Article by Andrew Rotondo accepted for publication by ‘Australasian Journal of Philosophy’
Andrew Rotondo, Ph.D., assistant lecturer in philosophy, wrote a paper that was recently accepted for publication by the Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
In "Disagreement and Intellectual Skepticism," Rotondo discusses that several philosophers have recently argued that our awareness of widespread disagreement about controversial topics, such as politics, religion and philosophy, renders our opinions about those topics unreasonable.
Rotondo posits that this is a kind of intellectual skepticism that is both fascinating and disturbing, as it would leave us unable to hold reasonable opinions about many issues that we care about deeply.
He examines one of the main components of the skeptical position – that the idea that we should think of our opponents on controversial topics as epistemic peers – and argues that our grounds for thinking of our opponents as epistemic peers are either too weak (and fail to generate the skeptical conclusion) or too strong (and imply absurd conclusions). Therefore, Rotondo concludes that disagreement-based intellectual skepticism is not plausible.