III-Faultless Disagreement
Max Kölbel · Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (Hardback) · 2003
There seem to be topics on which people can disagree without fault.For example, you and I might disagree on whether Picasso was a better artist than Matisse, without either of us being at fault.Is this a genuine possibility or just apparent?In this paper I pursue two aims: I want to provide a systematic map of available responses to this question.Simultaneously, I want to assess these responses.I start by introducing and defining the notion of a faultless disagreement.Then I present a simple argument to the conclusion that faultless disagreement is not possible.Those who accept the argument have to explain away apparent cases of faultless disagreement.Those who want to maintain the possibility of faultless disagreement must deny one of the argument's premisses.The position I want to promote belongs to the latter category and is a form of genuine relativism.I F aultless Disagreement: Definition and Examples.Most people think that there can be faultless disagreements at least on some topics, for example on matters of taste.They believe that there is a difference between disputes on objective matters of fact and disputes on non-objective matters of opinion.When two thinkers disagree on a non-objective matter of opinion it is possible that neither of them has made a mistake or is at fault.It is possible that even though they disagree, giving up the belief in question would be an improvement for neither of them.Let's call such disagreements faultless.Candidate topics include aesthetic, culinary or moral value, probability, justification of beliefs, and many others.The examples I will be using will mostly concern matters of taste, because I believe the intuition that faultless disagreement is possible is strongest in this area.However, the range of available views on the possibility of faultless disagreement will be similar in other areas.Let's start with a more precise definition of 'faultless disagreement':A faultless disagreement is a situation where there is a thinker A, a thinker B, and a proposition (content of judgement) p, such that: