MATEUS MATOS TORMIN

How to proceed in practical life, from an individual perspective, when faced with issues that are dear to us and about which there is widespread ethical, moral and political disagreement? In order to outline an answer to this question, I divided the Thesis into three main parts. In the first part, I define what I am calling “moral-political disagreement” and provide two types of explanation for its persistence: (i) a conceptual-philosophical one (which explains the persistence of these disagreements through the way concepts function in our argumentative practices) and one that draws on moral cognitive psychology (which explains the persistence of these disagreements through biases to which we are subject). In summary, the answer that will be developed in the second part of the Thesis is this: faced with issues that are dear to us and on which there is broad moral-political disagreement (a disagreement that tends to be persistent), we must proceed with intellectual modesty and responsibility, in the manner of a skeptical Socrates. Finally, in the third part of the Thesis, I intend to claim the label “skeptical" for this answer.