ABSTRACT
The chapters in this collection provide philosophical and discourse analytic analyses of some of the most current pathologies affecting public debates and political disagreement in Western democratic societies. The chapters comprising the first focus on arrogance and on disagreement and argumentation in debate. Catarina Dutilh Novaes provides an analysis of three models of argumentation in debate. The first takes debates consisting in engagement with dissent automatically to provide epistemic gains; the second conceptualises debate as a kind of argumentative war and the third promotes a view of argumentation as therapy. Finally, the topic of Lani Watson's concluding chapter is polarisation over moral issues taking abortion as a case in point rather than explicitly about science. It offers new ways, informed both by empirical findings and philosophical theories, of understanding the pathologies of political debates and, based on this understanding, it helps formulate solutions to address these dysfunctions.
