Epistemic Justice and Democratic Legitimacy

The deliberative turn in political philosophy sees theorists attempting to ground democratic legitimacy in free, rational, and public deliberation among citizens. However, feminist theorists have criticized prominent accounts of deliberative democracy, and of the public sphere that is its site, for being too exclusionary. Iris Marion Young, Nancy Fraser, and Seyla Benhabib show that deliberative democrats generally fail to attend to substantive inclusion in their conceptions of deliberative space, even though they endorse formal inclusion. If we take these criticisms seriously, we are tasked with articulating a substantively inclusive account of deliberation. I argue in this article that enriching existing theories of deliberative democracy with Fricker's conception of epistemic in/justice yields two specific benefits. First, it enables us to detect instances of epistemic injustice, and therefore failures of inclusion, within deliberative spaces. Second, it can act as a model for constructing deliberative spaces that are more inclusive and therefore better able to ground democratic legitimacy.     

Justice,Health, and Healthcare

Healthcare (including public health) is special because it protects normal functioning, which in turn protects the range of opportunities open to individuals. I extend this account in two ways. First, since the distribution of goods other than healthcare affect population health and its distribution, I claim that Rawls's principles of justice describe a fair distribution of the social determinants of health, giving a partial account of when health inequalities are unjust. Second, I supplement a principled account of justice for health and healthcare with an account of fair process for setting limits or rationing care. This account is provided by three conditions that comprise "accountability for reasonableness."     

Negative Freedom, Rational Deliberation, and Non-Satiating Goods

Negative freedom (as opposed to positive freedom) has been widely considered an inherently non problematic notion. This paper attempts to show that, if considered as a good with a minimally objective structure, negative freedom can disrupt the capacity for deliberating in a substantively (that is, non purely formal, decision-theoretic) rational way. The argument turns on the notion of non-satiation, as a property of the objective value of some goods of not changing when the availability of the good is increased. Two classes of non-satiating goods are distinguished, one of which has disruptive consequences for rational deliberation. Negative freedom belongs to this last class; and its non-satiating conceptual nature is defended by means of a simple dispositional analysis of value. It is suggested that also rationality itself can be regarded as a non-satiating good that can disrupt deliberation.     

Democratic Citizenship, Education and Friendship Revisited: In Defence of Democratic Justice

Literature about the significance of cultivating democratic citizenship education in universities abounds. However, very little has been said about the importance of friendship in sustaining democratic communities. In this article I argue for a complementary view of friendship based on mutuality and love—with reference to the seminal ideas of Sherman and Derrida. My view is that teaching and learning ought to be used as pedagogical spaces to nurture forms of friendship which not only encourage mutuality but also love in order to make possible the taking of risks on the part of students and teachers. And, if teachers and students act with mutuality and love they would be more favourably positioned in their society to take risks and to enact democratic justice.     

A Compatibilist Account of the Epistemic Conditions on Rational Deliberation

A traditional concern for determinists is that the epistemic conditions an agent must satisfy to deliberate about which of a number of distinct actions to perform threaten to conflict with a belief in determinism and its evident consequences. I develop an account of the sort that specifies two epistemic requirements, an epistemic openness condition and a belief in the efficacy of deliberation, whose upshot is that someone who believes in determinism and its evident consequences can deliberate without inconsistent beliefs. I argue that conditions of both types are indispensable, and that they can be formulated so as to withstand the relevant objections.     

临床合理用药中若干问题的思考

为临床合理用药提供参考依据.参考大量文献,用对立统一的思想分析临床合理用药存在的问题.结果临床合理用药目前存在许多问题,我们需要用对立统一的辩证思维和方法正确对待和处理目前临床用药存在的问题.     

Justice,Virtue, and Power in Democratic Conflict

The question of how to respond to the deep political divides in the United States today has resulted in the emergence of two camps. On one side are those who argue that the cultivation of civic virtues like civility will lead to more respectful interpersonal relationships through which consensus and mutual understanding can be built. On the other are those who argue that our commitment to justice is primary and may require uncivil behavior to disrupt and change unjust structural relationships. In Healthy Conflict in Contemporary American Society, Jason Springs helps to bridge the divide between these two positions. Because he takes a relational approach that centers both interpersonal and structural relationships, Springs makes both mutual respect and just structures central to his conception of healthy conflict. Taking relationality seriously thus helps to overcome this impasse, but it also raises significant questions about the impact of asymmetrical relationships on citizens’ responsibilities to engage in healthy conflict.     

On the Prospects for Democratic Deliberation: Values Analysis Applied to AustralianPolitics

Democratic theorists increasingly stress that democratic legitimacy rests primarily on authentic deliberation. Critics of deliberative democracy believe that this hope is unrealistic—that deliberation either will prove intractable across political differences or will exacerbate instability. This paper deploys some tools of political psychology, notably Q methodology and values analysis, to investigate the conditions under which effective deliberation is likely to occur. These tools are applied to contemporary political debates in Australia, concerned with how the Australian polity should be constituted in light of a reform agenda underpinned by a discourse we term "Inclusive Republicanism." An investigation of the character of the basic value commitments associated with discursive positions in these debates shows that some differences will yield to deliberation, but others will not. When two discourses subscribe to different value bases, deliberation will induce reflection and facilitate positive-sum outcomes. When a discourse has a value base but finds its specific goals opposed by a competitor that otherwise has no value base of its own, deliberation will be ineffective. When one discourse subscribes to a value base that another questions, but without providing an alternative, deliberation can help to bridge idealism and cynicism.     

The Empathy Dilemma: Democratic Deliberation,Epistemic Injustice and the Problem of Empathetic Imagination

Res Publica - One of the challenges facing complex democratic societies marked by deep normative disagreements and differences along lines of race, gender, sexuality, culture and religion is how...     

Recognizing the Emotion Work in Deliberation. Why Emotions Do Not Make Deliberative Democracy More Democratic

Critics of deliberative democracy theory have argued that deliberation should be supplemented with forms of emotional expression to eliminate the inequalities of gender, race, and class which are reproduced in deliberations that privilege rational discussion. This article presents results from a qualitative empirical study on emotion work in deliberations. Emotional expression requires emotion work on the part of the participants. The capacity for such emotion work appears to depend on the individual participant's emotional capital. The results show that, given the participants' varying levels of emotional capital, an emphasis on emotion work tends to reproduce inequalities, rather than to eliminate them.     

Capability and Deliberation

This paper explores the role of deliberation in the context of the capability approach to human well-being from the standpoint of the individual doing the reflecting. The concept of a ‘strong evaluator’ is used develop a concept of the agent of capability. The role of values is discussed in the process of deliberating, particularly the nature of and difference between prudential values and intrinsic values. Some consideration is given to the limits and constraints on deliberation and finally a brief example of deliberation is considered—that of occupational choice.