A non-ideal approach to disagreement

Fellow-Vortrag: Blas Radi

The epistemology of disagreement has mainly focused on disagreements between epistemic peers, in hyper-idealized contexts, where the disagreements is always considered positive, even when it cannot be resolved. Its subject is as irrelevant as the identities of the people involved.

However, these methodological boundaries are not appropriate for addressing real-world disagreements, which usually involve asymmetrically situated groups in contexts of (epistemic) injustice. This presentation will focus on such forms of deep disagreements, particularly those that confront activists from marginalized groups on the one hand, and institutional agents in positions of power on the other. These disagreements often "end badly": activists simply walk away from the dialogue, or do not show up at all, or even boycott it. This kind of behavior often triggers public repudiation, which finds it incompatible with the democratic promotion of social transformations. Critics suggest that either the activists are not really pursuing such objectives or that they behave in an unreasonable manner that goes against their own interests. For its part, the epistemology of disagreement, for other reasons, shares the judgment. Against them, this presentation will argue that such behavior is reasonable and rational.

Blas Radi is a PhD candidate in Philosophy with a full scholarship granted by the National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina. He is currently working on Non-Ideal Theory, Social Epistemology and Trans Studies. He is Faculty at the Department of Philosophy, University of Buenos Aires, where he teaches Social Epistemology. He works on pressing issues such as: epistemic extortion, reproductive injustice and eugenics, and the concept of travesticide/transfemicide. In 2018, he created the Independent Chair of Trans Studies at the School of Philosophy and Literature (UBA).

Zoom-Link: https://zoom.us/j/93268466346