Radical Disagreement

Exploration of why people disagree, cannot agree to disagree, and how they might come to an agreement. Study approach is applied and empirical, relying on case studies, student game play, and in-class simulations. Covers normative disagreement between and within ethical frameworks: utilitarianism, rights, justice-fairness, and virtue ethics; and within utilitarianism, e.g., effective altruism versus effective accelerationism. Study of theories of disagreement such as evolutionary psychology, cultural theory, world values, systems theory, and the nature of belief systems in the mass public and among experts. Exploration of types of disagreement: moral; political, and party-political; religious and spiritual; between men and women; intra-cultural and cross-cultural; generational; expert-expert and expert-lay; insider-outsider, center-periphery, cosmopolitan-parochial, and urban-rural; premodern, modern, and anti-modern; scientific and conspiratorial; and meta-ethical.

P/NP or letter grading.