Disagreement within Philosophy

This workshop will explore the impact that ubiquitous disagreement has within different areas of philosophical research. In particular, by bringing together philosophers from different areas — such as epistemology, metaethics, the philosophies of language and logic — we aim at exploring, among other things, the following issues:

• What is, in general, the theoretical role that disagreement plays in these areas?
• Should we derive general skeptical conclusions from ubiquitous disagreement in philosophy or are more permissive responses viable?
• What are plausible explanations of widespread disagreement in many areas of philosophy?
• Can disagreement be used as a sort of litmus paper to explore normative questions in these areas? (E.g. can the degree of robustness and resilience of disagreement in an area be a guide to what kind of norms govern judgements in that area?)
• In the light of recent discussion on the very notion of disagreement, what can the occurrence of disagreement in a given area teach us about the nature of the subject matter?

This will be the third and last international workshop of the DFG-funded project “Disagreement in Philosophy: Semantic and Epistemic Foundations” hosted by the Universities of Bonn and Cologne.