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Filippo Ferrari

Università di Bologna, Department of the Arts (DAR), Faculty Member

New York University, Philosophy, Visiting Graduate Student

Università di Bologna, Philosophy, Alumnus

Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Institut für Philosophie, Post-Doc

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PhD (Aberdeen - Supervisors: Crispin Wright and Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins - Examiners: Paul Horwich, Matthew Chrisman)
My doctoral thesis engages three philosophical topics and some relationships between them: (i) the phenomenon of disagreement (paradigmatically, where one person makes a claim and another person denies it) as it occurs in some core areas of the so-called evaluative domain (taste, comedic and moral); (ii) the normative character of disagreement (in particular the issue of whether, and in what sense, one of the parties must be “at fault” for believing something that’s untrue); and (iii) the issue of which theory of what truth is can best accommodate the norms relating belief and truth in these areas of discourse.
I argue that there are important differences in the normative character of disagreement in the three domains under scrutiny. While a substantive notion of faultlessness might be applicable (with some subtle differences) to disagreements in both the taste and the comedic domain, it fails to apply to moral disagreements. I argue that this difference should be accounted for by looking at the normative role of truth in different areas of enquiry. In so doing I defend the thesis that truth plays a variable normative role – from a very thin one in the taste domain (where truth is deontically silent) to a more substantive one in the moral domain. I conclude by showing how an amended version of alethic deflationism can account for the normative variability of truth and the difference in the normative status of disagreement.

Current Research – I am currently conducting my research within the remit of the Leverhulme funded project Relativism and Rational Tolerance. I investigate the nature and normative aspects of tolerance in connection with disagreement. In particular, I focus on the question – when and why is it rational for thinkers to take an attitude of tolerance towards differences of opinion?

Research Plans – In the next few years, I would like to investigate the normative governance of enquiry – a topic of recently intensifying interest in contemporary epistemology. In particular I would like to focus on a cluster of foundational issues concerning the respects in which enquiry is, at least intuitively, constrained by norms.
Supervisors: Crispin Wright, Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins, and Eva Picardi
Address: Northern Institute of Philosophy
University of Aberdeen
School of Divinity, History & Philosophy
Department of Philosophy
Old Brewery - Old Aberdeen AB24 3UB - Scotland (UK)

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Johannes Zachhuber

University of Oxford

Daniel D. Hutto

University of Wollongong

The University of Texas at Austin

University of Nottingham

Duncan Pritchard

University of California, Irvine

University of Reading

University of Missouri Columbia

University of Glasgow

Richard Amesbury

Arizona State University

University of Vienna

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Papers by Filippo Ferrari

Anti-exceptionalism about logic: an overview

Synthese, Feb 10, 2023

Perspectives on Post-Truth

Social Epistemology

Post-Enquiry and Disagreement. A Socio-Epistemological Model of the Normative Significance of Disagreement Between Scientists and Denialists

Social Epistemology

Verità e Post-Verità: dall'Indagine alla Post-Indagine

Talking with Vultures

Mind, 2016

At the time of its first publication, relativism was proclaimed by the publisher's advertisement ... more At the time of its first publication, relativism was proclaimed by the publisher's advertisement for Herman Cappelen and John Hawthorne's book to be "currently the hottest topic in philosophy". Maybe that was commercial license but there is no denying that the debates provoked by the reinvention of relativism as a thesis not of speculative metaphysics but of descriptive semantic theory 1 have been intense and have attracted much attention. Relativism, as understood in these debates, is the claim that, for at least certain distinguished regions of discourse-in the recent literature, the relativistic case has been argued for discourses concerning each of epistemic mights and coulds, knowledge, taste, indicative conditionals, probability statements, and future contingents 2-we obtain the best theoretical characterisation of our actual linguistic practice by allowing that the truth value of an assertion is not determined purely by the state of the world in relevant respects 3 but depends upon and may vary with additional parameters whose values may be different across different thinkers. 4 Cappelen and Hawthorne's short book 5 belongs to the first wave of reaction against this tendency, and at the time of writing remains the only book-length critique of it. Its heart is a systematic defence of a cluster of traditional ideas that together amount to the thesis that its authors caption as Simplicity, incorporating the following five ingredient claims (p. 1):

Disagreement and the normativity of truth beneath cognitive command

What does it take for a statement to be true? Intuitively, many would simply say that a statement... more What does it take for a statement to be true? Intuitively, many would simply say that a statement is true if and only if things stand as it says they are. This idea is perhaps our most basic intuition about truth. 2 According to Michael Lynch this is one of the truisms about truth that underlies our ordinary conception of truth. 3 Various formulations of this intuitive thought are found in the writings of many philosophers since, at least, ancient Greece. For instance, both Plato and Aristotle 4 informally characterized truth along these lines. In their words: "Socrates: Then that speech which says things as they are is true, and that which says them as they are not is false?" 5 "To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true." 6 As it is clear from these passages, there are two keys ingredients in the ordinary conception of truth. On the one hand, there is the question of what the statement says. On the other hand that of whether what the statement says is in agreement with, or corresponds to, the way things are-or, more simply, to reality. These two elements seem

Disagreement and suspended judgement

Metaphilosophy

Brigitte, Diana, and Sarah are three detectives independently working on a crime case. They are i... more Brigitte, Diana, and Sarah are three detectives independently working on a crime case. They are investigating whether Mike is the murderer. After some careful inquiry, our three detectives come to different verdicts: Brigitte, the believer, accepts that Mike is the murderer, and thus comes to believe that Mike is the murderer; Diana, the disbeliever, rejects that Mike is the murderer, and thus comes to disbelieve that Mike is the murderer; Sarah, the suspender, refrains both from accepting that Mike is the murder and from rejecting that Mike is the

Relativism, faultlessness and parity: why we should be pluralists about truth's normative function

Some philosophers, like Mark Richard and Paul Boghossian, have argued against relativism that it ... more Some philosophers, like Mark Richard and Paul Boghossian, have argued against relativism that it cannot account for the possibility of faultless disagreement. However, I will contend that the objections they moved against relativism do not target its ability to account for the possibility of faultless disagreement per se. Rather, they should be taken to challenge its capacity to account for another element of our folk conception of disagreement in certain areas of discourse—what Crispin Wright has dubbed parity. What parity demands is to account for the possibility of coherently appreciating, within a committed perspective, that our opponent's contrary judgement is somehow on a par with our own judgement. Understood in this way, Boghossian's and Richard's objections put indeed considerable pressure on relativism—or so I will argue. I will consider John MacFarlane's attempt to resist their objections and I will show that, once their arguments are properly understood a...

