PUBLIC REASON'S CHAOS THEOREM

Episteme ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Kogelmann
Keyword(s):  
Public Reason ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
Public Reasoning ◽  
Assurance Problem

ABSTRACTCitizens in John Rawls's well-ordered society face an assurance dilemma. They wish to act justly only if they are reasonably sure their fellow citizens will also act justly. According to Rawls, this assurance problem is solved through public reasoning. This paper argues that public reason cannot serve this function. It begins by arguing that one kind of incompleteness public reason faces that most Rawlsians grant is ubiquitous but unproblematic from a normative standpoint is problematic from an assurance perspective: it makes it possible for citizens to argue for policy conclusions that are favored by their private interests, rather than justice. In response, perhaps the thing to do is structure deliberative democratic institutions such that citizens will always be incentivized to use public reasons to only argue for conclusions they believe are favored by justice. The paper proves that this is impossible by extending the Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem.

Exclusive Public Reason

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christie Hartley
Keyword(s):  
Public Reason ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Moral Duty ◽  
Public Justification ◽  
Moral Foundation ◽  
Narrow Scope ◽  
Public Reasoning ◽  
Comprehensive Doctrines

This chapter develops the idea of public reason based on the shared reasons account of public justification. It is argued that the moral foundation for political liberalism delimits a narrow scope for the idea of public reason, such that public reasons are required only for matters of constitutional essentials and basic justice. It is also argued that where public reason applies, persons as citizens have a moral duty to never appeal to their comprehensive doctrines when engaging in public reasoning. Hence, an exclusive account of public reason is vindicated. Finally, we respond to various potential objections to our view, such as the claim that the shared reasons view requires identical reasoning and the claim that public reason is interderminate or inconclusive.

Political Parties and the Overlapping Consensus

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Bonotti
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Overlapping Consensus ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Creative Agency ◽  
Public Reasoning ◽  
The Common ◽  
Comprehensive Doctrines ◽  
Political Liberal

This chapter rejects the ‘extrinsic’ view of public reason examined in Chapter 4, and argues that political parties can play an important role in helping citizens to relate their comprehensive doctrines to political liberal values and institutions. Once we understand the distinctive normative demands of partisanship, this chapter claims, we can see that there is no inherent tension between them and the demands of the Rawlsian overlapping consensus. This is because partisanship (unlike factionalism) involves a commitment to the common good rather than the sole advancement of merely partial interests, and this implies a commitment to public reasoning. The chapter further examines three distinctive empirical features of parties that particularly enable them to contribute to an overlapping consensus. These are their linkage function, their advancement of broad multi-issue political platforms, and their creative agency.

Shared intentions, public reason, and political autonomy

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (6) ◽  
pp. 776-804 ◽  
Author(s):  
Blain Neufeld
Keyword(s):  
John Rawls ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
State Power ◽  
Public Justification ◽  
Political Autonomy ◽  
Public Reasoning ◽  
Corporate Body ◽  
Gerald Gaus

AbstractJohn Rawls claims that public reasoning is the reasoning of ‘equal citizens who as a corporate body impose rules on one another backed by sanctions of state power’. Drawing upon an amended version of Michael Bratman’s theory of shared intentions, I flesh out this claim by developing the ‘civic people’ account of public reason. Citizens realize ‘full’ political autonomy as members of a civic people. Full political autonomy, though, cannot be realised by citizens in societies governed by a ‘constrained proceduralist’ account of democratic self-government, or the ‘convergence’ account of public justification formulated recently by Gerald Gaus and Kevin Vallier.

scholarly journals Deep Uncertainty, Public Reason, the Conservation of Biodiversity and the Regulation of Markets for Lion Skeletons

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (18) ◽  
pp. 5085 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Coals ◽  
Dawn Burnham ◽  
Paul J. Johnson ◽  
Andrew Loveridge ◽  
David W. Macdonald ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Sustainable Use ◽  
Formal Concept ◽  
Deep Uncertainty ◽  
Argument Analysis ◽  
Ethical Argument ◽  
Public Reasoning ◽  
Relative Value ◽  
Single Argument

Public reason is a formal concept in political theory. There is a need to better understand how public reason might be elicited in making public decisions that involve deep uncertainty, which arises from pernicious and gross ignorance about how a system works, the boundaries of a system, and the relative value (or disvalue) of various possible outcomes. This article is the third in a series to demonstrate how ethical argument analysis—a qualitative decision-making aid—may be used to elicit public reason in the presence of deep uncertainty. The first article demonstrated how argument analysis is capable of probing deep into a single argument. The second article demonstrated how argument analysis can analyze a broad set of arguments and how argument analysis can be operationalized for use as a decision-making aid. This article demonstrates (i) the relevance of argument analysis to public reasoning, (ii) the relevance of argument analysis for decision-making under deep uncertainty, an emerging direction in decision theory, and (iii) how deep uncertainty can arise when the boundary between facts and values is inescapably entangled. This article and the previous two make these demonstrations using, as an example, the conservation and sustainable use of lions.

