The epistemology and politics of conceptual disagreement

ongoing

Conceptual disagreements are ubiquitous in social and political debates: What kind of act counts as terrorism? When is someone a refugee or an economic migrant? Are trans women women? Managing such disagreements is both urgent and practically impactful. Yet, they pose important epistemological and practical challenges. Unlike factual disagreements, we cannot simply appeal to empirical evidence to settle these questions. Instead, conceptual disagreements often involve networks of commitments, beliefs, and principles regarding the role of conceptualizations, what purposes they should serve, and who has the authority to decide what they should be. This makes it particularly difficult to exchange reasons when much of the common ground is lacking, which is often the case for politically charged concepts. The overall aim of the ConTension project is to provide a unified, practically-oriented and empirically-grounded framework that helps us understand and manage real-life conceptual disagreements. It pursues three key objectives: (1) Identifying the object and nature of conceptual disagreement, by building a model of commitment networks (beliefs, default inferences, evaluation principles, interests) inspired by inferentialism; (2) Determining the structure and hierarchy of norms in conceptual evaluation, by transposing the model of commitment networks into a network of reasons; (3) Assessing the legitimate and illegitimate role played by competing group interests in disagreement over politically charged concepts, and providing solutions for managing them when consensus is unattainable. ConTension is both a response to the recent surge of interest in questions of conceptual choice and conceptual revision within philosophy, and an innovative take on the conceptual nature of some of today’s most urgent debates and societal challenges. The outcomes of the project are intended to be relevant to philosophers, scientists, policymakers, and citizens alike.