This paper offers an analysis of the relation between political populism and mass media, and how this relation becomes problematic for democratic societies. It focuses on the fact that mass media, due to their purpose and infrastructure, can unintentionally reinforce populist messages. Research findings from communication science and political psychology are used to illustrate how, for example, a combination of mass media agenda setting and motivated reasoning can influence citizens’ political decisions and impair their political autonomy. This poses a particular (...) normative challenge for modern democracies: how to counter these populism-supporting effects within the constraints of democratic legitimacy? After showing how severely limited legal measures to curb populist media effects would be, the paper argues in favour of media competence education as a way of providing future citizens with an epistemic toolkit to navigate the media environment and strengthen their political autonomy. (shrink)

Over the last 30 years the Indian philosopher-economist Amartya Sen has developed an original normative approach to the evaluation of individual and social well-being. The foundational concern of this ‘capability approach’ is the real freedom of individuals to achieve the kind of lives they have reason to value. This freedom is analysed in terms of an individual’s ‘capability’ to achieve combinations of such intrinsically valuable ‘beings and doings’ (‘functionings’) as being sufficiently nourished and freely expressing one’s political views. In this (...) account, ‘development’ is conceived as the expansion of individuals’ capability, and thus as a concept that goes beyond the economic growth of third world countries. My thesis is a philosophical examination of Sen’s capability approach. In the first part (chapters 1-3) I present and defend my interpretation of Sen’s work. (shrink)

Can compensation repair the moral harm of a previous wrongful act? On the one hand, some define the very function of compensation as one of restoring the moral balance. On the other hand, the dominant view on compensation is that it is insufficient to fully repair moral harm unless accompanied by an act of punishment or apology. In this paper, I seek to investigate the maximal potential of compensation. Central to my argument is a distinction between apologetic compensation and non-apologetic (...) compensation. Apologetic compensation, I argue, is an act that expresses regret and apology by means of some offer of money, goods, or services. Non-apologetic compensation is an act that seeks to restore loss or harm without expressing regret or apology. In the paper, I defend the view that acts of compensation can be apologetic and argue that such apologetic compensation is sufficient for moral repair. (shrink)

Inclusive design prescribes addressing the needs of the widest possible audience in order to consider human differences. Taking differences seriously, however, may imply severely restricting “the widest possible audience”. In confronting this paradox, we investigate to what extent Rawls’ theory of justice as fairness applies to design. By converting the paradox into the question of how design can be fair, we show that the demand for equitability shifts from the design output to the design process. We conclude that the two (...) main questions about justice find application in design: the question about the standards of justice and the question about its metrics. We endorse a Rawlsian approach to the former, while some revision may be due regarding the latter. (shrink)

Institutions have often been characterized as responses to conflict, and assumptions about the nature of conflict have frequently determined the structure and scope of political activity. Two prevalent interpretations of conflict portray it as either a conflict of interest or a competition for resources. Yet there is another view of conflict that regards it in terms of a contest of values, something that raises a different set of questions and issues. These issues involve concerns about the incommensurability and incompatibility of (...) values, and challenge contemporary arguments that rely upon the ordering of preferences or that urge the pursuit of a normative consensus. As I argue, both preference based theories and theories of deliberative democracy prove to deal inadequately with the challenges of moral pluralism and value conflict. (shrink)

Taken as a model for how groups should make collective judgments and decisions, the ideal of deliberative democracy is inherently ambiguous. Consider the idealised case where it is agreed on all sides that a certain conclusion should be endorsed if and only if certain premises are admitted. Does deliberative democracy recommend that members of the group debate the premises and then individually vote, in the light of that debate, on whether or not to support the conclusion? Or does it recommend (...) that members individually vote on the premises, and then let their commitment to the conclusion be settled by whether or not the group endorses the required premises? Deliberative-democratic theory has not addressed this issue, and this is a problem. The discursive dilemma of my title--a generalisation of the doctrinal paradox from analytical jurisprudence--shows that the procedures distinguished can come apart. Thus deliberative democrats must make up their minds on where they stand in relation to the issue; they cannot sit on the fence. This paper is an attempt to address the issue and look at the grounds on which it may be resolved. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIt is often held that disagreement over non-normative facts is less significant to the project of public justification than disagreement over relevant moral norms. But this dismissal of non-normative factual disagreement is unjustified—an ad hoc attempt to save the ideal of public justification from the endemic actual disagreement that threatens it. Disagreement over norms is relevant to political legitimacy; so, too, is disagreement over facts. I draw two implications from this point. First, inasmuch as accounts of public justification typically involve (...) a unanimity condition, public justification should not be thought a desideratum of political legitimacy. Second, virtuous political praxis will often involve enforcing legislation in spite of unresolved non-normative factual disagreement. That is, with respect to legitimacy, there is nothing morally amiss about such legislation. Clearly these last claims presuppose some basis for legitimacy other than agreement; I will only gesture at what this might be. Assuming that much actual legislation is indeed legitimate, though—in spite of extant normative and non-normative disagreement—I go so far as concluding that such a basis, whatever it is, must exist. (shrink)

The relationship between the necessity to ensure that information is shared in the stages of deliberation and the overcoming of what Dryzek (2001) called constriction of deliberative economy is directly related to the proponents and opponents’ propensity to submit and add information differently, in a plural manner. This article describes the salient features of the deliberative turn in order to defend that this propensity is not individual. The evolution of the public space in science and in politics are both paradigmatic (...) examples to appreciate that individual deliberation, and even mere aggregation of opinions, are consistently interpreted only if they are part of social practices and collective institutions aimed at defending tolerance towards positions, beliefs and interpretations that are different or even confronted. This paper argues that the so called model of contestatory deliberative democracy contributes to the acquisition of knowledge precisely because it fosters a plurality of epistemic states associated with practices as consensus and dissent. (shrink)

The concept of legitimacy is often used and emphasized in the context of setting limits in health care, but rarely described is what is actually meant by its use. Moreover, it is seldom explicitly stated how health-care workers can contribute to the matter, nor what weight should be apportioned to their viewpoints. Instead the discussion has focused on whether they should take on the role of the patients’ advocate or that of gatekeeper to the society’s resources. In this article, we (...) shed light on the role of health-care workers in limit setting and how their conferred legitimacy may support subordinators’ (i.e. citizens’) conferred legitimacy. We argue that health-care workers have an important role to play as both moral and political agents in limit setting, and delineate normative conditions that justify and facilitate health-care workers in conferring legitimacy on this kind of decision. Their role and potential impact on political limit setting does not—theoretically—affect the idea of democratic legitimacy negatively. Rather, as we suggest, by designing for limit-setting policymaking accordingly, health-care workers, as well as citizens, are more justified in conferring democratic legitimacy to health-care limit-setting decisions than if these concerns were not addressed. (shrink)

A number of philosophers working in applied ethics and bioethics are now earnestly debating the ethics of what they term “moral bioenhancement.” I argue that the society-wide program of biological manipulations required to achieve the purported goals of moral bioenhancement would necessarily implicate the state in a controversial moral perfectionism. Moreover, the prospect of being able to reliably identify some people as, by biological constitution, significantly and consistently more moral than others would seem to pose a profound challenge to egalitarian (...) social and political ideals. Even if moral bioenhancement should ultimately prove to be impossible, there is a chance that a bogus science of bioenhancement would lead to arbitrary inequalities in access to political power or facilitate the unjust rule of authoritarians; in the meantime, the debate about the ethics of moral bioenhancement risks reinvigorating dangerous ideas about the extent of natural inequality in the possession of the moral faculties. (shrink)

Philip Pettit ,Aude Bandini | : La démocratie signifie d’abord et avant toute chose l’idée d’un contrôle populaire, et ce par l’ensemble des moyens possibles. Ces moyens donnent lieu à la légitimité. Mais ces contrôles populaires, du moins tels qu’ils sont entendus dans de nombreuses discussions, ne donnent pas lieu à la légitimité espérée. Les théories de la démocratie ne partagent pas une même conception des choses à ce sujet, ce qui donne lieu à une pluralité d’approches. Dans cet article, (...) l’auteur soutient que la réponse la plus intéressante à cette question implique une réinterprétation de la notion de contrôle populaire. | : Democracy means popular control, by almost all accounts. And by almost all accounts democracy entails legitimacy. But popular control, at least as that is understood in many discussions, does not entail legitimacy. So something has got to give. Democratic theories divide on what this is, so that the question prompts a taxonomy of approaches. The most appealing answer, so the paper suggests, involves a reinterpretation of the notion of popular control. (shrink)

Health policy frameworks usually construe environmental protection and human health as harmonious values. Policies that protect the environment, such as pollution control and pesticide regulation, also benefit human health. In recent years, however, it has become apparent that promoting human health sometimes undermines environmental protection. Some actions, policies, or technologies that reduce human morbidity, mortality, and disease can have detrimental effects on the environment. Since human health and environmental protection are sometimes at odds, political leaders, citizens, and government officials need (...) a way to mediate and resolve conflicts between these values. Unfortunately, few approaches to applied bioethics have the conceptual tools to do accomplish this task. Theories of health care ethics have little to say about the environment, and theories of environmental ethics don’t say much about human health. In this essay, I defend an approach to ethical decision-making that gives policy-makers some tools for balancing promotion of human health and protection of the environment. (shrink)

Most countries appear to believe that their health system is in a state of semi-crisis with expenditures rising rapidly, with the benefits of many services unknown and with pressure from the public to ensure access to a comprehensive range of services. But whose values should inform decision-making in the health area, and should the influence of different groups vary with the level of decision-making? These questions were put to 54 members of the public and health professionals in eight focus groups. (...) Adopting a different perspective from other studies, participants were not asked if particular groups should be involved in decisions but rather through deliberation and discussion nominated their own potential decision makers. This delivered a clear message that participants saw a legitimate role for a broad range of stakeholders in priority-setting decisions so as to incorporate a diversity of expertise and opinion. Companion themes were the acknowledgment that decisions involve ethical judgments and are not purely technical, that the power of special interest groups (such as clinicians) should be kept in check, and that the process by which decisions are reached is important. The results suggest that qualitative methods of investigation have the potential to improve the legitimacy of policy decisions by contributing to a better understanding of the values of the public and health professionals, and by expanding the range of options available for further research. (shrink)

Für die Medizinethik liegt ein großes Potential sozialempirischer Forschung in der Erhöhung der Kontextsensitivität, dem Sichtbarmachen von sozialen und institutionellen Rollen und dem Einbringen von Stimmen, die bislang zu wenig gehört worden sind. Diese Möglichkeiten bergen jedoch auch das Risiko, dass Deliberation und Argumentation durch Umfragen und Meinungserhebungen ersetzt werden. Der in den Sozialwissenschaften einsetzende participatory turn gibt Anlass, Anliegen und Methoden klassischer sozialempirischer Vorgehensweisen aus normativer Sicht zu hinterfragen. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Konzeptionen von Betroffenheit, Öffentlichkeit und Expertise ist nicht (...) nur aus methodologischen, sondern gerade auch aus normativen Gründen wichtig. Für die ethische Relevanz sind dabei die Idee der Argumentation und demokratietheoretische Überlegungen besonders erörterungswürdig. Wenn Bioethik Teil eines auch öffentlich verankerten Diskurses sein soll, ist die Frage nach der angemessenen Form der Berücksichtigung bestimmter Perspektiven ebenso im Kern bioethischer Reflexion zu verorten wie die Rechtfertigung spezieller ethischer Normen. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Mutz argues that there is an inverse correlation between deliberation and participation. However, the validity of this conclusion partly depends on how one defines deliberation and participation. Mutz's definition of deliberation as ?hearing the other side? or ?cross-cutting exposure? is narrower than a minimal conception of deliberation with which deliberative democrats could agree. First, a minimal conception of deliberation would have to revolve around the principle of a reasoned exchange of arguments, as opposed to mere exposure to dissenting views. (...) Second, Mutz's almost exclusive focus on participation as partisan activism gives the impression of an essential tension between participation and deliberation. But another form of civic participation, which I call ?critical-deliberative involvement,? is perfectly compatible with the incentives for reasoned exchange of arguments with others. We should thus encourage people to participate in politics in ways that engage their reasoning faculty, not just their party loyalty. This also requires teaching people how to disagree constructively. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The media's attentive vigil over America's most militant and outrageous activists in the abortion wars has obscured a massive but quiet effort on the part of evangelicals to engage their opponents in exemplary deliberative discussions about bioethics. For a variety of reasons, activists in the pro‐life movement are more committed to carving out civic spaces for such dialogue than are their pro‐choice counterparts. This discrepancy invites investigation into the forces that promote and constrain political movements' interest in deliberation, as (...) well as highlighting the undeniable limits to deliberative ideals. (shrink)

