The International Journal of Philosophical Studies (IJPS) has introduced the winners of its 2023 essay prizes.
The theme for the IJPS Robert Papazian Essay Prize was “The Ethics and Politics of Disagreement”. Its winner is Nick Küspert (St. Andrews) for his essay, “Conciliating to Avoid Moral Scepticism.”
Right here’s the summary of the paper:
A standard fear about ethical conciliationism is that it entails at finest uncertainty about lots of our ethical beliefs and at worst epistemological ethical scepticism. Towards this fear, I argue that ethical conciliationism saves us from epistemological ethical scepticism and allows us to be assured in lots of our ethical beliefs. First, I present that solely taking disagreements severely as a menace to our beliefs permits us to utilise agreements in assist of our beliefs (name this symmetry). Subsequent, I argue that utilising ethical agreements as an epistemic useful resource permits ethical conciliationism to withstand the possibly worrisome discount in confidence of our ethical beliefs. Taking the relevance of ethical settlement under consideration, I argue that it’s anti-conciliationism that should meet the problem of epistemological ethical scepticism. For this, I recommend that ethical inquiry is finest understood as a collective endeavour. If that’s the case, then settlement on our ethical judgments is required to justify the arrogance we’ve in lots of our ethical beliefs. Nonetheless, by symmetry, this attraction is feasible provided that one accepts the conciliatory perspective in direction of disagreements. Therefore, accepting, relatively than rejecting ethical conciliationism, is the best way out of ethical scepticism.
The prize is 3000 euros. That is the primary time a graduate pupil has gained the Papazian essay prize.
Robert Papazian, for whom the prize is called, was a political prisoner in Iran who was executed in 1982. You possibly can be taught extra about him and the prize here.
The theme for the PERITIA competitors was “Knowledgeable Disagreement”.
The successful article of the PERITIA IJPS prize of 2000 euros was “Disagreement about Disagreement?” by Ruth Weintraub (Tel Aviv College).
Right here’s its summary:
This paper isn’t involved with the (amply mentioned) query as to the rational response to look disagreement. As an alternative, it addresses a (significantly much less usually debated) drawback to which many views in regards to the (epistemic) significance of disagreement are weak (to some extent or one other): self-undermining. I reject a number of solutions which were proposed within the literature, defend one which has been provided (by assembly objections to it), and present that in its gentle, the prevalent assumption that the ‘equal-weight view’, a outstanding view about disagreement, rationally requires us to droop judgement about contentious issues, is seen to be too pessimistic.
The runner up PERITIA prize of 1200 euros was awarded to Aidan McGlynn (Edinburgh) for “Hidden Depths: Testimonial Injustice, Deep Disagreement, and Democratic Deliberation”.
There have been two joint winners of the third prize of 500 euro every: Marc Andree Weber (Mannheim) for “Unknown Peers” and Manuel Almagro Holgado (Valencia) and Neftalí Villanueva Fernández (Granada) for “Disagreeing with Experts“.
That is the final yr the Papazian and PERITIA prizes shall be awarded.
The successful, shortlisted and invited essays, a few of that are additionally open entry, seem in IJPS, volume 31.3.
