Oslo Mind, Language and Epistemology Network Seminar: Harish Pedaprolu, Perspectival Clashes are Attentional Conflicts

Most of us would agree that beliefs may clash if , for example, both of them can’t be true at the same time. Most of us would also agree that desires may conflict if, for example, both of them cannot be satisfied at the same time. But do perspectives clash? If they do, what does it take for them to clash? 

Not many philosophers have written about this subject. Those who have written about it, disagree with each other as to whether there can be perspectival clashes and what these clashes are. Iris Marion Young suggests that while two or more perspectives may be incommensurate, it makes little sense to say that they ‘conflict’ or ‘clash’ with one another. Elizabeth Camp argues that perspectives can clash and they clash when they embody dissimilar or opposing cognitive, affective and attentional dispositions. Ege Yumusak has recently argued, against Camp, that two perspectives may clash even if they embody similar dispositions, if these dispositions are used to pursue opposing ‘agendas’ or inquiry-structuring questions. So, Yumusak argues, perspectives must be identified with inquiry-structuring questions or agendas and not dispositions. 

This paper has a negative and a positive side. On the negative side,  I argue that there are good reasons to reject all three of the above positions, insightful as they are. Against Young, I hold that perspectives can and do often conflict in addition to being merely incommensurate. I agree with Yumusak on her criticism of Camp’s position. However, against Yumusak, I argue that having different or ‘opposing’ inquiry-structuring questions, in itself,  is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for perspectives to conflict. 

On the positive side, I propose four unique features of perspectival conflicts that set them apart from what are traditionally considered conflicts in belief or values: (i) Having opposing inquiry-structuring questions amounts to a clash only when one is engaged in or aims to engage in a joint inquiry with another entity (this is often another person but joint inquiries could also involve institutions, past versions of oneself,  and so on as co-inquirers). (ii) The adjudication of whether two inquiry-structuring questions are ‘opposite’ or not can only be made relative to a frame of assessment or a third perspective. (iii) The site of a perspectival clash is not questions themselves but is the organization of these questions. (iv) A perspectival clash is nothing but an attentional conflict because attention is what organizes our questions.