A type of level 2 disagreement

I want to elaborate on my reductio against level 4 disagreements, mentioned earlier this morning. It may be that a person cannot form cogent arguments for his own claim but will not admit defeat of his view. In order for this to be a level 2 defeat, his argument must really be rationally indefensible in principle--meaning that, somewhere at least, he must be contradicting some assumptions that have been made. These assumptions can be either exclusively his own, or some level 1 assumptions, or both. If he really is this irrational, he might well not admit this defeat of his position, but because the cogency must therefore exist on the side of the negation of his view, his claim is still a level 2 falsehood. In other words, a dispute can exist at level 2 independently of whether both sides are willing to admit that a proper resolution has been made. This is simply part of the nature of rational discourse, and part of why it can be so difficult to resolve disputes. We don't always know when a dispute has been resolved at level 2, but it seems hard to deny that it is an objective, factual matter that exists independently of whether either side will recognise or admit it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Philosophy of Al Qaeda

People out there seem pretty interested in the philosophy of Al Qaeda. Three of my most recent hits have involved searches on those words. Mine is the top-ranked page when "Al-Qaeda" is spelled with a hyphen, and the second-ranked page when it is not. And my page was only referring to someone else's blog page in the first place! So let's talk about the philosophy of Al Qaeda. Paul Berman wrote an excellent article about it. He identifies Sayyid Qutb as the most important philosopher behind the movement. Qutb is Qaeda's intellectual hero, its "Karl Marx". In this respect, Qutb's best known work is Milestones , his Das Kapital . Berman, however, calls attention to Qutb's deeper work, the enormous In the Shade of the Koran . It is full of literary beauty and deep ideas. Just because ideas are deep, however, does not mean that they are true, and many of Qutb's ideas, Berman argues, are indeed false. Qutb opposes the separation of church and s
Read more

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Do you see any conflict between your spending considerable money on the care of your mother and your principle of spreading out wealth to help the most people? Yes. In a sense, my spending money on my mother's care is in conflict with that principle. But so is the fact that I flew back to Australia to visit my daughters at Christmas. That money could also be better spent elsewhere. I've never claimed that I live my life perfectly in accordance with those principles of sharing my money as much as I should. Interview with Peter Singer by Princeton Alumni Weekly , January 26, 2000. Is Peter Singer a hypocrite? Lonnie Lee Best, from his excellent web page on " The Psychology of Hypocrisy ", defines a hypocrite as 'a person whose actions contradict his or her stated or internal beliefs. (Or vice versa.)' From the sections on " Singer's Mother " and " Singer's Donations ", it seems clear enough that Singer falls into this cat
Read more

Commensurability 5.0

Key concept: commensurability Dictionary Definition: measurability by a common standard (Based on definition of "commensurable" in WordNet 2.0 .) Substantive Account: of a claim, measurability of its truth or falsity by a common standard that falls along a continuum of degrees, or levels , of conduciveness to non-coercive agreement. I distinguish the following four levels: Level 1 Keyword: Commonality. UPDATE 2014/12/28: Could also be triviality. Necessary and sufficient condition: Pre-existing agreement about truth or falsity of claim. Examples: "The Pope is Catholic" is at level 1 because of pre-existing agreement of its truth. "The moon is made of green cheese" is at level 1 because of pre-existing agreement of its falsity. Additionally, non-trivial claims can be at level 1 relative to a particular discussion. For example, assumptions made in a scientific paradigm are at level 1 relative to all who share that paradigm. Level 2 Keywor
Read more