Assessment relativism

The Varieties of Agnosticism

The Philosophical Quarterly

We provide a framework for understanding agnosticism. The framework accounts for the varieties of... more We provide a framework for understanding agnosticism. The framework accounts for the varieties of agnosticism while vindicating the unity of the phenomenon. This combination of unity and plurality is achieved by taking the varieties of agnosticism to be represented by several agnostic stances, all of which share a common core provided by what we call the minimal agnostic attitude. We illustrate the fruitfulness of the framework by showing how it can be applied to several philosophical debates. In particular, several philosophical positions can be aptly conceived of as instances of agnosticism whilst retaining their differences and distinguishing features.

Epistemic Peer Disagreement

The Routledge Handbook of Social Epistemology, 2019

Austere Truth Pluralism

The Nature of Truth, 2021

Normative Alethic Pluralism

Pluralisms in Truth and Logic

Some philosophers have argued that truth is a norm of judgement. 1 This thesis has been given in ... more Some philosophers have argued that truth is a norm of judgement. 1 This thesis has been given in a variety of formulations-that true judgements are the correct ones; that it is better to judge truly than to judge falsely; and that the truth is what judges ought to pursue in enquiry. I will assume that truth somehow functions as a norm of judgement, and I will be focusing on two core questions concerning the judgement-truth norm-namely: (i) what are the normative relationships between truth and judgement? (ii) do these relationships vary or are they constant? I argue for a pluralist picture-what I call normative alethic pluralism 2 (henceforth NAP)according to which (i) there is more than one correct judgement-truth norm and (ii) the normative relationships between truth and judgement vary in relation to the subject matter of the judgement. By means of a comparative analysis of disagreement in three core areas of the evaluative domain-refined aesthetics, basic taste and morality-I show that there is an important variability in the normative significance that disagreement has in these areas-I call this the variability conjecture. By presenting a variation of Lynch's scope problem for alethic monism, I argue that a monistic approach to truth's normative function is unable to vindicate

Deflating Truth About Taste

American Philosophical Quarterly

This is a penultimate draft of a paper which is forthcoming in The American Philosophical Quarter... more

Enquiry and Normative Deviance

The Epistemology of Fake News

It is argued that science denialism brings about an aberrant form of enquiry that deviates in sig... more It is argued that science denialism brings about an aberrant form of enquiry that deviates in significant ways from the epistemic norms governing scientific enquiry. Science denialism doesn’t involve just a rejection of a scientific theory; it also challenges the practice of continuously and impartially testing research methods, theories, and evidential sources with the aim of improving the accuracy of our theories. This chapter provides an in-depth analysis of the epistemic mechanisms at work. It develops a fine-grained framework to model a variety of normative deviances that may take place in enquiry. Through analysing two case studies, it is argued that fake news plays two pivotal roles in shaping epistemic norms operating within science denialism. First, it discredits a variety of (institutional) sources of evidence; second, it also plays a part in building the alternative explanation of the target phenomena.

Proof-theoretic pluralism

Synthese

Starting from a proof-theoretic perspective, where meaning is determined by the inference rules g... more Starting from a proof-theoretic perspective, where meaning is determined by the inference rules governing logical operators, in this paper we primarily aim at developing a proof-theoretic alternative to the model-theoretic meaning-invariant logical pluralism discussed in Beall and Restall (Logical pluralism, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006). We will also outline how this framework can be easily extended to include a form of meaning-variant logical pluralism. In this respect, the framework developed in this paper—which we label two-level proof-theoretic pluralism—is much broader in scope than the one discussed in Beall and Restall’s book.

Preface to Special Issue Logical Pluralism and Normativity

Inquiry

Logical pluralism, indeterminacy and the normativity of logic

Inquiry

Abstract According to the form of logical pluralism elaborated by Beall and Restall there is more... more Abstract According to the form of logical pluralism elaborated by Beall and Restall there is more than one relation of logical consequence. Since they take the relation of logical consequence to reside at the very heart of a logical system, different relations of logical consequence yield different logics. In this paper, we are especially interested in understanding what are the consequences of endorsing Beall and Restall’s version of logical pluralism vis-à-vis the normative guidance that logic is taken to provide to reasoners. In particular, the aim of this paper is threefold. First, in Sections 2 and 3, we offer an exegesis of Beall and Restall’s logical pluralism as a thesis of semantic indeterminacy of our concept of logical consequence – i.e. understood as indeterminacy logical pluralism. Second, in Sections 4 and 5, we elaborate and critically scrutinize three models of semantic indeterminacy that we think are fit to capture Beall and Restall’s indeterminacy logical pluralism. Third, in Section 6, following Beall and Restall’s assumption that the notion of logical consequence has normative significance for deductive reasoning, we raise a series of normative problems for indeterminacy logical pluralism. The overall conclusion that we aim to establish is that Beall and Restall’s indeterminate logical pluralism cannot offer an adequate account of the normative guidance that logic is taken to provide us with in ordinary contexts of reasoning.

Alethic pluralism and the value of truth

Synthese

I have two objectives in this paper. The first is to investigate whether, and to what extent, tru... more I have two objectives in this paper. The first is to investigate whether, and to what extent, truth is valuable. I do this by first isolating the value question from other normative questions. Second, I import into the debate about the nature of truth some key distinctions hailing from value theory. This will help us to clarify the sense in which (and to what extent) truth is valuable. I then argue that there is significant variability in the value of truth in different areas of discourse. I shall call this the axiological variability conjecture (AVC). I illustrate and substantiate AVC by contrasting the occurrence of disagreement in two paradigmatically evaluative areas of discourse, viz. matters of taste, on the one hand, and morality, on the other. I claim that there is a reasonable tendency to care much more about settling moral disagreements than taste disagreements and that this difference has to do, at least partly but significantly, with the different value that truth exhibits in these two areas of discourse. I then turn to the second objective of the paper—namely, to discuss how pluralistic accounts of the nature of truth may deal with the value of truth in light of AVC. I will argue that AVC is a problem for all versions of truth pluralism that are committed to the following two theses: (1) that truth is a value concept; and (2) that this characteristic of the concept has to be reflected in the metaphysical nature of any admissible truth properties—i.e., all the various properties that are admissible (qua truth properties) in the pluralist account are value-conferring properties and thus intrinsically valuable. In so doing, I will focus primarily on Michael Lynch’s functionalist incarnation of truth pluralism. Lynch terms this “Manifestation Alethic Pluralism” (MAP). My reason for this is twofold: first and foremost, MAP is a paradigmatic exemplification of a model of truth pluralism that is committed to both (1) and (2); second, MAP has, to date, enjoyed the most discussion, and currently provides the most developed account of truth pluralism. However, I argue that MAP lacks the resources to account for AVC. Owing to this, I suggest two ways out for an advocate of MAP, which force various structural changes in her view.

Disputatio

Anti-exceptionalism about logic: an overview

Synthese, Feb 10, 2023

Perspectives on Post-Truth

Social Epistemology

Post-Enquiry and Disagreement. A Socio-Epistemological Model of the Normative Significance of Disagreement Between Scientists and Denialists

Social Epistemology

Verità e Post-Verità: dall'Indagine alla Post-Indagine

Talking with Vultures

Mind, 2016

At the time of its first publication, relativism was proclaimed by the publisher's advertisement ... more At the time of its first publication, relativism was proclaimed by the publisher's advertisement for Herman Cappelen and John Hawthorne's book to be "currently the hottest topic in philosophy". Maybe that was commercial license but there is no denying that the debates provoked by the reinvention of relativism as a thesis not of speculative metaphysics but of descriptive semantic theory 1 have been intense and have attracted much attention. Relativism, as understood in these debates, is the claim that, for at least certain distinguished regions of discourse-in the recent literature, the relativistic case has been argued for discourses concerning each of epistemic mights and coulds, knowledge, taste, indicative conditionals, probability statements, and future contingents 2-we obtain the best theoretical characterisation of our actual linguistic practice by allowing that the truth value of an assertion is not determined purely by the state of the world in relevant respects 3 but depends upon and may vary with additional parameters whose values may be different across different thinkers. 4 Cappelen and Hawthorne's short book 5 belongs to the first wave of reaction against this tendency, and at the time of writing remains the only book-length critique of it. Its heart is a systematic defence of a cluster of traditional ideas that together amount to the thesis that its authors caption as Simplicity, incorporating the following five ingredient claims (p. 1):

Disagreement and the normativity of truth beneath cognitive command

What does it take for a statement to be true? Intuitively, many would simply say that a statement... more What does it take for a statement to be true? Intuitively, many would simply say that a statement is true if and only if things stand as it says they are. This idea is perhaps our most basic intuition about truth. 2 According to Michael Lynch this is one of the truisms about truth that underlies our ordinary conception of truth. 3 Various formulations of this intuitive thought are found in the writings of many philosophers since, at least, ancient Greece. For instance, both Plato and Aristotle 4 informally characterized truth along these lines. In their words: "Socrates: Then that speech which says things as they are is true, and that which says them as they are not is false?" 5 "To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true." 6 As it is clear from these passages, there are two keys ingredients in the ordinary conception of truth. On the one hand, there is the question of what the statement says. On the other hand that of whether what the statement says is in agreement with, or corresponds to, the way things are-or, more simply, to reality. These two elements seem

Disagreement and suspended judgement

Metaphilosophy

Brigitte, Diana, and Sarah are three detectives independently working on a crime case. They are i... more Brigitte, Diana, and Sarah are three detectives independently working on a crime case. They are investigating whether Mike is the murderer. After some careful inquiry, our three detectives come to different verdicts: Brigitte, the believer, accepts that Mike is the murderer, and thus comes to believe that Mike is the murderer; Diana, the disbeliever, rejects that Mike is the murderer, and thus comes to disbelieve that Mike is the murderer; Sarah, the suspender, refrains both from accepting that Mike is the murder and from rejecting that Mike is the

Relativism, faultlessness and parity: why we should be pluralists about truth's normative function

Some philosophers, like Mark Richard and Paul Boghossian, have argued against relativism that it ... more Some philosophers, like Mark Richard and Paul Boghossian, have argued against relativism that it cannot account for the possibility of faultless disagreement. However, I will contend that the objections they moved against relativism do not target its ability to account for the possibility of faultless disagreement per se. Rather, they should be taken to challenge its capacity to account for another element of our folk conception of disagreement in certain areas of discourse—what Crispin Wright has dubbed parity. What parity demands is to account for the possibility of coherently appreciating, within a committed perspective, that our opponent's contrary judgement is somehow on a par with our own judgement. Understood in this way, Boghossian's and Richard's objections put indeed considerable pressure on relativism—or so I will argue. I will consider John MacFarlane's attempt to resist their objections and I will show that, once their arguments are properly understood a...

Assessment relativism

The Varieties of Agnosticism

The Philosophical Quarterly

We provide a framework for understanding agnosticism. The framework accounts for the varieties of... more We provide a framework for understanding agnosticism. The framework accounts for the varieties of agnosticism while vindicating the unity of the phenomenon. This combination of unity and plurality is achieved by taking the varieties of agnosticism to be represented by several agnostic stances, all of which share a common core provided by what we call the minimal agnostic attitude. We illustrate the fruitfulness of the framework by showing how it can be applied to several philosophical debates. In particular, several philosophical positions can be aptly conceived of as instances of agnosticism whilst retaining their differences and distinguishing features.

Epistemic Peer Disagreement

The Routledge Handbook of Social Epistemology, 2019

Austere Truth Pluralism

The Nature of Truth, 2021

Normative Alethic Pluralism

Pluralisms in Truth and Logic

Some philosophers have argued that truth is a norm of judgement. 1 This thesis has been given in ... more Some philosophers have argued that truth is a norm of judgement. 1 This thesis has been given in a variety of formulations-that true judgements are the correct ones; that it is better to judge truly than to judge falsely; and that the truth is what judges ought to pursue in enquiry. I will assume that truth somehow functions as a norm of judgement, and I will be focusing on two core questions concerning the judgement-truth norm-namely: (i) what are the normative relationships between truth and judgement? (ii) do these relationships vary or are they constant? I argue for a pluralist picture-what I call normative alethic pluralism 2 (henceforth NAP)according to which (i) there is more than one correct judgement-truth norm and (ii) the normative relationships between truth and judgement vary in relation to the subject matter of the judgement. By means of a comparative analysis of disagreement in three core areas of the evaluative domain-refined aesthetics, basic taste and morality-I show that there is an important variability in the normative significance that disagreement has in these areas-I call this the variability conjecture. By presenting a variation of Lynch's scope problem for alethic monism, I argue that a monistic approach to truth's normative function is unable to vindicate

Deflating Truth About Taste

American Philosophical Quarterly

This is a penultimate draft of a paper which is forthcoming in The American Philosophical Quarter... more

Enquiry and Normative Deviance

The Epistemology of Fake News

It is argued that science denialism brings about an aberrant form of enquiry that deviates in sig... more It is argued that science denialism brings about an aberrant form of enquiry that deviates in significant ways from the epistemic norms governing scientific enquiry. Science denialism doesn’t involve just a rejection of a scientific theory; it also challenges the practice of continuously and impartially testing research methods, theories, and evidential sources with the aim of improving the accuracy of our theories. This chapter provides an in-depth analysis of the epistemic mechanisms at work. It develops a fine-grained framework to model a variety of normative deviances that may take place in enquiry. Through analysing two case studies, it is argued that fake news plays two pivotal roles in shaping epistemic norms operating within science denialism. First, it discredits a variety of (institutional) sources of evidence; second, it also plays a part in building the alternative explanation of the target phenomena.

Proof-theoretic pluralism

Synthese

Starting from a proof-theoretic perspective, where meaning is determined by the inference rules g... more Starting from a proof-theoretic perspective, where meaning is determined by the inference rules governing logical operators, in this paper we primarily aim at developing a proof-theoretic alternative to the model-theoretic meaning-invariant logical pluralism discussed in Beall and Restall (Logical pluralism, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006). We will also outline how this framework can be easily extended to include a form of meaning-variant logical pluralism. In this respect, the framework developed in this paper—which we label two-level proof-theoretic pluralism—is much broader in scope than the one discussed in Beall and Restall’s book.

Preface to Special Issue Logical Pluralism and Normativity

Inquiry

Logical pluralism, indeterminacy and the normativity of logic

Inquiry

Abstract According to the form of logical pluralism elaborated by Beall and Restall there is more... more Abstract According to the form of logical pluralism elaborated by Beall and Restall there is more than one relation of logical consequence. Since they take the relation of logical consequence to reside at the very heart of a logical system, different relations of logical consequence yield different logics. In this paper, we are especially interested in understanding what are the consequences of endorsing Beall and Restall’s version of logical pluralism vis-à-vis the normative guidance that logic is taken to provide to reasoners. In particular, the aim of this paper is threefold. First, in Sections 2 and 3, we offer an exegesis of Beall and Restall’s logical pluralism as a thesis of semantic indeterminacy of our concept of logical consequence – i.e. understood as indeterminacy logical pluralism. Second, in Sections 4 and 5, we elaborate and critically scrutinize three models of semantic indeterminacy that we think are fit to capture Beall and Restall’s indeterminacy logical pluralism. Third, in Section 6, following Beall and Restall’s assumption that the notion of logical consequence has normative significance for deductive reasoning, we raise a series of normative problems for indeterminacy logical pluralism. The overall conclusion that we aim to establish is that Beall and Restall’s indeterminate logical pluralism cannot offer an adequate account of the normative guidance that logic is taken to provide us with in ordinary contexts of reasoning.

Alethic pluralism and the value of truth

Synthese

I have two objectives in this paper. The first is to investigate whether, and to what extent, tru... more I have two objectives in this paper. The first is to investigate whether, and to what extent, truth is valuable. I do this by first isolating the value question from other normative questions. Second, I import into the debate about the nature of truth some key distinctions hailing from value theory. This will help us to clarify the sense in which (and to what extent) truth is valuable. I then argue that there is significant variability in the value of truth in different areas of discourse. I shall call this the axiological variability conjecture (AVC). I illustrate and substantiate AVC by contrasting the occurrence of disagreement in two paradigmatically evaluative areas of discourse, viz. matters of taste, on the one hand, and morality, on the other. I claim that there is a reasonable tendency to care much more about settling moral disagreements than taste disagreements and that this difference has to do, at least partly but significantly, with the different value that truth exhibits in these two areas of discourse. I then turn to the second objective of the paper—namely, to discuss how pluralistic accounts of the nature of truth may deal with the value of truth in light of AVC. I will argue that AVC is a problem for all versions of truth pluralism that are committed to the following two theses: (1) that truth is a value concept; and (2) that this characteristic of the concept has to be reflected in the metaphysical nature of any admissible truth properties—i.e., all the various properties that are admissible (qua truth properties) in the pluralist account are value-conferring properties and thus intrinsically valuable. In so doing, I will focus primarily on Michael Lynch’s functionalist incarnation of truth pluralism. Lynch terms this “Manifestation Alethic Pluralism” (MAP). My reason for this is twofold: first and foremost, MAP is a paradigmatic exemplification of a model of truth pluralism that is committed to both (1) and (2); second, MAP has, to date, enjoyed the most discussion, and currently provides the most developed account of truth pluralism. However, I argue that MAP lacks the resources to account for AVC. Owing to this, I suggest two ways out for an advocate of MAP, which force various structural changes in her view.

Disputatio

Normative (Alethic) Pluralism

The primary focus of this paper is an investigation into the alethic norms governing judgment. In... more The primary focus of this paper is an investigation into the alethic norms governing judgment. In particular, I am interested in the structural issue concerning the judgement-truth norms—i.e. in the question what are the normative relationships between truth and judgement in the various areas of enquiry. The traditional debate about the judgement-truth norm generally assumes a monistic conception (Normative Alethic Monism, NAM) where truth’s normative function is expressed by a single principle which is taken to apply uniformly to all judgements in the various domains of enquiry. I will argue that NAM falls prey to a variation of the scope problem originally put forward by Michael Lynch against alethic (substantivist) monism. The problem, in a nutshell, is that NAM is unable to account for an important variability in the normative significance of enquiry-related phenomena such as the occurrence of disagreement. By means of examples from different areas of discourse I will illustrate how the kind of normative reaction elicited by the presence of disagreement varies in relation to the subject matter at issue for then arguing that since NAM forces us to adopt a Procrustean normative attitude towards the occurrence of disagreement it fails to account for such a variability. In reply to this problem, I will outline a pluralistic conception of the normative role that truth plays over judgment (Normative Alethic Pluralism, NAP) which amounts to the following two theses: (plurality) there is more than one way in which truth regulates judgment; (variability) the normative function that truth plays over judgements varies in relation to the specific subject matter at issue. I will demonstrate NAP’s superiority over NAM by showing how exactly it helps in dealing with the normative version of the scope problem. Lately, in the final section of the paper I will scrutinise the explanatory relationships between NAP and pluralism about truth. I will argue that although the two pictures complement each other quite nicely, they are nonetheless independent in that one might be a pluralist about truth without being a pluralist about the normative role of truth, and vice versa, one might be a pluralist about the normative role of truth without being a pluralist about truth itself.

BOLOGNA PLURALISM WORKSHOP (2) — Pluralism and Normativity

After the very successful Pluralism Workshop (1), COGITO research centre (University of Bologna) ... more After the very successful Pluralism Workshop (1), COGITO research centre (University of Bologna) in collaboration with VERITAS research centre (Yonsei University) is pleased to announce a second major international workshop, as part of the national research project "PRIN 2010-2011 Realismo e Oggettività", from Thursday the 22nd to Saturday the 24th of October 2015. The workshop will be hosted by the Department of Philosophy and Communication, University of Bologna, with the generous support of Scuola Superiore di Studi Umanistici (http://www.sssub.unibo.it).

This second workshop aims to bring together two hot topics in the current philosophical debate - that of pluralism about truth and logic and that about the normative aspects of enquiry. Although the two debates have been conducted for the most part separately, few points of connection have started to emerge especially in the pluralism debate. This workshop will provide a unique occasion for philosophers working in these areas to further explore connections and foster collaborative work with the hope of originating new and fruitful directions of research.

Disagreement about Taste and Alethic Suberogation

I elaborate a novel strategy to account for two thoughts concerning disagreements about taste: ... more I elaborate a novel strategy to account for two thoughts concerning disagreements about taste: (i) that they need not involve any substantive fault (faultlessness); (ii) that the faultlessness of a contrary opinion can be coherently appreciated from within a committed perspective (parity). Under the assumption that judgments of taste are truth- apt and governed by the truth-norm, I argue that understanding exactly how truth is normative offers a strategy to account for both thoughts. I distinguish between different ways in which truth governs enquiry to substantiate the thesis that truth’s normative profile is not uniform but it varies as a function of the subject matter at issue. Specifically, I argue that truth in the taste domain is deontically silent. I develop the idea of alethic suberogation as a model for understanding the specific normative function of truth in the taste domain and I show how it accounts for parity and faultlessness.

Deflationism, Pluralism and the Normativity of Truth

Many have argued that one of the deepest problems for deflationism is its inability to account fo... more Many have argued that one of the deepest problems for deflationism is its inability to account for the normativity of truth. This is mainly because, truth being normative is in tension with the radical deflationary attitude towards the metaphysics of truth advocated by deflationists. Despite its sympathies with some of the methodological pillars of deflationism, alethic pluralism is generally taken to be immune to such a challenge. However, in a very recent paper, Pascal Engel has argued that pluralism is subject to a different, although related, problem. Under the assumption that we should be monist with respect to the normativity of truth, such problem can be put in the form of a dilemma: is the normative feature of truth part of the (minimal) concept, or is it part of the truth-property? If it is part of the concept then it cannot be a substantive feature, and this seems to push pluralism back to a deflationary position. If, on the other hand, we take it to occur at the level of the property, this would limit significantly the range of pluralism, in fact pushing it towards a form of monism.
In this talk I will take issue with Engel’s criticism. I will argue that within a certain framework for understanding the normativity of truth that distinguishes between four ways in which truth shapes enquiry, there is no reason for assuming that the normative profile of truth must be uniform across different domains. On the contrary, there are good reasons for maintaining that truth exhibits different normative profiles in different areas of discourse. If this is right, we have some independent motivation for rejecting the thesis that the full normativity of truth should be included among the platitudes (or truisms) that constitute the analytic theory of the concept of truth. I will then show how, once the assumption of the normative uniformity is dropped, a pluralist should respond to Engel’s challenge.

Deflationism, Pluralism and the Normativity of Truth

Many have argued that one of the deepest problems for deflationism is its inability to account fo... more Many have argued that one of the deepest problems for deflationism is its inability to account for the normativity of truth. This is mainly because, truth being normative is in tension with the radical deflationary attitude towards the metaphysics of truth advocated by deflationists. Despite its sympathies with some of the methodological pillars of deflationism, alethic pluralism is generally taken to be immune to such a challenge. However, in a very recent paper, Pascal Engel has argued that pluralism is subject to a different, although related, problem. Under the assumption that we should be monist with respect to the normativity of truth, such problem can be put in the form of a dilemma: is the normative feature of truth part of the (minimal) concept, or is it part of the truth-property? If it is part of the concept then it cannot be a substantive feature, and this seems to push pluralism back to a deflationary position. If, on the other hand, we take it to occur at the level of the property, this would limit significantly the range of pluralism, in fact pushing it towards a form of monism.
In this talk I will take issue with Engel’s criticism. I will argue that within a certain framework for understanding the normativity of truth that distinguishes between four ways in which truth shapes enquiry, there is no reason for assuming that the normative profile of truth must be uniform across different domains. On the contrary, there are good reasons for maintaining that truth exhibits different normative profiles in different areas of discourse. If this is right, we have some independent motivation for rejecting the thesis that the full normativity of truth should be included among the platitudes (or truisms) that constitute the analytic theory of the concept of truth. I will then show how, once the assumption of the normative uniformity is dropped, a pluralist should respond to Engel’s challenge.

warrant, Warrant and Superassertibility

Moderate Neo-Mooreanism

Moral and Aesthetic Disagreement: A Comparative Analysis

Disagreement and Value – Between Ethics and Aesthetics

Moderate Neo-Mooreanism

Radical Relativism, Retraction and “Being at Fault”

The Value of Deflationary Truth

Alethic Relativism, Propositions and Completeness

Disagreement and the Normativity of Truth beneath Cognitive Command

University of Aberdeen

Austere truth pluralism

by Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen, Filippo Ferrari, and Sebastiano Moruzzi

In J. Wyatt, J. Kim, M. P. Lynch, N. Kellen (eds.): The Nature of Truth, 2nd ed. MIT Press., 2020

Moderate pluralism is the dominant view in the truth pluralism debate. This paper aims to show th... more Moderate pluralism is the dominant view in the truth pluralism debate. This paper aims to show that austere pluralism—a form of strong truth pluralism—should be taken seriously as a contender in the pluralist landscape. We do three kinds of work to level the playing field. First, we argue that moderate pluralism conveniently takes advantage of the dual nature of their view, switching back and forth between their distinctively monist and distinctively pluralist commitments depending on the issue or task at hand (Sect. 2). Crucially—and perhaps somewhat ironically—the plurality of truth-grounding properties plays an ineliminable role in explaining the metaphysical unity of truth, a key feature of moderate pluralism—and a monist one at that (Sect. 3). Second, we introduce and articulate austere pluralism, a novel form of strong pluralism (Sect. 4) and show that it is entirely adequate for capturing the core idea of pluralism (Sect. 6.1) and can deal with the problem of mixed compounds and the problem of mixed inferences, two challenges usually regarded as stumble blocks for austere pluralism (Sect. 5). Third, we argue that austere pluralism fares better than moderate pluralism with respect to ontological parsimony, an important theoretical virtue (Sect. 6.2).

Agnosticism and Disagreement

Can the agnostic—i.e. someone who suspends judgement about a certain proposition <p>—be in a stat... more Can the agnostic—i.e. someone who suspends judgement about a certain proposition <p>—be in a state of disagreement with someone who (dis)believes <p>? One reason for answering negatively has to do with what Sven Rosenkranz has called the alignment problem (Rosenkranz 2007: 63). The thought is that the kind of opposition occurring between the agnostic and someone who believes (or disbelieves) <p> seems to happen on a different level than the opposition occurring between the believer and the disbeliever. Whereas the opposition between the believer and the disbeliever can be put in terms of the incompatibility between the propositions <p> and <not-p>, that between the agnostic and the believer (disbeliever) cannot be put in those terms. Hence there is a misalignment with respect to the subject matter of the disagreement. The project of this paper is to develop a theoretically fruitful account of the notions of suspended judgement and disagreement which explains how and why the agnostic is in a state of disagreement with both the believer and the disbeliever on the very same issue—i.e. the very same proposition or set of propositions—in a way that solve the alignment problem. Following some recent work by Friedman (2013), (2015), I will provide an account of suspended judgement as a sui generis cognitive mental attitude. The focus will be in particular on developing the normative profile associated with the attitude of suspended judgement in contrast with that of belief and disbelief. My proposal is to understand part of the normative profile of these cognitive mental attitudes in terms of the normative commitments that they engender in the context of enquiry. With this on board, I will then elaborate on a doxastic-non-cotenability view of disagreement (MacFarlane 2014) according to which disagreement is explained in terms of the incompatibility between the sets of normative commitments that the agents involved in a situation of disagreement are subject to in virtue of their possessing contrasting attitudes. In this way, the opposition between the believer, the disbeliever, and the agnostic can be put in terms of the conflict between the normative commitments engendered by these different cognitive attitudes. In this way, I will argue, we can fully account for the disagreement between the (dis)believer and the agnostic and thus solve the alignment problem. 1. Suspended Judgement and Disagreement: The Alignment Problem Brigitte, Diana and Amelie are three detectives independently working on a crime case. They enquire into whether Mike is the murderer. After some careful investigation, our three detectives come to different verdicts: Brigitte, the believer, judges that Mike is the murderer, and thus comes to believe that Mike is the murderer; Diana, the disbeliever, judges that Mike is not the murderer,

Normative (Alethic) Pluralism

The primary focus of this paper is an investigation into the alethic norms governing judgment. In... more The primary focus of this paper is an investigation into the alethic norms governing judgment. In particular, I am interested in the structural issue concerning the judgement-truth norms—i.e. in the question what are the normative relationships between truth and judgement in the various areas of enquiry. The traditional debate about the judgement-truth norm generally assumes a monistic conception (Normative Alethic Monism, NAM) where truth’s normative function is expressed by a single principle which is taken to apply uniformly to all judgements in the various domains of enquiry. I will argue that NAM falls prey to a variation of the scope problem originally put forward by Michael Lynch against alethic (substantivist) monism. The problem, in a nutshell, is that NAM is unable to account for an important variability in the normative significance of enquiry-related phenomena such as the occurrence of disagreement. By means of examples from different areas of discourse I will illustrate how the kind of normative reaction elicited by the presence of disagreement varies in relation to the subject matter at issue for then arguing that since NAM forces us to adopt a Procrustean normative attitude towards the occurrence of disagreement it fails to account for such a variability. In reply to this problem, I will outline a pluralistic conception of the normative role that truth plays on judgment (Normative Alethic Pluralism, NAP) which amounts to the following two theses: (plurality) there is more than one way in which truth regulates judgment; (variability) the normative function that truth plays on judgements varies in relation to the specific subject matter at issue. I will demonstrate NAP’s superiority over NAM by showing how exactly it helps in dealing with the normative version of the scope problem.

Poster Normativity and Metaphysics Current Topics Bologna

POSTER Logics, Norms, and Reasoning GAP.10 Colloquium

According to orthodoxy, logic plays an essential role in guiding reasoning. Both Kant and Frege, ... more According to orthodoxy, logic plays an essential role in guiding reasoning. Both Kant and Frege, for instance, claimed not only that logic provides the general laws governing thought but also that a subject cannot be said to be reasoning in the first place if she violates those laws. This conviction has been subject to a variety of prominent criticisms—e.g., Lewis Carroll’s (1895) regress argument, Gilbert Harman’s (1984, 1986) arguments against the relevance of logic for reasoning, and a range of epistemic challenges like David Makinson’s (1965) paradox of the preface and Henry E. Kyburg’s (1961) lottery paradox.
Recent years have seen a renewed interest in the topic, especially among philosophers of logic and of epistemic normativity. The emerging discussions show that there is a need for more fine-grained distinctions concerning the source(s) of the normativity involved in reasoning and logic, the scope of logic when applied to reasoning, and the specific normative function(s) that logic is supposed to exert on reasoning. Further complexity is added by the increasing popularity of logical pluralism—the view that there is more than one correct logic. If pluralists are right, what should one make of seemingly competing normative constraints on reasoning given by different logics?

Foundations of Logic and Mathematics School Program

It is a familiar thought that truth-theoretic paradoxes (e.g., the Liar paradox, Curry's paradox)... more It is a familiar thought that truth-theoretic paradoxes (e.g., the Liar paradox, Curry's paradox) motivate sub-classical logic. On this view, the paradoxes teach us that classical logic goes too far in its account of what's valid; some argument forms that classical logic deems to be valid are in fact invalid; and the truth-theoretic paradoxes teach us as much. In the end, we enjoy an unrestricted truth predicate in and for our language in virtue of 'enjoying' sub-classical logic.

Poster "Disagreement within Philosophy"

Disagreement within Philosophy University of Bonn, October 10-12, 2018 https://sites.google.com/v... more Disagreement within Philosophy
University of Bonn, October 10-12, 2018
https://sites.google.com/view/disagreement-philosophy/home

The workshop will explore the impact that ubiquitous disagreement has within different areas of philosophical research. In particular, by bringing together philosophers from different areas—such as epistemology, metaethics, the philosophies of language and logic, we aim at exploring, among other things, the following issues:

What is, in general, the theoretical role that disagreement plays in these areas?
Should we derive general skeptical conclusions from ubiquitous disagreement in philosophy or are more permissive responses viable?
What are plausible explanations of widespread disagreement in many areas of philosophy?
Can disagreement be used as a sort of litmus paper to explore normative questions in these areas? (E.g. can the degree of robustness and resilience of disagreement in an area be a guide to what kind of norms govern judgements in that area?)
In the light of recent discussion on the very notion of disagreement, what can the occurrence of disagreement in a given area teach us about the nature of the subject matter?

This will be the third and last international workshop of the DFG-funded project “Disagreement in Philosophy: Semantic and Epistemic Foundations” hosted by the Universities of Bonn and Cologne (http://dissens.uni-koeln.de/)

International Workshop: Disagreement—Current Topics

Master Class—“Disagreement: Current Topics” with Elke Brendel & Filippo Ferrari (University of Bonn)

by Filippo Ferrari and Elke Brendel

As part of the ongoing collaboration between the philosophy departments at the Universities of Bo... more As part of the ongoing collaboration between the philosophy departments at the Universities of Bologna and Bonn, and under the auspices of the Erasmus + programme, we are pleased to announce a three-days Master Class on “Disagreement: Current Topics” with Elke Brendel and Filippo Ferrari (University of Bonn).

The Master Class will run from September the 19th to September the 20th, 2017 and will be hosted by the Department of Philosophy & Communication, University of Bologna.

The Master Class will be dedicated to a critical discussion of a selection of cutting-edge research papers—that students are invited to read beforehand—led by the two instructors. The course will be structured around four main topics, according to the following schedule (for detailed information and syllabus, visit https://sites.google.com/site/disagreementbologna/home):

Tuesday September 19th
09.00-09.30 Registration and Welcome
09.30-11.00 First Session on the topic "Varieties of Disagreement"
11.00-11.30 Coffee Break
11.30-13.00 Second Session on the topic "Varieties of Disagreement"
13.00-14.30 Lunch Break
14.30-16.30 First Session on the topic "Disagreement & Semantic Theories"
16.30-17.00 Coffee Break
17.00-19.00 Second Session on the topic "Disagreement & Semantic Theories"

Wednesday September 20th
09.30-11.00 First Session on the topic "Verbal vs non-Verbal Disputes"
11.00-11.30 Coffee Break
11.30-13.00 Second Session on the topic "Verbal vs non-Verbal Disputes"
13.00-14.30 Lunch Break
14.30-16.30 First Session on the topic "Normative Significance of Disagreement"
16.30-17.00 Coffee Break
17.00-19.00 Second Session on the topic "Normative Significance of Disagreement"

Registration: attendance is free but please register by no later than by Monday September 4th at: [email protected]

Organization: Elke Brendel, Filippo Ferrari and Sebastiano Moruzzi

Contact: [email protected]

Webpage: https://sites.google.com/site/disagreementbologna/home

Venue: Department of Philosophy and Communication, University of Bologna, Sala Rossa, Via Azzo Gardino 23, 40122 Bologna

Chair of Logic Workshop (with Anne Meylan)—Poster.pdf

Stefan Heidl (Bonn) "The Pragmatic Justification of Rationality" Accounts of the justification of... more Stefan Heidl (Bonn) "The Pragmatic Justification of Rationality" Accounts of the justification of rationality which appeal to pragmatic considerations such as the money pump or Dutch book argument offer a possible answer to the question "Why be rational?". But Broome (2013, p. 198) thinks that such pragmatic considerations cannot be used to explain why rationality is normative. In this talk, I want to analyze Broome's arguments against derivations of the normativity of rationality involving pragmatic considerations and suggest which form a pragmatic account of the justification of rationality would have to take to deal with these objections.

Poster Chair of Logic Workshop (with Marcus Rossberg).pdf

Bologna Pluralism Workshop 2

Pluralisms. Methodology, Motivations, and Interconnections

by Filippo Ferrari, Erik Stei, and Dorothee Schmitt

Disagreement: Conceptual and Semantic Foundations

Bologna Pluralism Workshop 3

by Filippo Ferrari, Elena Tassoni, Erik Stei, and Jeremy Wyatt

This workshop is part of a series of events organised by a research network constituted by the u... more

Syllabus for Introduction to Metaphysics and Epistemology

Course description: This course is an introduction to some of the central problems in philosophy.... more Course description: This course is an introduction to some of the central problems in philosophy. We will begin by introducing concepts and techniques required for successful philosophical argumentation. We will then focus on four topics in philosophy: skepticism & perception, the mind/body problem, personal identity and free will. The emphasis will be on extracting, constructing and critically evaluating philosophical arguments.

