Marcelo Dascal’s Theory of Controversies

In his Theory of Controversies, Marcelo Dascal proposed three types of polemic exchange, in which Controversy was added to the classic types of Discussion and Dispute. For example, in Dascal’s lights, logic is associated with polemic discussions, power manipulations with disputes, and ‘soft logic’ with controversies. The theory was remarkably successful in providing a realist framework for polemic exchanges. In this paper, I provide a conceptually independent substantiation and expansion of the theory, by associating it with meta-ethical analysis of thick and thin concepts, indebted to Michael Walzer, Menachem Fisch and Yitzhak Benbaji.