Cogency v2 n2

Wittgenstein and the Logic of Deep Disagreement / D. M. GODDEN & W. H. BRENNER
5.3. A Wittgenstenian Pessimism?
Given that deep disagreements are disagreements across language games,
our position is that the optimism of Fogelin’s respondents is largely misplaced
– at least, on a Wittgenstenian view of the issue – because each variously
mischaracterizes the nature of deep disagreement or the nature of
reason, thereby misrepresenting reason’s role and potential in resolving such
disputes.
To begin, consider Memedi’s proposal to normalize deep disagreements
by introducing a “third party” rational arbiter. 4 Recall though, that by definition
deep disagreements are ones whose irresolvability is not due to the
ignorance or intransigence of their disputants. As such, adding an impartial
interlocutor cannot provide resolution-resources not already available to
the initial disputants. At best, the third-party might be conversant in the
different language-games involved in the deep disagreement, thereby possibly
adding a degree of understanding not initially present. Yet since the
irresolvability of disagreements is due to the language-games in which they
occur and not the language-users engaged in them, this added understanding
could only help to clarify the nature of the disagreement, rather than
indicate or prescribe its resolution.
Similarly, there is a problem with Feldman’s construal of deep disagreements
as differences of opinion about framework propositions which treats
a difference in measure (concept determination) as though it were a disagreement
in measurement (concept application) when in fact their logical,
and therefore rational, character is of a different order. On Feldman’s view,
in “turning our spade” we loose some single stone – the framework proposition
at issue – from the “sedimentary layer of the unchallenged” and displace
it into the shifting sands or even “the river of thought” itself, realizing
that it is not “intrinsically” fixed (cf. OC §§ 96, 97, 99). (For Wittgenstein no
proposition is beyond assessment intrinsically, but only insofar as it is functioning
foundationally.) While surely this ‘loosing of some single stone of
the logical grammar’ occurs , and is part of the ordinary development of
4
For a further commentary on Memedi’s proposal see Campolo (2007).
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