This article proposes a way of connecting two levels at which scholars have studied discursive practices from a normative perspective: on the one hand, local transactions-face-to-face arguments or dialogues-and broadly dispersed public debates on the other. To help focus my analysis, I select two representatives of work at these two levels: the pragmadialectical model of critical discussion and Habermas's discourse theory of politicallegal deliberation. The two models confront complementary challenges that arise from gaps between their prescriptions and contexts of actual (...) discourse. In response, I propose a theory of argument cogency that distinguishes three kinds of merit: content, transactional, and public. Normative links between the two levels arise through the ways argument contents spread across multiple transactions in a social space whose structure and composition favor collective reasonableness. (shrink)

. Philia and pedagogy ‘side by side’: the perils and promise of teacher–student friendships. Ethics and Education: Vol. 7, Creating spaces, pp. 211-223. doi: 10.1080/17449642.2013.766541.

Soft regulatory measures are often promoted as an alternative for existing regulatory regimes for nanotechnologies. The call for new regulatory approaches stems from several challenges that traditional approaches have difficulties dealing with. These challenges relate to general problems of governability, tensions between public interests, but also (and maybe particularly) to almost complete lack of certainty about the implications of nanotechnologies. At the same time, the field of nanotechnology can be characterized by a high level of diversity. In this paper, we (...) discuss and compare two models for framing public policy in relation to technology regulation: the first is a deliberative model based on foresight knowledge and the second the wide reflective equilibrium model, developed by political philosopher John Rawls. In both models, the aim is to find consensus on (a framework for) policy measures and regulation. On the basis of a critical discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of both models, some tentative conclusions are drawn for effective policy making and implementation based on soft law. (shrink)

Abstract Many political theorists have argued that religious reasons should play a rather limited role in public or political settings. So, for example, according to the Doctrine of Religious Restraint, citizens and legislators ought not allow religious reasons to play a decisive role in justifying public policies. Many military professionals seem to believe that some version of that doctrine applies in military settings, that is, that military professionals should not allow their religious convictions to determine how they exercise command authority. (...) We explain why the Doctrine of Religious Restraint should not apply to military professionals and articulate an alternative understanding of the justificatory role legitimately played by religious considerations in military settings. This alternative understanding assumes that military professionals will exercise command authority with tact, wisdom, and due respect for both the spirit and letter of the law, even when they are guided by robust faith commitments. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a distinctive epistemic rationale for the liberal practice of constant and ostentatious reason-giving in the political context. Epistemic trust is essential to democratic governance because as citizens we can only make informed decisions by relying on the claims of moral, scientific, and practical authorities around us. Yet rational epistemic trust is also uniquely fragile in the political context in light of both the radical inclusiveness of the relevant epistemic community (i.e., everyone who participates in the (...) political process) and the conflicting interests bound up in policy debate. I argue that liberal justification is a necessary condition for warranted epistemic trust in this context, and therefore a necessary condition for healthy public inquiry about politically significant questions. (shrink)

