Delia Belleri (Vienna)
MON MAR 5 — 15.00-17.00
Sala "Enzo Paci" — Direzione del Dipartimento (Via Festa del Perdono 7, Milano)
Two Species of Merely Verbal Dispute
It is common to criticize a debate by alleging that it is a merely verbal dispute. But how conclusive would an argument based on such allegations be? I will take the material composition debate as a case-study and argue that the mere-verbality move is less decisive than one might expect. While assessing the dialectical effectiveness of the mere-verbality move, I will also try to mark some progress in the philosophical understanding and appreciation of the phenomenon itself of merely verbal disputes. My contribution will consist in shedding light on a distinction between the “faultlessness” and “faultiness” of a verbal dispute.