New Modes of Governance, Political Accountability and Public Reason

2011 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert Weale
Keyword(s):  
Public Reason ◽  
White Paper ◽  
Political Accountability ◽  
Electoral Accountability ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Reasoning ◽  
European Governance ◽  
Policy Deliberation ◽  
Modes Of Governance ◽  
New Modes Of Governance

AbstractNew modes of governance are said to create problems of political accountability. To understand this claim, we need a theory of accountability. Electoral accountability provides authorization and sanction, but it neglects the problems entailed in the requirement to provide explanation and justification. Political accountability in this discursive sense can be understood through the idea of public reason, where this is defined in terms of substantive rationality and an orientation to the public interest. This conceptualization leads in turn to the requirement of replicability and openness in public reasoning. The problem of accountability is one of securing the conditions under which the institutions within which policy deliberation takes place can merit the confidence of citizens in these terms, and the Commission White Paper on European governance is used to illustrate the application of these tests.

Liberalism, Multiculturalism, and the Case for Public Religion

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 580-609 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonia Sikka
Keyword(s):  
Public Reason ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Stability ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Common Goal ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Public Religion ◽  
Public Reasoning ◽  
Diverse Nations

AbstractLiberalism, as a political paradigm, is committed to maintaining a stance of neutrality toward religion(s), along with other comprehensive systems of belief. Multiculturalism is premised on the view that the political policies of internally diverse nations should respect the beliefs and practices of the various cultural, ethnic, and religious groups of which those nations are composed. Sometimes synthesized, sometimes standing in tension, these two political frameworks share a common goal of minimizing conflict while respecting diversity. Although this goal is, in principle, laudable, I argue in this article that the operation of liberal and multiculturalist forms of public reasoning inadvertently diminishes critical reflection and revision in the area of religion, with potentially dangerous consequences both for the health of religion and for social stability. Measures to counter these dangers, I propose, include a relaxation of the restrictive rules that define liberal public reason, and education about religion in schools.

When Public Reason Fails Us: Convergence Discourse as Blood Oath

2016 ◽  
Vol 110 (4) ◽  
pp. 717-730 ◽  
Author(s):  
BRIAN KOGELMANN ◽  
STEPHEN G. W. STICH
Keyword(s):  
Public Reason ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Reasonable Pluralism ◽  
Political Conception ◽  
Costly Signal ◽  
Interesting Corollary ◽  
Assurance Problem

Public officials in John Rawls's well-ordered society face an assurance problem. They prefer to act in accordance with the political conception of justice, but only if they are assured that others will. On Paul Weithman's influential interpretation, Rawls attempts to solve this problem by claiming that public reason is an assurance mechanism. There are several problems with Rawls's solution: Public reason talk is too cheap to facilitate assurance, it is difficult to know when particular utterances express public reasons, and the requirements of public reason conflict with the fact of reasonable pluralism. We argue that convergence discourse—not public reason—solves the assurance problem by being a costly signal that indicates commitment to the political conception. This solution has none of Rawls's problems and has an interesting corollary: As diversity increases in society, so too does society's ability to solve the assurance problem. In short, the more diversity the better.

Bentham

2019 ◽  
pp. 283-302
Author(s):  
Gerald J. Postema
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Public Deliberation ◽  
Systematic Theory ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Reasoning ◽  
Critical Task ◽  
Modern Era

Bentham was one of the first, and among the most thorough, theorists of publicity of the modern era. Publicity is a pervasive theme running through all of Bentham’s moral, political, and legal theory; it is foundational to his thought. Bentham constructed a systematic theory of public reason, integrating utility and law into a complex framework for public reasoning, with a detailed architecture of public space, and constructing a network of key institutions and incentives for public accountability and public deliberation. He designed these institutions to secure the transparency of every exercise of ruling power and to encourage, educate, and empower the public in their critical task of holding officials to their responsibilities under the law. This chapter brings together the most important occurrences of the idea of publicity, documenting Bentham’s reliance on it throughout his career and demonstrating its centrality to his moral, legal, and political thought.

Publicness and human development

2020 ◽  
pp. 393-416
Author(s):  
Flavio Comim
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Human Development ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Reasoning ◽  
Political Emotions ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Development Perspective ◽  
Different Levels

Publicness is far from being a consecrated concept in the human development or capability literature. Instead, it is common to find references to other expressions about ‘public’ such as ‘public reason’ or ‘public reasoning’, ‘public values’, and ‘public goods’. It is important to examine the key concept of ‘public reason’ in Rawls and how it has been discussed by Sen and Nussbaum. However, a concrete concern of this chapter is how to think more broadly in terms of publicness from a human development perspective. In order to make this discussion more concrete, the chapter considers the context of BRICS in terms of the provision of public goods, defining three different levels of publicness. By doing so, it dialogues with what Nussbaum called ‘the institutional side of political emotions’ in societies that have been going through key economic and societal transformations. The public sphere of human development is easier to theorize than to see reflected in concrete indicators.

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