Deliberative democracy, it is claimed, is essential for the legitimisation of public policy and law. It is built upon an assumption that citizens will be capable of constructing and defending reasons for their moral and political beliefs. However, critics of deliberative democracy suggest that citizens’ emotions are not properly considered in this process and, if left unconsidered, present a serious problem for this political framework. In response to this, deliberative theorists have increasingly begun to incorporate the emotions into their accounts. (...) However, these accounts have tended to focus only upon the inclusion of emotions in the external-collective exchange of reason between citizens. Little work has been done on how the individual will actually cope with emotions internally within their own minds. There has been no consideration of the capacities that citizens will need to perceive, understand and regulate emotions as they formulate reasons both by themselves and with others. Moreover, there has been little consideration of how these capacities might be educated in children so that emotionally competent deliberative citizens can be created. In this paper, emotional intelligence is presented as an essential capacity that can fulfil this role for the deliberative citizen and deliberative democracy more generally. The ‘deliberative school’ is suggested as a potential site for this transformation that can progress from generation to generation, cultivating citizens that are increasingly better equipped to handle emotionally-laden deliberative engagement. (shrink)

Abstract Richard Posner's Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy urges that political and legal decision makers should be guided by what he calls ?everyday pragmatism,? rather than by ?abstract? moral theory. He links his conception of pragmatic government to Sclmmpeter's unromantic view of democracy. Posner argues that judicial review should be based on a combination of pragmatism and adherence to this limited conception of democracy, rather than sticking closely to ?formalist? theories of adjudication, which demand strict adherence to traditional legal norms. However, (...) Posner's consequentialist pragmatism fails to provide an adequate guide to judicial decision making, because it does not give us any criterion for deciding which consequences are desirable. His Schumpeterian theory of democracy, too, is problematic because it does not sufficiently consider the shortcomings exposed in recent scholarship in political science and economics. (shrink)

In this paper, I seek to challenge two prevailing views about religious accommodation. The first maintains that religious practices deserve accommodation only if they are regarded as something unchosen on a par with the involuntary circumstances of life people must face. The other view maintains that religious practices are nothing more than preferences but questions the necessity of their accommodation. Against these views, I argue that religious conducts, even on the assumption that they represent voluntary behaviours, deserve in certain circumstances (...) certain kinds of accommodation. They must be understood as one possible expression, along with nonreligious or secular beliefs, of a person's convictions of conscience, which are strong ethical commitments upon which depends the moral integrity of those having such convictions. I demonstrate that the main ground for religious accommodation is the need to protect fairly, through such rights as religious freedom and freedom of conscience, the ethical commitments and conscientious beliefs of all citizens. Finally, against the objection that such a view risks leading to the proliferation of demands for accommodation, I maintain that a deliberative approach to religious accommodation is in a good position to put serious hurdles in the path of unreasonable demands. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Habermas' proceduralist model of law can be put to feminist ends in at least two significant ways. First, in presenting an alternative to the liberal and welfare models of laws, the proceduralist model offers feminism a way out of the equality/difference dilemma. Both these attempts to secure women's equality by emphasising women's sameness to men or their difference from men have placed the onus on women to either find a way of integrating themselves into (...) existing institutions or to confront the so-called question of women's difference. The proceduralist model renders this dilemma irrelevant. Instead, it proceeds from the fact of sexual difference; a fact that produces competing and conflicting needs and interests that require interpretation by both men and women. This, I argue, marks a change in the very way we conceptualise the so-called problem of women's difference, insofar as the question is no longer framed in these terms. Second, I argue that this deliberative process over the interpretation of conflicting interests affects a fundamental shift in the nature of legal institutions themselves, insofar as law is no longer a vehicle for promoting male interests. (shrink)

This essay reviews contemporary theories of public justification. In particular, it argues that conceptions of public justification and public reason have moved significantly beyond Rawls.

