Tackling the 21st-Century Proliferation of Disagreement

Picture this: You believe capital punishment deters crime, but when you make your argument to a smart and well-informed friend whose opinion you respect, she disagrees. In fact, she presents an equally strong argument to the contrary. 

Where might the conversation go from here, if anywhere? 

Bryan Frances tackles this type of conundrum in Disagreement (Polity, 2014), which he describes as an introductory book on a subject that’s drawing heightened interest from philosophers in the Internet age. When everyone has access to the wealth of arguments and counterarguments that can easily be found online, deciding whether, and how, to disagree can be daunting. 

“It is one thing if you can say ‘they don’t have this key piece of evidence I have,’ but that doesn’t happen too often anymore,” said Frances, professor of philosophy. “No matter what you think, yo

u can go onto the Internet and find a whole lot of really smart people who disagree with you and have some evidence that goes against yours.

“So how do you conduct your intellectual life? It’s more pressing now than ever.”

Among philosophy scholars there hasn’t been much written on disagreement, says Frances, who was approached by the publisher to write the introductory book. The interest in the topic has its roots in philosophers’ increased focus on religious disagreement—most notably in English-speaking countries where mass communication has made global religions, such as Islam, more visible to westerners.

And while the book offers no hard-and-fast advice, it does come to a conclusion on how to approach highly controversial issues such as capital punishment or the morality of abortion. 

“In many of these instances, we probably would do well to suspend judgment and dig deeper,” said Frances, “even on those issues near and dear to our heart.” 

Frances did not come gently into his philosophical scholarship. Before turning to the humanities, he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics with emphasis on quantum theory and relativity theory. 

“Eventually I realized that the questions I wanted to ask about those topics were more philosophical than scientific,” he said.

Even though disagreement has been around since the beginning of time, Frances said, philosophers have only recently written about it in a “rigorous and thorough way.”  In fact, the void of scholarship made writing Disagreement difficult.

“I’d write an article about this topic and, because there was so little to go on, I’d end up disagreeing with my former self a few years later.”

--Janet Sassi

“Science, Philosophy, and Religion” Lecture to Explore “What is Wisdom?”

What makes a person wise? Is wisdom different than intelligence? Is God the only one that can be called “wise”?

Stephen Grimm, Ph.D., as associate professor of philosophy, will take up the topic of wisdom for the next installment of Fordham University’s John C. and Jeanette D. Walton Lecture in Science, Philosophy, and Religion.

“What is Wisdom?”

Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2014

6:30 p.m.

12th-floor Lounge / Corrigan Conference Center

Lincoln Center Campus

113 W. 60th St., New York City

Grimm, a philosopher who specializes in epistemology, is the recipient of a $4.2 million John Templeton Foundation grant — the largest award Fordham has ever received in the humanities. The grant funds Grimm’s interdisciplinary project, “Varieties of Understanding: New Perspectives from Psychology, Philosophy, and Theology,” a three-year initiative that sponsors research into the many ways in which human beings understand the world.

“As human beings, we have a natural desire to understand the world and our place within it… But what exactly is understanding?” said Grimm.

We know generally what understanding is, he said; namely, it is a higher-order cognitive capacity that falls within the broader category of knowledge. To put this in practical terms, the person who has knowledge of a thing might possess a collection of facts about that thing, but the person who understands it is able to also see how these facts relate to one another and to the larger picture.

Wisdom, though, is another category altogether. In the Walton lecture, Grimm will explore questions surrounding this topic, which was favored by ancient and medieval philosophers, yet has been given relatively little attention by contemporary thinkers.

The Walton lectures and workshops features scholars of the highest caliber on topics at the intersection of science, philosophy, and theology. Upcoming events will cover current research on how consciousness and free will relate to the brain, the role of science in contemporary society, and more.

For more information, contact the Office of Special Events by email or at (212) 636-6575.

— Joanna K. Mercuri

Faculty Reads: Charting Hegel’s Philosophy

German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) is one of the discipline’s most influential thinkers. Unfortunately, his comprehensive, systematic philosophy is so complex that some contemporary philosophers never fully grasp it.

Thankfully, Fordham professor Michael Baur, Ph.D. has helped to make Hegel’s worldview more accessible. G.W.F. Hegel: Key Concepts (Routledge, 2014), which Baur edited, provides an introduction to both Hegel’s thought and the later philosophical movements that Hegel inspired.

“Hegel was a very comprehensive and systematic thinker, [so] in order to grasp the full meaning of any particular part within Hegel’s system, it is necessary to appreciate the context of the whole,” writes Baur, an associate professor of philosophy and adjunct professor at Fordham Law.

“[In addition,] Hegel developed his innovative and systematic philosophy in continuous dialogue with his own contemporaries. Thus, in order to understand Hegel, it is necessary also to understand the historical context within which, and in response to which, Hegel was developing his own philosophical views.”

The book is divided into two parts. First, it covers the main philosophical themes Hegel addresses, namely, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, ethical theory, political philosophy, philosophy of nature, philosophy of art, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of history.

