Contradictions, Disagreement and Normative Error

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

Abstract

My aim is to discuss some counterexamples to the following principle: (P) Necessarily, for every proposition p, for every cognitive agent S and for every cognitive agent S*, if S believes that p and S* believes that ¬p, then either S makes a normative error or S* makes a normative error. If we assume the identity between S and S*, then (P) regulates what I'm going to call psychological contradiction; conversely, if we assume the non-identity between S and S*, then (P) regulates cases of disagreement. In trying to offer counterexamples, I will compare two different approaches: a three-valued approach and a relativist approach. I will argue that adopting the latter is preferable, since, contrary to the former, in offering counterexamples to (P) it does not commit us to hold the controversial metaphysical views that I will present in section 2. Furthermore, it allows us to propose genuine counterexamples not only in cases of syntactic disagreement, but also in cases of semantic and ontological disagreement.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationNew Frontiers in Truth
PublisherCambridge Scholars Publishing
Pages103-114
Number of pages12
ISBN (Print)978-1-4438-6806-8
Publication statusPublished - 2014

Keywords

  • Contradictions
  • Disagreement
  • Future contingents
  • Semantic relativism
  • Three-valued logic
  • Vagueness

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