Serhij Kiš

In this thesis, I defend the claim that adversarial argumentation in deep moral disagreements is epistemically harmful to the arguers, and I propose a strategy to prevent this harm. In particular, I claim that, due to the inherent limits of human cognition in the form of biases, arguing is sometimes not only ineffective but also epistemically harmful. This happens when arguing affectively polarizes the interlocutors, making them increasingly alienated and antagonized toward each other. From this perspective, arguing becomes counterproductive, as it hinders its own goal, which, under the dominant paradigm, is the resolution of the disagreement through consensus between the arguers. I propose that arguing is epistemically harmful in this way in situations of “deep moral disagreements”. A person is in a deep moral disagreement when she argues about a deeply entrenched, value-laden belief she is viscerally convinced of. Paradigmatic cases of deep disagreements involve debates on the morality of abortion, the obligation to go vegan, or the moral justification of euthanasia. In conflicts like these, people tend to manifest a “naïve realism bias”, seeing their opponents as epistemically or morally bankrupt and uninformed. In effect, argumentation worsens disagreement by polarizing the arguers. This is a problem because constructive disagreement, usually deemed a fundamental part of pluralistic democracies, is impossible under the condition of polarization. So, is it possible to prevent argumentation in deep moral disagreements from generating affective polarization? I defend an affirmative answer. I do so by offering a way to leverage emotions that arise during an argument to recognize that one is engaged in a deep moral disagreement and that eristic or adversarial arguing (i.e., arguing to win the debate) is therefore counterproductive. My proposal draws on the philosophy of emotions, particularly on the notion of “epistemic emotions”, or emotions that help us to acquire knowledge about our environment by guiding our attention to their sources. Ultimately, I propose that specific negative emotions we experience during an argument, such as anger, frustration, or anxiety, signal to us that we are in a disagreement that is deep. These emotions, therefore, are markers of situations in which we must change our argumentative strategy, or else we risk affective polarization.

How do we know that we are in a deep disagreement – i.e. disagreement irresolvable by rational means? Some suggest, we know that only after trying out all our rational arguments. However, such strategy risks backfiring by polarizing the parties. This paper proposes an alternative way of recognizing depth. Drawing on epistemic capacity of emotions, I argue that debater’s emotional experience during deep disagreement, namely frustration, functions as an indicator of the disagreement’s depth. Résumé: Comment savons-nous que nous sommes en profond désaccord, c'est-à-dire insoluble par des moyens rationnels? Certains suggèrent que nous ne le savons qu'après avoir présenté tous nos arguments rationnels. Cependant, une telle stratégie risque de se retourner contre nous en polarisant les parties. Cet article propose une autre façon de reconnaître la profondeur du désaccord. En m'appuyant sur la capacité épistémique des émotions, je soutiens que l'expérience émotionnelle du débatteur lors d'un profond désaccord, à savoir la frustration, fonctionne comme un indicateur de la profondeur du désaccord.

The existence of deep moral disagreement is used in support of views ranging from moral relativism to the impossibility of moral expertise. This is done despite the fact that it is not at all clear whether deep moral disagreements actually occur, as the usually given examples are never of real life situations, but of some generalized debates on controversial issues. The paper will try to remedy this, as any strength of arguments appealing to deep moral disagreement is partly depended on the fact the disagreement exists. This will be done by showing that some real life conflicts that are intractable, i.e. notoriously difficult to resolve, share some important features with deep moral disagreement. The article also deals with the objection that the mere conceptual possibility renders illustrations of actually happening deep moral disagreements unnecessary. The problem with such objection is that it depends on theoretical assumptions (i.e. denial of moral realism) that are not uncontroversial. Instead, the article claims we need not only suppose deep moral disagreements exist because they actually occur when some intractable conflicts occur. Thus, in so far as to the deep moral disagreement’s existence, the arguments appealing to it are safe. But as intractable conflicts can be resolved, by seeing deep moral disagreements as constitutive part of them, we might have to consider whether deep moral disagreements are resolvable too. A brief suggestion of how that might look like is given in the end of the paper.