Gandhi Beyond Public Reason Liberalism

Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research - Since contemporary societies are deeply multicultural and plural, the partisan ideological politics obviously animate conflict of opinions and...     

Public Reason, Religious Restraint and Respect

In recent years liberals have had much to say about the kinds of reasons that citizens should offer one another when they engage in public political debates about existing or proposed laws. One of the more notable claims that has been made by a number of prominent liberals is that citizens should not rely on religious reasons alone when persuading one another to support or oppose a given law or policy. Unsurprisingly, this claim is rejected by many religious citizens, including those who are also committed to liberalism. In this paper I revisit that debate and ask whether liberal citizens have a moral obligation not to explain their support for existing or proposed laws on the basis of religious reasons alone. I suggest that for most (ordinary) citizens no such obligation exists and that individuals are entitled to explain their support for a specific law and to persuade others of the merits of that law on the basis of religious reasons alone (though there may be sound prudential reasons for not doing so). My argument is grounded in the claim that in most instances advocating laws on the basis of religious reasons alone is consistent with treating citizens with equal respect. However, I acknowledge an exception to that claim is to be found when using religious reasons to justify a law also implies that the state endorses those reasons. For this reason I argue that there is a moral obligation for some (publicly influential) citizens, and especially those who hold public office, to refrain from explaining their support for existing or proposed laws on the basis of religious reasons. I conclude by suggesting that this understanding of the role of religion in public political discourse and the obligations of liberal citizens is a better reflection of our experience of liberal citizenship than that given in some well-known accounts of liberalism.     

The Alleged Incompleteness of Public Reason

According to John Rawls's ideal of liberal public reason, comprehensive moral, religious and philosophical doctrines should play no more than an auxiliary or marginal role in the political life of constitutional democracies. David Reidy has recently claimed that since liberal public reason is incomplete, comprehensive doctrines, and non-public reasons, must play a wider role than Rawls admits. In response, I argue that Reidy's arguments do not establish that liberal public reason is incomplete. Furthermore, even if the substantive values embodied in liberal public reason were insufficient to determine certain fundamental decisions, such indeterminacy need not be eliminated by recourse to comprehensive doctrines. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

政治自由主义和公共理性的局限性

这篇论文分析了政治自由主义的局限性.这一点是通过批判其公共理性的不足来阐明的.这个论述分三部分来进行:第一部分分析公共理性和话语,第二、三部分分别进行民主缺陷和社会缺陷的解释.这些缺陷被分析为是对公民参与政治社会条件的一个根本限制.因此这个分析集中于过去十年最有影响的政治哲学家 J.罗尔斯的公共理性理论.这篇论文认为在他的理论中有两个缺陷:一是随着个体向社会的不完全整合而带来的缺陷--民主缺陷;二是与低估正义的社会分配维度相关的缺陷--社会缺陷.     

Scientific Research and the Public Trust

This essay analyzes the concept of public trust in science and offers some guidance for ethicists, scientists, and policymakers who use this idea defend ethical rules or policies pertaining to the conduct of research. While the notion that public trusts science makes sense in the abstract, it may not be sufficiently focused to support the various rules and policies that authors have tried to derive from it, because the public is not a uniform body with a common set of interests. Well-focused arguments that use public trust to support rules or policies for the conduct of research should specify (a) which public is being referred to (e.g. the general public or a specific public, such as a particular community or group); (b) what this public expects from scientists; (c) how the rule or policy will ensure that these expectations are met; and (d) why is it important to meet these expectations.     

Science as Public Reason: A Restatement

According to John Rawls, the methods and conclusions of science—when these are non-controversial—constitute public reasons. However, several objections have been raised against this view. This paper focuses on two objections. On the one hand, the associational objection states that scientific reasons are the reasons of the scientific community, and thus paradigmatically non-public in the Rawlsian sense. On the other hand, the controversiality objection states that the non-controversiality requirement rules out their public character when scientific postulates are resisted by a significant portion of the citizenry. The paper replies that both objections miss their mark. To the associational objection, it replies that the relevant test for a reason to be public is whether the reasons have been construed under the rules and constrains of a public frame of thought. Insofar as scientific methods and conclusions correspond to the principles of reasoning and rules of evidence that liberals understand as public, their associational origin is secondary. To the controversiality objection, it replies that the standard for a scientific argument to be regarded as non-controversial should refer to its degree of intra-scientific consensus, since ordinary citizens accept or reject scientific pronouncements conditioned to their particular comprehensive views. Nonetheless, a wide extra-scientific agreement on the epistemic virtues of the scientific method will be needed. The paper concludes that there is a good case to think about scientific reasons as public to the extent that scientific reasoning is a mode of inquiry that mirrors a central aspiration of Rawlsian political liberalism: having a public way of thought and an impersonal standpoint to adjudicate between competing claims.     

科学方法概览

科学是一种知识体系和研究活动.在这种特殊的生产知识的社会活动中,需要借助科学方法和科学思维才能创造出新的、日趋完备和完美的知识体系.     

情感与罗尔斯公共理性再释

个人自主与"强迫自由"之间的紧张是后现代政治哲学所面临的重要困境:一方面,现代政治哲学预设了个体的自由和自主;另一方面,人可能是无知、自私和反复无常的,所以自由的内涵往往被精英们所定义,这种"强迫自由"沦为他治和权威。罗尔斯的公共理性是解决这种困境的一种尝试,他论证了一种不依赖于分歧观念的政治正义观,以此兼顾人的自主与政治的共识。不过,罗尔斯的方案缺乏实践的可行性。本文重新思考情感在公共理性所扮演的角色,从情感角度修正罗尔斯的理论。     

Public Reason, Objectivity, and Journalism in Liberal Democratic Societies

How should we understand the familiar demand that journalists ‘be objective’? One possibility is that journalists are under an obligation to report only the facts of the matter. However, facts need to be interpreted, selected, and communicated. How can this be done objectively? This paper aims to explain the concept of journalistic objectivity in methodological terms. Specifically, I will argue that the ideal of journalistic objectivity should be recast as a commitment to John Rawls’s conception of public reason. Journalism plays a vital role in the operation of all modern liberal democracies, functioning as the public watchdog, the fourth estate, or the conduit through which vital information flows to the citizenry. Journalism is, therefore, an institution that is best understood as part of the basic structure of society. In Political Liberalism, Rawls explicitly excludes media of any kind from the demands of public reason because he doesn’t think that they play a political role that is important enough to bring them under the official auspices of public reason. I will argue that overlooking the political significance of journalism is a mistake, but one that can be corrected while keeping within the spirit and most important elements of his theory. This revision will widen the scope for what counts as journalism beyond traditional outlets and forms of media but will impose the demands of public reason on anyone who intends to participate in the institution.     

摩尔根学派的科学成就及其成功原因分析

对遗传学中著名的摩尔根学派的科学成就作了简要的评价,并深入探讨了其成功的原因,为促进我国的科学研究事业提供一些有益的借鉴与启示.