disagreement

I take it as a given that if two people both start with the same facts and both apply proper logic, they will reach identical conclusions. So if two people disagree, then either they’re not working from the same facts or at least one of them got the logic wrong.

Or, alternately, there’s a third option: they have different goals.

It’s not rational to like strawberries. Nonetheless, some people do it, naturally, and there’s nothing particularly despicable about it. And if you are one of them, it is rational to order strawberry shortcake for dessert rather than chocolate mousse or crème brûlée. You are not ordering the best dessert. You are ordering the best dessert for you.

So what happens when there is a disagreement and it’s due to different goals, or different priorities, or different ethics? How do we determine what goals everyone uses? If we should determine them rationally, well, all we’ve done is moved the disagreement back one meta-level, for no net gain. If we should let people determine their own according to their personal nature, we get bizarre results like violent criminals being legally allowed to assault people because it gets them what they want. If we go by some group consensus, some mean or median of personal natures across society (and this seems to be how it’s generally been done throughout history — social species, by definition, have consistent species-wide behaviors), we get something practical, but not so much rational as utilitarian. I don't really care for any of these options.