IN the last decade deliberative democracy has developed rapidly from a “theoretical statement” into a “working theory.”1 Scholars and practitioners have launched numerous initiatives designed to put deliberative democracy into practice, ranging from deliberative polling to citizen summits.2 Some even advocate deliberation as a new “revolutionary now.”3 Deliberative democracy has also experienced the beginning of an empirical turn, making significant gains as an empirical (or positive) political science. This includes a small, but growing body of literature tackling the connection between (...) the normative standards of deliberation, how well they are met, and the empirical consequences of meeting them.4 This trend has, for instance, included the use of methods and frameworks borrowed from other fields, such as political and social psychology. Such studies suggest that cases approaching ideal deliberation are rare, but that group interaction sometimes works surprisingly well according to such ideals.5. (shrink)

Public reasoning is widely thought to be essential to democracy, but there is much disagreement about whether such deliberation should be constrained by a principle of public reason, which may seem to conflict with important democratic values. This paper denies that there is such a conflict, and argues that the distinctive contribution of public reason is to constitute a relationship of civic friendship in a diverse society. Acceptance of public reason would not work against mutual understanding, learning, or compromise, nor (...) does the principle involve any violation of political equality. The real threat to democracy is not public reason, but the framing of public reason by a presumption against state action. (shrink)

While a large social-choice-theoretic literature discusses the aggregation of individual judgments into collective ones, there is much less formal work on the transformation of judgments in group communication. I develop a model of judgment transformation and prove a baseline impossibility theorem: Any judgment transformation function satisfying some initially plausible conditions is the identity function, under which no opinion change occurs. I identify escape routes from this impossibility and argue that the kind of group communication envisaged by deliberative democats must be (...) "holistic": It must focus on webs of connected propositions, not on one proposition at a time, which echoes the Duhem-Quine "holism thesis" on scientific theory testing. My approach provides a map of the logical space in which different possible group communication processes are located. (shrink)

In South Africa there is widespread recognition amongst university educators that the new outcomes‐based education system can prevent instrumental thinking, particularly in view of OBE's agenda to encourage critical learning. However, what these educators do not necessarily take into account is that many students are not always ready to deal with critical learning because of the apparent persistence of instrumental thinking at some universities in South Africa. Simply put, many students seem to be quite willing to be taught about some (...) of the ends of education, rather than the reasons behind these ends. With this idea of desired student learning in mind, in this article, I argue that it has become necessary to fulfil the promise of democratic justice on the African continent through educating for friendship, rather than perpetuating uncritical modes of learning which could further extend the violation of human dignity on the African continent. Reflecting on several moments in my classroom pedagogy and conversations with colleagues at different universities, I firstly argue that critical learning cannot be blind to prescriptiveness, since students have to be made attentive in some way to the public realm of a democratic post‐apartheid South Africa and post‐colonial Africa. In short, they have to be taught what it means to be democratically just. Thereafter, I argue that teaching students about democratic justice can entail critical learning and, hence, be non‐instrumental, provided that university educators become more responsible educators. Finally, I examine how actions can potentially fulfil the democratic justice project, the success of which is so desperately needed on the African content. (shrink)

In animal husbandry in The Netherlands, as in a wide variety of other societal areas, we see an increased awareness of the fact that progress cannot be attained anymore by simply repeating the way we modernized this sector in the decades before, due to the multiplicity of the problems to be dealt with. The theory of reflexive modernization articulates this macro-social phenomenon, and at the same time serves as a prescriptive master-narrative. In this paper, I analyse the relationship between Feenberg's (...) instrumentalization theory and reflexive design; that is, the approach of doing reflexive modernization. Feenberg's analytical distinction between primary and secondary instrumentalization is useful in highlighting the way social and political values are inscribed into technological arrangements, but is not meant as a method. Reflexive design, on the other hand, is meant to be a reflective and deliberative method that aims to articulate, assess and reintegrate hitherto unquestioned values and presuppositions into new designs of production systems. Reflexive design thus may be seen as a conscious strategy of making explicit the separate stages of instrumentalization in advance, instead of criticizing the implicit embedding of dominant values in technological artefacts once they have been realized. The approach is illustrated with a case from animal husbandry. (shrink)

