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Consensus Building and Its Epistemic Conditions

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Abstract

Most of the epistemological debate on disagreement tries to develop standards that describe which actions or beliefs would be rational under specific circumstances in a controversy. To build things on a firm foundation, much work starts from certain idealizations—for example the assumption that parties in a disagreement share all the evidence that is relevant and are equal with regard to their abilities and dispositions. This contribution, by contrast, focuses on a different question and takes a different route. The question is: What should people actually do who find themselves in deep disagreement with others? And instead of building theory on some “firm foundation,” the paper starts from a specific goal—building consensus by creating new proposals—and asks, first, which actions are suitable to achieve this goal and, second, what are the epistemic conditions of these actions. With regard to the latter, the paper focuses on what has been called framing and reframing in conflict research, and argues that both metaphors need and deserve a suitable epistemological conceptualization.

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Notes

  1. I have to thank here two anonymous reviewers. Each of them pointed out one of these counter arguments against Fogelin’s argument.

  2. See Habermas (1990 <1983>, p. 66), and Rehg (2003, p. 85).

  3. Habermas (1990  <1983>), especially pp. 67–68 and p. 70.

  4. I have to thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing out the important difference between the “window” and the “QLG” cases.

  5. Another possible anchor is Polanyi’s notion of “interpretative frameworks” (Polanyi 1964).

  6. I have to thank one of the anonymous reviewers for raising this question.

  7. I am focusing here on what Schön and Rein call “co-design” among policy adversaries. The authors mention also three further strategies to deal with contention that do not involve frame reflection or reframing: (a) continuation or escalation of the controversy; (b) a “marketing strategy”; and (c) negotiation that aims at a compromise (Schön and Rein 1994, p. 170).

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Acknowledgements

This research has been supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (Cyberlearning and Future Learning Technologies, Award 1623419). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. I am thankful for feedback that Bryan Norton, Justin Biddle, Rafael Meza, Anne Zacharias-Walsh, and Daniel S. Schiff provided.

Funding

This study was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation (Cyberlearning and Future Learning Technologies, Award 1623419).

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  1. School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology, 685 Cherry Street, N.W., DM Smith Building, Atlanta, GA, 30332-0345, USA

    Michael H. G. Hoffmann

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Correspondence to Michael H. G. Hoffmann.

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Hoffmann, M.H.G. Consensus Building and Its Epistemic Conditions. Topoi 40, 1173–1186 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-019-09640-x

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