Course Leaflet Moral Relativism

Moral relativism has come to play an increasingly important role in contemporary culture, and it ... more Moral relativism has come to play an increasingly important role in contemporary culture, and it is frequently the object of heated discussions in the mass media. Two opposite attitudes seem to be predominant in the public debate. On the one hand, many think that because societies are becoming more and more multicultural and interconnected, moral relativism is the only sensible option. On the other hand, many others forcefully oppose anything resembling a relativistic attitude towards morality. These people fear the fact that endorsing such an attitude would undercut the right to condemn, and prevent from flourishing, certain extreme views that represent a serious threat to the safety of our societies. However, both positions are unjustified, and based on some misunderstanding of what moral relativism amounts to. Getting clear about what a viable form of moral relativism might be is thus an extremely valuable task that will be carried out in this course. In so doing, we will cover some core topics in metaethics by engaging in debates about a specific view: moral relativism. We will address both big picture questions – such as: What is the place of relativism in the meta-ethical debate? – and more specific questions – such as: what are the differences and relations between the various moral relativisms defended in the literature?; Why endorse relativism?. Most part of the course will be devoted to the study of some ‘classics’ of moral relativism, such as Gilbert Harman, Bernard Williams, Carol Rovane, Isaiah Berlin, Philippa Foot and David Wong.

VARIETIES OF PLURALISM

At the core of any investigation about some fundamental philosophical notion N—e.g. truth, existe... more At the core of any investigation about some fundamental philosophical notion N—e.g. truth, existence, validity, justification—is the project of providing an analysis of the nature of N. Traditionally, analysis has been conceived as the attempt to provide a definition of the target notion N in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. This way of understanding philosophical analysis presupposes a monistic conception of N according to which N is one and has a uniform nature. To illustrate: monists about truth claim that truth is one and has a uniform nature across all areas of discourse—e.g. mathematics, aesthetics, scientific discourse, moral discourse, etc. A similar thesis applies to the analysis of other fundamental philosophical notions such as logical validity, existence and justification. At the core of the pluralist project is the denial of this monistic assumption. In its most general form, pluralism about a given philosophical notion N usually amounts to the thesis that there is a plurality of ways of being N. For instance, pluralists about truth claim that there is a plurality of ways of being true; logical pluralists claim that there is a plurality of ways of being valid; ontological pluralists claim that there is a plurality of ways of existing; epistemic pluralists claim that there is a plurality of ways of being justified. In the past decade or so, pluralism has been at the centre of many discussions in ontology, epistemology and the philosophies of logic and language. This course is intended as a detailed investigation into the main forms of pluralism currently discussed in the literature. In particular, the main objectives of the course are: (i) to introduce and critically assess the main varieties of pluralist accounts currently defended in the literature—i.e. alethic, logical, ontological and epistemic pluralism; (ii) to get clear about what a pluralist account of a philosophical notion N exactly amounts to; (iii) to explore possible interconnections between these pluralisms; (iv) and, last, to get a better sense of the kind of philosophical methodology underpinning pluralist accounts.

Disagreement in Philosophy – What it Means and Why It Matters

In the past few years, the topic of disagreement has received a great deal of attention. In parti... more In the past few years, the topic of disagreement has received a great deal of attention. In particular, four clusters of issues have been at the core of recent discussions in the philosophy of language and epistemology. First, and foremost, there is the conceptual issue of how to understand the very notion of disagreement and of whether some kind of pluralistic account is needed in order to capture the variety of phenomena that intuitively are thought to be instances of disagreement. Second, there is the question of how to distinguish in a principled way between disputes based on the occurrence of some genuine disagreement and disputes which turn out to be merely verbal. Third, there is the issue of which semantics for natural languages best capture disagreement phenomena. Last, there is a trend of research within epistemology that has focused on the normative significance of disagreement, in particular on the questions whether some form of faultless disagreement is possible and how to rationally respond to a situation of disagreement. Research on these four clusters has progressed quite significantly, in fact reaching a point of high sophistication and technicality. This course aims at providing a systematic map of the current cutting-edge literature on disagreement in order to allow students to achieve a full grasp of the complexity of this much-debated topic.

Truth and Pluralism Syllabus

Course Description: We will investigate and critically assess some of the main pluralist proposal... more Course Description: We will investigate and critically assess some of the main pluralist proposals on the nature of truth—i.e., proposals that maintain, roughly, that there is more than one kind of truth. We will be especially concerned with what are the motivations and limits of these proposals. Since this is a master course, some familiarity with basic notions in the philosophies of language and logic is expected. The course will be taught in English.

Truth and Norms: Normative Alethic Pluralism and Evaluative Disagreement

Lexington Books, 2021

Truth and Norms: Normative Alethic Pluralism and Evaluative Disagreements engages three philosop... more Truth and Norms: Normative Alethic Pluralism and Evaluative Disagreements engages three philosophical topics and the relationships among them. Filippo Ferrari first contributes to the debate on the nature and normative significance of disagreement, especially in relation to evaluative judgements such as judgements about basic taste, refined aesthetics, and moral matters. Second, he addresses the issue of epistemic normativity, focusing in particular on the normative function(s) that truth exerts on judgements. Third, he contributes to the debate on truth—more specifically, which account of the nature of truth best accommodates the norms relating judgements and truth. This book develops and defends a novel pluralistic picture of the normativity of truth: normative alethic pluralism (NAP). At the core of NAP is the idea that truth exerts different normative functions in relation to different areas of inquiry. Ferrari argues that this picture of the normativity of truth offers the best explanation of the variable normative significance that disagreement exhibits in relation to different subject matters—from a rather shallow normative impact in the case of disagreement about taste, to a normatively more substantive significance in relation to moral judgements. Last, Ferrari defends the view that NAP does not require a commitment to truth pluralism, since it is fully compatible with a somewhat refined version of minimalism about truth.