Christopher Tindale on “Deep Diversity, Pluralism, and the Fractured Self”

Much argumentation is addressed at disagreements, and various metaphors are employed as aids to think through the problems involved. We treat some disagreements as “deep”, for example and work to understand, manage, and even resolve them. Changing the metaphors will help us look at such matters from different angles, but they still remain disagreements. These social issues reflect the unavoidable presence of disagreement at other levels of our experience, including within our own selves. Drawing on various theorists, like political scientist Charles Taylor and argumentation theorists Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, I want to explore the kind of deep diversity that characterizes our inner states and the ways in which the self-deliberator serves as a kind of audience to work in this environment. Thinking of the self as divided or fractured encourages more metaphorical thinking but it also invites further reflections on the importance of pluralism in our private and social lives and the ways in which argumentation plays a role in the formation of dispositions to provide the stability required for commitment and action. The dispositions of character formation develop within the context of a variable instability. Hence, while argumentation does important work in the public sphere, it also operates in the private sphere, where we manage diversity and rich and challenging as any we encounter beyond us.

Christopher Tindale (University of Windsor)

To join the session on Zoom, please get in touch with Maria Grazia Rossi at mgrazia.rossi@fcsh.unl.pt for the details.

This event is part of the ArgLab Research Colloquium organised by Maria Grazia Rossi, Giulia Terzian and Gloria Andrada at the Laboratory of Argumentation, Cognition and Language of the NOVA Institute of Philosophy. For any inquiries, please contact Maria Grazia, Giulia, or Gloria.

Event supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology (Fundação para a Ciência e para a Tecnologia) of the Portuguese Ministry of Education and Science under the projects UIDB/00183/2020 and UIDP/00183/2020.