Research, resources, and support for people who want to make disagreements more productive.

 

Experience Dissensus as An Online Class

Work through a self-guided curriculum on disagreement

Watch our preview to find out what Dissensus is all about.

Compendium

Short summaries on disagreement research

Featured
General Disagreement Research

Coming Soon.


Read More →
Deep Disagreement

Summary: Fogelin argues that some of our disagreements are deep: they cannot be resolved by argument, because the disagreement undercuts the very conditions that make argument possible.

Read More →
“Find Common Ground,” a Seductive, but Ineffective Strategy

When disagreements are going nowhere,we might try to search for common ground. Doing so is a natural response to deep disagreements. Unfortunately, finding common ground will not always (or even usually) work, and it will not help us resolve deep disagreements, though it may give the illusion of doing so.

Read More →

Teaching Resources

Designed to develop reasoning skills that address disagreements' challenges

An Interrogative
Model of Reasoning

What does it mean to prove a conclusion? "Proving a conclusion," means showing that the conclusion is a better answer to the argument's implicit question than other serious rival answers. 

 

Diagnostic Reasoning

When events happen they leave behind traces. For example, when a car slams on its breaks to avoid a pedestrian, the skid marks, the smell of burning rubber are left behind. Traces give us reasons to think that an event happened, because the event happening could explain why the traces are there.

 

Correlational Reasoning

Correlations, when two events happen together, lead us to wonder if the events are causally connected. Causal stories that elaborate how one event is causally related to another, explain why events happen together.