The Dialogue Between Believers and Atheists: the Platonic Model in the Laws

This paper examines the question concerning the right model of epistemically rational dialogue. First of all, the main, though not undisputed, principles of rational dialogue are defined according to the contemporary field of the epistemology of disagreement. It then explains why even these principles are not sufficient for making the disagreement between believers and atheists not only a rational discourse but also a fruitful dialogue. This paper defends a thesis that the latter aim can be achieved with a proper model of dialogue, which is found in Plato’s Laws – one of the first discussions between the believers and the atheists in the Western intellectual tradition. This model not only includes the contemporary principles of rational argument but also provides some new guidelines for the solution of problems that lead the believers and the atheists to the communicational dead end.

Organising around ideas: Why we need to take the battle of ideas in education more seriously

In this article we develop the notion of 'organising around ideas'. We highlight the ways in which education debate in England has narrowed as traditional spaces for discussion and debate have been closed down. The state now has extraordinary power to shape discourses and frame narratives about the purposes of schooling. Here we argue that we must find new ways to engage in the battle of ideas, not simply as an exercise in rational argument, but as an essential element of organising and movement building. The article provides three short case studies of 'organising around ideas' in action to illustrate what this work can look like. The cases are not templates, but illustrate the flexible, grassroots-based activity that is central to building a movement from the bottom up.

The Ontological Argument

This chapter argues that Kant’s criticism of the ontological argument is targeted, in the first instance, at Leibniz’s sympathetic revamping of the Cartesian argument. But Kant’s discussion actually contains a suite of objections to the ontological argument, some of them effective against Descartes, others (less successfully) directed against Wolff and Baumgarten, and one—the famous objection that being is not a real predicate—directed exclusively against Leibniz. It argues that this last objection, which appeals to the example of a hundred thalers, succeeds against Leibniz because he is prevented by his stance on the Euthyphro contrast from offering the obvious reply. Kant’s most famous objection is thus an ‘ad hominem’ argument in the original (and now largely forgotten) sense of that term: a perfectly rational argument that does not attack an opponent’s character, but rather uses one of their own commitments against them.

Are voters influenced by the results of a consensus conference?

We evaluate whether people will outsource their opinion on public policy to consensus conference participants. The ideal consensus conference brings together a representative sample of citizens and introduces them to the range of perspectives and evidence related to some policy. The sample is given the opportunity to ask questions of experts and to deliberate. Attitudes about each policy are queried before and after the conference to see if the event has changed minds. In general, such conferences do produce opinion shifts. Our hypothesis is that the shift can be leveraged by simply communicating conference results – absent substantive information about the merits of the policies discussed – to scale up the value of conferences to the population at large. In five studies, we tell participants about the impact of a consensus conference on a sample of citizens’ opinions for a range of policies without providing any new information about the inherent value of the policy itself. For several of the policies, we see a shift in opinion. We conclude that the value of consensus conferences can be scaled up simply by telling an electorate about its results. This suggests an economical way to bring evidence and rational argument to bear on citizens’ policy attitudes.

‘If men were angels, no government would be necessary’: intuitive theories of human nature and preference for authoritarian leaders

How do people arrive at their opinions regarding how society should be governed? We suggest people possess an intuitive theory of human nature. The function of this theory is to predict how strangers will behave in particular classes of situation, and suggest what kinds of institutions and interventions are required to make society function under those circumstances. Across four within-subjects experiments with 750 UK adult participants, we show that the intuitive theory of human nature is fundamentally situation-sensitive. Our participants intuited that conditions of war, scarcity or cultural heterogeneity would increase selfishness and immorality from a subgroup of the population, and that this would undermine the provision of public goods. Rational argument would be become less effective under such circumstances, and punishment more effective; hence, respondents more strongly favoured coercive authoritarian leaders under these conditions compared to peace or abundance. Using World Values Survey data from 55 countries, we detect real-world patterns consistent with these principles: both within and between countries, the more respondents are concerned about the collective threat of war, the more pessimistic their assessment of the moral dependability of their co-citizens, and the stronger their endorsement of authoritarian forms of government.

