Agreeing to disagree: Moral argumentation, social criticism, philosophical contemplation

One of the most distinctive and notorious characteristics of moral discourse is the pervasive and apparently interminable nature of the disagreement by which it seems to be riven. Many philosophers have argued that this disagreement can be traced to the lack of any underlying consensus on the considerations that might relevantly be brought to bear in a moral argument. According to this account, moral disagreement cannot be settled in light of any shared procedure, since what constitutes a valid moral “reason” is precisely what is in dispute. By attributing disagreement in conclusions to the incommensurability of the practices out of which the parties to a dispute argue, such a view threatens to undermine the possibility of rational criticism. My dissertation questions the generality of this account by arguing that what distinguishes moral from epistemic discourse is not the absence of a procedure that can be shared by both parties to a dispute, but the presence of a shared procedure that allows for disagreement at the level of conclusions. If what makes a scientific conclusion rational is its having been arrived at by means of an established argumentative procedure, then moral conclusions may be rational for precisely the same reason. By emphasizing the agreements in practice that can underlie disagreements in conclusions—agreements that allow us to disagree—the account I offer preserves the possibility of rational criticism while nevertheless allowing for the possibility that disagreement may persist. In light of this account I offer philosophical critiques of both Habermasian discourse ethics and Derridean deconstruction and argue instead for both a conception of our moral practices that is broad enough to accommodate multiple points of view on controversial issues and a conception of moral philosophy according to which the philosopher's job is neither to underwrite nor to undermine these practices, but to seek to understand them. If, as I argue, a capacity for dissent and criticism is, as it were, built right into the structure of moral discourse, then a contemplative philosophical approach to this discourse need not entail moral conservatism or quietism.