You are all very much invited to the next human-tech colloquium taking place on May 30, 15:45-17:15 in RA4237 by Dr. Julia Hermann on "Moral Certainty, Deep Disagreement, and Disruption"
Abstract:
Wittgenstein’s On Certainty has been a source of inspiration for philosophers concerned with the notion of deep disagreement (see Fogelin, 2005; Pritchard, 2021). While Wittgenstein’s examples of certainties do not include moral certainties, some philosophers have argued that an analogy can be drawn between certainty regarding the empirical world and moral certainty (Goodman, 1982; Hermann, 2015; Pleasants, 2008). Moral certainty manifests itself in our fundamental ways of feeling, thinking, and acting morally. Moral deep disagreement seems to be best understood as disagreement involving conflicting moral certainties. In this paper, I aim to shed light on the phenomenon of moral deep disagreement by relating it not only to the notion of moral certainty but also to the concept of deep disruption as it is currently developed and discussed in the philosophy of technology. I argue that the phenomena of certainty, deep disagreement and deep disruption are all located at the level of “bedrock practices” (Williams, 1999, p. 198), and that the fundamentality of their objects should be understood in terms of relationality and interconnectedness. My analysis of the relationship of the three concepts shows that deep disagreements can occur through deep technology-induced disruption, and that overcoming those deep disagreements requires re-establishing common ground among the disagreeing parties. That common ground includes shared concepts and agreement on how to apply them. Deep disagreements are rationally irresolvable given the current conceptual repertoire of the disagreeing parties. Deep disruption and moral deep disagreement can lead to moral progress, for instance in the form of recognising and overcoming an epistemic injustice.
Bio:
Julia Hermann is an Assistant Professor in philosophy at the University of Twente. She is a research fellow of ESDiT (Ethics of Socially Disruptive Technologies), working primarily on ectogestative technology, care robots, technomoral change and progress, new methodologies in the ethics of technology, transdisciplinary approaches, and the philosophy of the later Wittgenstein.
