7. Static Pluralism And Pluralism Under Transformation

Recursive examination can proceed without requiring the whole orientation to become unsettled at once.

But what it examines need not remain unchanged. Questions, criticism, or new distinctions can alter what remains convincing.

That means convictional pluralism need not be static.

Static pluralism would mean that different people possess different convictions and may continue to disagree while their frameworks simply remain beside one another.

But this is not the picture suggested by CFT.

Questions can alter possibility spaces, and criticism can expose assumptions. Other people may introduce distinctions that had not been active before. Criteria and convictions themselves may weaken, strengthen, narrow, or reorganize.

Pluralism exists under conditions of possible transformation.

Two people may begin with incompatible convictions and remain incompatible after extensive inquiry.

Neither persistence nor convergence is guaranteed. Inquiry may change what convinces either person, or leave the disagreement intact.

Convictional pluralism need not be a fixed arrangement of settled positions.

People can enter inquiries that may change what remains convincing.

They cannot determine in advance whether that will happen, in which direction it will happen, or whether anything will change at all.

If convincingness were directly voluntary, we could decide beforehand which commitments were permitted to survive. Inquiry could become theatre.

But if convincingness is not under direct command, inquiry carries a risk.

Inquiry may alter what we hoped to defend or strengthen what we expected to reject. A tactical question can become a genuine problem, and an argument entered only to refute it may acquire force. A familiar standard may become conditional. Sometimes nothing changes at all, and a conviction survives the examination unchanged in force.