Jordi Fairhurst

This paper establishes a structural approach to epistemic reparation, thereby establishing a concept of structural epistemic remedy. I achieve this by employing the structural injustice approach, which identifies unjust or objectionable social structures that enable various types of injustices at a collective level and, importantly, articulates suitable remedies for these unjust and objectionable social structures. The paper proceeds as follows. First, I will establish an intergenerational rights-based approach to epistemic reparation. While doing so, I will identify a gap in the rights-based approach, resulting in a defense of an alternative structural injustice approach. I argue that the rights-based approach and structural injustice approach combined will result in a more complete epistemic justice after wrongdoing. Second, I articulate the structural injustice approach, thereby establishing a concept of structural epistemic remedy. I demonstrate that a successful implementation of epistemic remedy necessitates the acquisition of specific knowledge. I identify three types of knowledge that are required for a genuine structural remedy: One must know (1) which social structures require remedy, (2) how those social structures should be changed, and (3) whether additional reparations must be paid beyond structural remedies. Finally, I will argue that individuals may have distinct types of responsibility, what I call the structural-epistemic responsibility, for obtaining this knowledge for epistemic remedy.

The notion of deep disagreement was originally introduced by Fogelin to describe situations where disagreement about the truth-value of a proposition proceeds from a clash of viewpoints (Fogelin, Informal Logic 7, 1985). Fogelin and others conceived of this notion in a Wittgensteinian fashion, i.e., as disagreements generated by a clash of what Wittgenstein called “hinge propositions” and “forms of life”. Thus, the notion of deep disagreement has inherited the theoretical traits that some scholars of Wittgenstein’s work attribute to the notion of hinge propositions and forms of life. In this paper, we take inspiration from Wittgenstein’s remarks to explore whether genuine moral disagreements align with the inherited definition of deep disagreements. The purpose of this paper is to explore the possible tension between the notion of deep disagreement inspired by later Wittgenstein, and a conception of moral disagreements, conceived as not straightforwardly factual disagreements, that can be tracked in Wittgenstein’s work from the Tractatus to On Certainty.

The phenomenon of selective dispute avoidance is that there are issues we debate and issues we recoil from debating, despite the fact that they are very similar in values at stake. What accounts for this variance? That some disagreements are deep and engagements on some deep issues yields meta-argumentatively bad results is a plausible explanation. However, practical second-order rebutting reasons to these considerations are proposed, essentially that not engaging has foreseeably worse consequences than engaging. What favors engagement, then, is that only when engaged can one address the negative second-order reasons one yields on either approach. What follows is a pragmatic meta-argument for engagement, even in cases of deep disagreement.

Exploring the metaphysics of deep disagreements, Ranalli identifies several essential features shared by all such disputes. These very features constitute a set of adequacy conditions that any satisfactory theory of deep disagreements must meet. The paper explains how Coliva’s Wittgensteinian hinge theory can satisfy Ranalli’s persistence desideratum. According to this condition, any appropriate theory must explain why deep disagreements tend to be persistent and thus unresolved without presupposing that they are rationally irresolvable. First, the work critically discusses how Coliva utilizes her proposed view to account for this desideratum. Second, the paper points out that Coliva’s response is partly problematic because of Ranalli’s definition of deep disagreements for Wittgensteinian hinge theories, which over-generates instances of genuine deep disagreements. Third, the work argues that Coliva’s theory can satisfy Ranalli’s persistence desideratum by resolving a deep disagreement between an anti-vaccination advocate and a proponent of vaccination using an expanded version of Pritchard’s side-on approach. Finally, the paper critically engages with Coliva on the solvability of deep disagreements.

Recently, José María Ariso and Samuel Laves have critically debated whether killing innocent and non‐threatening people [=WK] is a universal moral certainty. One of the main topics of their discussion concerns the case of the pisa‐suaves, children born in the context of the Colombian civil war who grew up with the FARC guerrillas. While Laves argues that such children hold WK, Ariso rejects his claim and stresses that pisa‐suaves have no moral code of conduct. In my work, I side with Laves and contend that WK is a universal moral certainty. Accordingly, I maintain that (i) either pisa‐suaves possess WK and thereby count as human moral agents, or (ii) if they do not possess any moral code of conduct, then they cannot count as human moral agents and, in turn, their existence does not undermine WK's universality.