A Fallibilist Perspective on Conflictual Inferences and the Possibility of Violence

This article argues that there is a social motivation for fallibilism that is linked to the possibility of violence. In order to show how this is the case, the article presents differences in belief and information as the starting point of processes of conceptual negotiation. However, it also argues that, as such, conceptual negotiation becomes the privileged site of conflict and, potentially, violence. Drawing from the inferentialist tradition in philosophy of language, as well as from the work of José Medina and Hans-Jörg Schmid, this article claims that whether or not conflictual conceptual negotiations overcome the possibility of violence or not will depend on the epistemic meta-attitudes that are being taken on during conceptual negotiation. Based on these conceptual meta-attitudes, the paper then argues that irresponsible epistemic meta-attitudes increase the possibility of violence whereas fallibilism is seen as the best chance for overcoming this possibility.