Interpersonal violence and neutralist arrogance. Ethical-epistemological approach to argumentation and objectivity

Abstract

This paper proposes an interdisciplinary approach on interpersonal violence understood as a complex and multidimensional phenomenon. As will be discussed initially, there is a broad socially shared view of the notion that interactional conflicts can only be resolved through rational conversational practices based on argumentation. However, there are some argumentative styles that work rather as motors of a symbolic epistemological violence. Such argumentative styles (so-called "vertiginous") are intimately related to the claim of neutrality that participants take in disputes, by bringing to the field of communication the prerogatives of the principle of objectivity reigning in the domain of science (and derived from an indiscriminate application of the third excluded law to the areas of the understanding of human behavior). The main objective of the reflections presented here is to show that the argumentative exercise has implications not only in cognitive terms but also in values. In the sense, both the defense and the attack of the reasons that validate the knowledge, imply modes of social relation that can be deeply disqualifying and devaluing the reasons alleged by the Others. Thus, it requires a philosophical approach that takes up the problem of relational violence from a deep dialogue between epistemology, ethics and social sciences.