Cognitive Peerhood, Epistemic Disdain, and Affective Polarisation: The Perils of Disagreeing Deeply

Abstract

Is it possible to disagree with someone without considering them cognitively flawed? The answer seems to be a resounding yes: disagreeing with someone doesn't entail thinking less of them. You can disagree with someone and not think that they are unreasonable. Deep disagreements, however, may challenge this assumption. A disagreement is deep when it involves many interrelated issues, including the proper way to resolve the disagreement, resulting in its persistence. The parties to a deep disagreement can hold neutral or even positive judgements of each other's epistemic character, as parties’ judging each other's epistemic character negatively (i.e., epistemic disdain) is not a defining feature of deep disagreements. When analysing real-life cases, however, we find that epistemic disdain is typical of deep disagreements. In this article, I analyse why this is the case. Given that epistemic disdain undermines cognitive peerhood, the prospects of deep disagreements between epistemic peers seem bleak. Finally, it is discussed how the phenomenon of epistemic disdain, as it relates to deep disagreements, may increase affective polarisation.

Deep conflicts and deep disagreements

“…Of course, as noted before, this is not a knock-down argument, since one could insist that even though deep disagreements are not necessarily pernicious nor irresolvable, they tend to be so because they are persistent, and the parties involved don't share a sufficient background (Lavorerio, 2023). Thus, finding cases of deep disagreement being fruitful and getting resolved wouldn't show that deep disagreements can usually be settled through reasons.…”

“…There is a common explanation for this fact that is gaining momentum in the literature. Some authors argue that current political discussions are unfruitful and difficult to resolve because they are instances of deep disagreement -i.e., situations where the parties disagree not only about the truth-value of a given proposition, but also about their relatively fundamental underlying principles on which their judgments are based (De Ridder, 2021;Lynch, 2021aLynch, , 2021bLavorerio, 2023). According to them, the occurrence of deep political disagreements in contemporary democracies erodes an essential assumption of democracy itself: it removes the necessary common ground for reasonable and fruitful deliberation.…”

“…Yet, this is not necessarily a strong objection against the previous explanation. The fact that deep disagreements are not necessarily pernicious does not entail that they don't have certain features that make them more likely to foster animosity (see Lavorerio, 2023 for a recent discussion). Deep disagreements can be characterized by exhibiting a tendency towards animosity and fruitlessness.…”