The second section deals with post-Hegelian movements in philosophy, including Marxism, existentialism, pragmatism, analytic philosophy, hermeneutics, and French post-structuralism.

G.W.F. Hegel his the shelves this week. Click here to read the publisher's synopsis of the book.

— Joanna K. Mercuri

Faculty Reads: East and West Converge on Moral Grounds

Western moral philosophy is built on the works of thinkers such as ancient Greece’s Aristotle and modern Germany’s Immanuel Kant. But in recent decades, many scholars have turned eastward, looking also to Buddhist thought to enlighten important moral and ethical issues.

The scholarship that has followed is copious, but disjointed, said Fordham Professor of philosophy Christopher Gowans. His solution is Buddhist Moral Philosophy: An Introduction (Routledge, 2014).

“There has been a lot of work lately interpreting Buddhist thought in terms of Western moral philosophy, and there is no book that brings this together in a single volume,” said Gowans, who specializes in contemporary moral philosophy and Buddhist philosophy.

“Since there is little that can be considered moral philosophy in the [Buddhist] tradition, this is really a new field. I’m trying to introduce the reader to it.”

He explained that the Buddhist tradition does not approach the subject of moral philosophy like the West does. Although Buddhist thought centers on ethics (namely, how we should live our lives), its philosophical reflections are primarily metaphysical and epistemological—not explicit, how-to guides to morality.

Nevertheless, contemporary scholars find value in examining Buddhist works through a Western lens, drawing on the likes of Aristotle and Kant. But because this scholarship is still evolving, the upshots of uniting Buddhist and Western moral traditions remain unclear.

“An optimistic response might envision these two enterprises as partly overlapping circles… Despite significant differences, there is enough common ground to generate a reasonable expectation that something valuable will come from examining Buddhist thought through the perspectives of Western moral philosophy,” Gowans writes in the book’s introduction.

“A more pessimistic response may [say] any such examination is, in the end, basically a futile effort to fit square pegs into round holes… Readers are invited to determine which of these responses is most appropriate.”

Broken into three sections, the book:

• presents the teaching of the Buddha and developments in Buddhist traditions (mainly the early Mahayana schools);
• examines the main areas of Buddhist moral philosophy (such as well-being, the problem of free will, normative ethics, issues about moral objectivity, and moral psychology) and the concerns that many Western thinkers have concerning karma, rebirth, nirvana, and related topics; and
• introduces readers to a contemporary movement known as socially engaged Buddhism, which delves into ethical issues such as human rights, war and peace, and environmental ethics.

Buddhist Moral Philosophy comes out today.

— Joanna Klimaski Mercuri

Gender Theorist Butler to Deliver Fordham's Suarez Lecture

Judith Butler
Contributed photo

Noted philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler, Ph.D., will deliver “'We, the People,' or Plural Action” at the Fordham philosophy department’s annual Suarez Lecture next week.

Tuesday, April 1

4:30 p.m.

Flom Auditorium, Walsh Family Library, Rose Hill Campus

Butler, the Maxine Elliot Professor in the departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature and the Co-director of the Program of Critical Theory University of California Berkeley, has had a significant influence on the fields of feminist, queer, and literary theory, philosophy, political philosophy, and ethics.

She is perhaps best known for her works Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge, 1990) and Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex,” (Routledge, 1990) where she challenges the sex/gender distinction and develops her theory of “gender performativity.”

Francisco Suarez, S.J., a late-medieval philosopher in the Catholic tradition, was known for his work in metaphysics, ethics, and just war theory, among other topics. In recent years, the Suarez lecture has been given by such notables as Harry Frankfurt and Christine Korsgaard.

—Patrick Verel

Panel: Christians and Other Animals

Christians and Other Animals: Moving the Conversation Forward

Friday, 16 November | 4 to 6 p.m.

12th-floor Lounge | Lowenstein Center

Fordham College at Lincoln Center

Panelists

Peter Singer, Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics, Princeton University

David Clough, Professor of Theological Ethics and Department Chair, University of Chester

Eric Meyer, Fordham Doctoral Candidate in Theology

R.R. Reno, Professor of Theological Ethics, Creighton University, editor of First Things

Moderator

Charles Camosy, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics, Fordham University

This panel, conducted with non-specialists in mind, will provoke Christians to think about other animals in new ways. Currently a very hot topic in academic theology and philosophy, concern for non-human animals is gaining traction in the broader culture, and our panel will try to connect academic and popular themes, in language that is accessible to a broad audience.

Peter Singer—in addition to being the most influential philosopher alive today—was the intellectual heft behind the beginning of the animal rights movement in the 1970s. David Clough is one of the leading voices in defense of animals in the contemporary Christian conversation, and Eric Meyer’s research has mined the Christian tradition in ways that turn the current debate about animals on its head. We are also fortunate to have R.R. Reno play the all-important role of ‘sympathetic skeptic’ in our discussion. The conversation will be accessible to non-specialists.

Space is limited. RSVP to christiansandotheranimals@gmail.com. 

Download the flyer as a PDF here.

Co-Sponsors: Department of Theology, Center for Religion and Culture, Office of the Provost, Dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill, Dean of Fordham University Faculty