CFP: /Philosophies/ Special Issue: Points of View and Disagreement

Dear Colleagues:

Knowledge lies at the core of our being. It grounds everything we do. Realists tell us that there is only one reality. And reality is what we know, according to epistemologists. So all of human knowledge should cohere nicely, revealing to us this one reality we all live in.

Alas… this doesn’t even remotely describe what we actually experience. What we experience is a vast sea of conflicting knowledges, all expressed in passionate and sometimes deadly disagreements. Often, these differing knowledges concern the deepest, most important parts of our lives: the nature of the world we live in (e.g., was it created or not); whether science is good and truth-producing or mostly evil and a hoax; whether vaccines are a public good; whether the global temperature is rising and, if so, why; whether there are any just wars. And, this is just an introductory list. It looks, therefore, as if the 8 billion humans on Earth constitute at least that many points of view.

It is common, at this step, for someone to point out that while there are many, many points of view on important topics, for each such topic, only a few closely related points of view constitute knowledge of that topic. Opinions vary; knowledge does not. But the fundamental problem is here: Who decides who has knowledge and who has mere opinion? For every person who decides one way, there is another who decides some other way. Fortunately, Philosophies is running a Special Issue where this all can be worked out.

Topics include, but are not limited to:

• Disagreements and points of view: How are points of view and disagreements related? Are we destined to always disagree?
• Formal treatments of points of view, including logics incorporating and describing points of view.
• How should we pick who adjudicates between the points of view that constitute knowledge and the ones that are mere opinion, assuming this very distinction isn’t question-begging?
• Moral and ethical consequences of deciding that some people’s cherished point of view is wrong.
• Ontological and epistemological status of points of view: Are points of view basic in any way? Are there different kinds of points of view?
• Psychology and points of view: Why do points of view vary so much? Why do humans have differing points of view at all? Are points of view kinds of perceptions?
• Relativism, of all varieties, and points of view: Does taking others’ points of view seriously mean that relativism is inevitable?
• What social policies, if any, should govern how we decide who knows and who doesn’t? It can’t all come down to pragmatics because people disagree about what they regard as pragmatically reasonable.

Prof. Eric Dietrich
Guest Editor

Keywords

• Belief
• Consciousness
• Disagreement
• Intentionality
• Knowledge
• Points of view
• Phenomenology of believing
• Phenomenology of knowing
• Relativism
• Science

Please contact Guest Editor Prof. Eric Dietrich or Special Issue Editor Clyde Cui at [email protected] for further information.

Philosophies (ISSN 2409-9287, https://www.mdpi.com/journal/philosophies) is an international peer-reviewed open access journal. The journal has recently been indexed into Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) in Web of Science.

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https://www.mdpi.com/journal/philosophies/special_issues/Disagreement/abstract

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