Intuitions, Philosophical Disagreement and Fake News

Abstract

The last ten years have seen an increase in
the discussion regarding what methodology
is developed in the philosophical field, and
what are the implications of developing such
diverse theoretical positions that allow philosophical
disagreement to be maintained as a
constant: agreeing to disagree comes dangerously
close to making the search for reasons
for certain theoretical positions trivial. This
is the context of the recent contributions collected
in D’Oro & Overgaard (Eds.) (2017),
from which we try not necessarily to initiate
a dialogue between different philosophical
paradigms, but rather to make explicit their
differences and similarities. The present paper
aims to analyze the theoretical inputs on
the methodological role of intuitions in the
philosophical field, specifically on the topic
of epistemic disagreement. An optimistic
perspective of this disagreement is proposed,
following Cappelen (2017) and Ichikawa
(2016). In particular, an attempt is made to
try to answer the question of whether the
persistence of disagreement constitutes a reason
to rule out that there is philosophical
progress. Similarly, the scope of fake news as
an epistemic input that prevents the attainment
of so-called evidential neutrality is assessed.