POL SCI 119B · POLISCI 119BRadical Disagreement
Political Science · 5 units · Undergraduate upper division (100-199)
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.
When it runs
- Fall 2025
Scheduled, not typical — from UCLA’s Schedule of Classes, which publishes Fall 2025 through Spring 2027 and nothing before it.
Requisites
UCLA lists no requisites for this course.
Requires
Everything that has to come before this course, not just the courses named in the requisite above.
Nothing — this is an entry point.
Unlocks
What this course is a requisite for, and what those courses lead to in turn.
No course in the catalog lists this as a requisite.