Folk and Theoretical Concepts of Deep Disagreements

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Abstract In recent years, the topic of deep disagreement has gained considerable interest. A central question in the debate is metaphysical and concerns the very nature of deep disagreement. The so-called metaphysical program aims to provide ways of arbitrating between the different conceptions of the nature of deep disagreements provided by scholarship. Two possible ways of implementing the metaphysical program are examined. The first approach interprets theoretical concepts as descriptions of the lay concept of deep disagreement and employs the method of cases to arbitrate between them. The second approach regards theoretical concepts as revisions of the lay concept of deep disagreement, relying on the criteria provided by revisionary analysis for their assessment. Both alternatives are rejected as inadequate. Theoretical models of deep disagreement are better conceived as explanatory analyses of the lay concept. A consequence of this is that the different accounts of the nature of the phenomenon are not mutually exclusive, as practitioners of the metaphysical program often assume. A second implication is that the concept of deep disagreement is not methodologically dispensable, as some recent critics of the metaphysical program have argued.