desiderata ................................................................. 51 2.2.1 Constitution question ......................................................................................... 51 2.2.2 Attitude question ................................................................................................ 56 2.2.3 Systematicity...................................................................................................... 57 2.2.4 Reason-taking .................................................................................................... 60 2.2.5 Persistence ......................................................................................................... 62 2.2.6 Disagreement ..................................................................................................... 64 Chapter 3: The Role of Argumentation on the RMI View of Deep Disagreements .......... 70 3.1 The RMI View and Optimism .................................................................................. 71 3.1.1 Pessimism .......................................................................................................... 71 3.1.2 Optimism ........................................................................................................... 77 3.2 The RMI View and Some Argumentative Strategies ............................................. 102 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 115 References ........................................................................................................................ 116 v List of Abbreviations FEP Fundamental Epistemic Principle FNP Fundamental Normative Principle RMI Rule(s) of Material Inference WHC Wittgensteinian Hinge Commitment vi Introduction What I want to do is look at the following question against the backdrop of a pragmatism informed by Sellarsian inferentialism What role, if any, is there for argumentation1 in deep disagreements? This question (which is really two questions) is a point of contention amongst argumentation theorists. The question of whether there is a role for argumentation is debated by optimists (who say “yes there is”)2 and pessimists (who say “no there isn’t”).3 The question of just what that role might be, meanwhile, is the source of disagreement amongst the optimists. I will ultimately claim that the Sellarsian inferentialist is among the optimists and endorse a number of possible roles various optimists have suggested argumentation might play in a deep disagreement. The argumentative problem of deep disagreement is first raised in Robert Fogelin’s 1985 “The Logic of Deep Disagreements.” To say that two people have a deep disagreement is to say that they are faced with a clash between their respective systems of underlying principles which can (at least appear to) preclude any hope of rational resolution. Fogelin provides the examples of debates over abortion and affirmative action 1. Argumentation will be understood as a linguistic (verbal or written) exchange of ideas. I will include as argumentation any linguistic exchange which occurs in what Sellars has called “the space of reasons” and which involves “justifying and being able to justify what one says.” (Wilfrid Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), §36, p. 76). This is taken to be in line with Finocchiaro’s description of argumentation as “essentially ‘reasoning-together,’ that is, reason-giving and reason-assessing.” (Maurice Finocchiaro and David Godden, “‘Deep Disagreements: A Meta- Argumentation Approach,” OSSA Conference Archive, no. 31 (2011), p. 7). The sense of argumentation with which I am concerned will be called earnest argumentation and its telos is truth. 2. Some optimists whose positions will be explored in this thesis include Andrew Lugg, David Adams, David Godden and William Brenner. 3. Some pessimists whose positions will be explored in this thesis include Jeremy Barris, Chris Campolo, and Fogelin himself. 1 as cases of deep disagreements. His point is that our failure to resolve these debates through argumentation is, at least sometimes, better understood as the manifestation of a deeper disagreement which has to do with the underlying principles related to the interlocutors’ respective understandings of personhood (in the context of the abortion debate) or fairness (in the context of the affirmative action debate).4 Fogelin’s claim is that, since argumentation relies on a certain minimum of unstated agreement (or common ground) between interlocutors, when two interlocutors are faced with sufficiently incompatible systems of underlying principles, argumentation between them will become impossible because the very “conditions for argument do not exist.”5 It should be clear at this point that how one understands deep disagreements turns upon how one understands the nature of the differing underlying principles to which each interlocutor is committed, and this is by no means settled amongst writers on the subject. It is not uncommon in the literature on deep disagreements to offer some account of how the underlying principles at issue in a deep disagreement ought to be understood and I will not stray from the herd here. My contribution in this regard will involve considering the underlying principles at issue in a deep disagreement through the lens of Sellarsian inferentialism (very roughly, the view that any meaning some statement may have is had only in virtue of the inferential role that that statement plays in a rule governed language),6 and the centrally-related