XIII - Dialectical softening
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
Where people differ radically over what they take to be axiomatic, it is likely that they also arrived at these beliefs through strikingly different tacit exemplars. The example of disagreement concerning the treatment of rape victims in Pakistan presented in §37 illustrated how both of these aspects of deep disagreement arise together. Their coincidence might be thought to exacerbate the difficulties of a rational bridge across deep disagreement. To the contrary, I will argue in this chapter: The dependence of hardened propositions upon tacit exemplars actually provides a way to soften the former. In other words, the importance of tacit learning undercuts the supposed rigidity of hardened propositions. In thus playing one barrier off against the other, I will leave tacit exemplars as the last remaining one to be reckoned with. Their importance will be assessed in the final chapter. While my imperative, defensive purpose for discussing interpersonal deliberation requires only that I deal with the case of the single person of mixed upbringing, it is simpler for purposes of exposition to stick with an interpersonal example. Although a single person of mixed upbringing can have absorbed radically divergent hardened propositions and cognitive ends from concrete experiences offering contrasting tacit exemplars, it is difficult to keep the tacit aspect of his or her internal division in view. In the case of different people from different cultures, by contrast, it is quite obvious.
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- Practical Reasoning about Final Ends , pp. 271 - 291Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994