The aim of this conference is to advance our understanding of the epistemology of religious disagreement (RD), to explore the goals and prospects of argumentative debate in responding to RD, and to shed light on the intersections between current philosophical debates in the epistemology of RD and contemporary theories of
recognition and toleration. Whereas the question of how pluralist societies can accommodate RD has been the topic of extensive research (e.g. in ethics, social theory, and political philosophy), the challenging question of how much room RD leaves for argumentative debate in its own right and terms has attracted much less attention. The conference will take a step towards remedying this situation. Moreover, it will pave the way for establishing a dialogue between current research in the epistemology of RD and contemporary work in theories of recognition and toleration.In a preliminary way, RD can be thought of as occurring in three different settings:
In a preliminary way, RD can be thought of as occurring in three different settings: between believers of the same faith (intra-faith disagreement), between believers of distinct faiths (cross-faith disagreement), and between believers and non-believers (atheists, agnostics or persons who simply do not care about religion). The role, the goals, and the reach of argumentative debate can be expected to differ across these settings and in relation to the religious faiths that are respectively involved in a given RD. Often, convergence of judgment or even consensus are identified as the intrinsic goals of argumentative debate. Can this convergence or consensus-based conception of the goals of public argumentation be usefully applied to the case of arguing religion? If not so, are there promising alternative conceptions? What roles do attitudes of recognition and/or toleration play in responding to RD? Ought the experience of persistent RD in pluralist societies to lead to a “fragilization of religious belief” (Charles Taylor)? The conference will approach these and the following questions from the perspectives of different philosophical sub-“disciplines” (epistemology, argumentation
theory, theories of recognition and theories of toleration):
o What is a religious disagreement, and what kinds of religious disagreement are there?
o To what extent can and should religious disagreements be thought of as epistemic, i.e., as disagreements in which at least one of the disagreeing parties commits an epistemic mistake (holds a false belief)?
o What are the theoretical alternatives to this cognitivist construal of religious disagreement and how do they respectively reflect on the role that argumentation and reasoning can and should play in responding to religious disagreements?
o Can (some) religious disagreements be fruitfully thought of as faultless, i.e., as cases in which, for some propositional content p, A believes that p (or something that entails p), B believes that not-p (or something that entails not-p), and neither A nor B are at fault?
o What is the epistemic significance of “peer disagreement” in the case of religious argumentation?
o How is the goal of arguing religion best to be understood? Is it to rationally convince the other, or rather to persuade or to convert her? Or something else altogether?
Programme http://arguingreligion.fbk.eu/program
