Talk (Work in Progress): Manuel Sanchís Ferrer (Lisbon)

Title:

A New Approach for a Definition of Rational Resolvability

Abstract:

This talk focuses on the notion of rational resolvability as applied to disagreements. As a first approximation, we can say that a disagreement is rationally resolvable when the agents who disagree can reach an agreement by engaging in rational argumentative interactions (and irresolvable if this is not the case). The notion of rational resolvability is prominent in the deep disagreement literature (Melchior 2023) but it has its own theoretical interest, mainly because involves tracking the limits of argumentation as a tool of rational persuasion among rational agents. The existence of rational irresolvable disagreements is plausible if we consider the domain of evaluative disagreements, as well as disagreements that involve a conflict in “worldviews”. Current accounts of what it means for a disagreement to be rationally resolvable/irresolvable are unsatisfactory in different respects, so I aim to provide a better definition of this property by taking a novel approach to the issue. This consists of finding a way to determine the set of argumentative interactions that are available for a pair of agents given their particular circumstances and, by introducing several idealizations to this set, defining rational resolvable disagreement in terms of it.