Political Theory and the Bourgeois Public Sphere

Arguing that political theory is an irremediably Western and liberal enterprise, this chapter shows that it is a discipline that does not seek to accurately represent and explain an object, but is rather knowledge “for,” performance rather than representation. The discipline is directed toward the public sphere, imagined as a realm of individuals possessed of their own “values” who, however, inhabit a common world and engage in rational, critical debate about that which they hold in common. It thus “performs” the liberal conviction that differing moral and political viewpoints being ineliminable, they must contend with each other in rational argument in a public sphere not itself marked by a commitment to any moral or political view. Recognizing the parochialism and Eurocentrism of these presumptions, some scholars have recently attempted to “deprovincialize” political theory by extending its geographical and cultural remit through “comparative political theory.” The chapter evaluates the success and shortcomings of these endeavors.

Facts or Feelings?

The social intuitionist model has significant implications for the study of communication. Specifically, this chapter argues that the social intuitionist model reveals the limitations of rational argument and illustrates factors contributing to misinformation. This argument is developed through a series of four observations. First, communicators have attempted to combat misinformation through rational argument. Second, centuries of interdisciplinary insights revealing the intuitive nature of human decision-making cast doubt on strategies that appeal to audiences primarily through facts and reason. Third, application of the social intuitionist model to contemporary American politics can help explain several puzzling dynamics, including the appeal of Donald Trump and the persistence of misinformation. Fourth, communication scholarship can be improved through greater recognition of the influence of intuition upon decision-making. This chapter concludes by proposing ways that emotional narratives can be used to bridge gaps between public opinion and expert consensus.

About the Fair Balance of Competing Rights in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic

The current pandemic situation gives us the opportunity of the following research, which is a plea to use the principle of proportionality as a rational argument in substantiating the restrictive measures adopted by the authorities in order to prevent the spread of Sars-CoV-2 virus. Thus, after (1) we found it appropriate to make general considerations related to governmental measures for public health and safety in the introductory part, we continued with (2) the presentation of the proportionality standard, as a jurisprudential model used both at national and international level, in order to develop (3) proportionality in a narrow sense afterwards, using the formula of professor Robert Alexy, which we consider representative for the structure of balancing competing rights, using a quantifiable model, in which respect we have exemplified the applicability of this formula (4). Finally, we concluded that the principle of proportionality can be a convincing structural approach in the legal reasoning designated to promote the balance of principles (6), although we acknowledge some of the limitations of the proposed method, which we consider that can be overcome (5).

The Role of Education

This chapter discusses the effects that education can have on a person’s receptiveness to argument. The main focus is upon two passages in the Republic about poetry and music. In book III, Socrates claims that exposure to beauty in the arts can prepare one to engage in rational argument. On the negative side, book X analyses the damage allegedly done by tragedy and comedy to the minds of the audience. Overall, I conclude that, although music and poetry have a significant effect on our susceptibility to argument, exposure to good art is not actually necessary for enabling one to follow the shorter route, and exposure to bad art does not necessarily disqualify one. At the end of the chapter I consider two further passages about the effects of education and upbringing, one about gymnastics in book III, the other about the use of dialectic on the young in book VII.

The Roles of Music and Habituation

Like Plato, Aristotle thought that early education affects one’s susceptibility to rational argument later in life. In the best case, the right education in childhood promotes a love of the kalon (the ‘beautiful’ or the ‘noble’) which makes one more receptive to moral argument in adulthood. However, when Plato describes early education in the Republic, he is mostly interested in music and poetry, whereas the NE focuses entirely on behavioural habituation. In this chapter I try to account for this difference by comparing their approaches to the kalon. Plato sees it as a property that is the same whether manifested in beautiful works of art or noble actions; hence the aesthetic can act directly as an introduction to the moral. For Aristotle, by contrast, they are distinct properties. So a musical training is a less direct way of introducing the young to moral value than habituation.