Experts and specialists, scientists and philosophers frequently imagine that they are right and have understood how things really are. Yet at the same time they know this can't plausibly be the case. In the history of humankind there is no theory that has been shown to be definitive, no claim that cannot be disputed. Nor can we imagine a time when such dispute will come to an end.
Should we give up the very idea that it is possible to be definitively right? Would this usher in a new era of compromise? Or is the possibility of being right essential to progress and culture, without which we risk violence and conflict?
Author of Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts Santiago Zabala, Robust Realist Corine Besson, and expert of Indian thought Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad clash over whether it is ever possible to be definitely right about anything.