Wee Michael
Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Warneford Hospital, Oxford, OX3 7JX UK.
Synthese. 2025;205(2):58. doi: 10.1007/s11229-024-04884-6. Epub 2025 Jan 20.
This paper explores the idea that deep disagreements essentially involve disputes about what counts as good reasoning, whether it is theoretical or practical reasoning. My central claim is that deep disagreements involve radically different paradigms of some principle or notion that is constitutively basic to reasoning-I refer to these as "basic concepts". To defend this claim, I show how we can understand deep disagreements by accepting the indeterminacy of concept-formation: concepts are not set in stone but are responsive to human needs, and differences in individuating and ordering concepts lead to clashes in paradigms of reasoning. These clashes can be difficult to resolve because linguistic concepts, especially basic concepts, impose a normative structure onto thought to make reasoning possible at all. This, I also argue, is an authentically Wittgensteinian account of the nature of reasoning. While deep disagreements involving theoretical and practical reasoning both stem from the same root problem of clashing paradigms of basic concepts, I will also draw attention to the particularly radical indeterminacy of moral concept-formation, which makes moral deep disagreements more difficult to resolve. Over the course of the paper, I will discuss two examples of deep disagreements to illustrate and defend my central claim: deep disagreements over vaccines and the concept of "evidence" (theoretical reasoning) and deep disagreements over affirmative action and the concept of "fairness" (practical reasoning). I conclude by suggesting how my account of reasoning does not lead to moral relativism.
本文探讨了这样一种观点，即深度分歧本质上涉及关于什么算作良好推理的争论，无论它是理论推理还是实践推理。我的核心主张是，深度分歧涉及到某些对于推理具有构成性基础的原则或概念的根本不同范式——我将这些称为“基本概念”。为了捍卫这一主张，我展示了我们如何通过接受概念形成的不确定性来理解深度分歧：概念并非一成不变，而是对人类需求有响应，并且在对概念进行个体化和排序方面的差异会导致推理范式的冲突。这些冲突可能难以解决，因为语言概念，尤其是基本概念，会给思维强加一种规范结构，以使推理成为可能。我还认为，这是对维特根斯坦关于推理本质的一种真实描述。虽然涉及理论推理和实践推理的深度分歧都源于基本概念范式冲突这同一个根本问题，但我也将提请注意道德概念形成中特别激进的不确定性，这使得道德深度分歧更难解决。在本文中，我将讨论两个深度分歧的例子，以说明和捍卫我的核心主张：关于疫苗和“证据”概念的深度分歧（理论推理）以及关于平权行动和“公平”概念的深度分歧（实践推理）。我通过表明我的推理观点如何不会导致道德相对主义来得出结论。