A study of a watershed planning process in the Cache River Watershed in southern Illinois revealed that class divisions, based on property ownership, underlay key conflicts over land use and decision-making relevant to resource use. A class analysis of the region indicates that the planning process served to endorse and solidify the locally-dominant theory that landownership confers the right to govern. This obscured the class differences between large full-time farmers and small-holders whose livelihood depends on non-farm labor. These two groups (...) generally opposed one another regarding wetland drainage. Their common identity as “property owner” consolidated the power wielded locally by large farmers. It also provided an instrument – the planning document – for state and federal government agencies to enhance their power and to bring resources to the region. The planning process simultaneously ameliorated conflicts between government agencies and the large farmers, while enhancing the agencies’ capacity to reclaim wetlands. In this contradictory manner, the plan promoted the environmental aims of many small-holders, and simultaneously disempowered them as actors in the region’s political economy. (shrink)

En este trabajo trato de abordar el concepto de marco mental como clave para entender la concepción que la neuropolítica tiene de la deliberación pública y la democracia. En un primer lugar expondré los puntos centrales de las teorías de Jonathan Haidt y George Lakoff sobre el marco mental y la deliberación pública. Después pondré en relación la idea del marco mental con el concepto de marco referencial de Taylor. Finalmente, analizaré críticamente el modelo de deliberación pública y de democracia (...) que cabe extraer del concepto de marco mental en la neuropolítica.In this article I address the concept of «mental frame» as the key to understand the conception neuropolithics has on moral deliberation. Firstly, I will expose the core points of Jonathan Haidt y George Lakoff’s theories on mental frame and public deliberation. Then, I will put in relation the idea of mental frame with Charles Taylor’s concept of «referential frame». This will allow us, finally, to critically analyze the model of public deliberation and democracy that can be drawn from the concept of moral frame in neuropolitics. (shrink)

Artículo centrado en el significado, medida y promoción de las competencias o capacidades democráticas. Tal como lo demuestran muchas Constituciones, declaraciones internacionales y encuestas, la mayoría de la población mundial valora los ideales morales democráticos. Sin embargo, en la vida cotidiana, rara vez nos comportamos a la altura de esos ideales. Para superar esa brecha, necesitamos cultivar las competencias democráticas a través de la educación, enseñando a los estudiantes a expresarse y escuchar a otros ―sobre todo a aquellos con puntos (...) de vista opuestos―. Pero en la mayoría de las escuelas, la educación para la democracia se limita a transmitir el conocimiento declarativo de los libros de texto, en vez de promover el conocimiento tácito o procedimental necesario para resolver conflictos sociales a través de la deliberación no-violenta. Así, el artículo: a) presenta un modelo conceptual del comportamiento democrático; b) explica brevemente las características metodológicas de un instrumento para la medición de una competencia democrática fundamental, el Test del Juicio Moral; y c) discute los principios pedagógicos del Método Konstanz de Discusión de Dilemas, un método que según se ha comprobado representa una mejora respecto al método pionero de Blatt y Kohlberg. (shrink)

Classic pragmatism laid the foundations for a practice-based notion of citizenship that views democracy as a fragile accomplishment in need of constant self-actualisation. This article revisits this heritage to explore different notions of pluralism and democratic participation developed over the last century. Drawing on James and Dewey, the article interrogates how different understandings of democracy deal with pluralism and the meaning of democratic life. The focus is on three prominent models in contemporary democratic theory and practice, namely: representative, participatory and (...) deliberative. The purpose is to review different ways of thinking and enacting citizen participation and explore key distinctions, overlaps and productive tensions. The conclusion argues that a vibrant democratic ecology requires combining the practices that underpin these models in order to develop deeper, and more sustainable, forms of citizenship and democratic life. (shrink)

Abstract An enduring challenge of democracy is to give citizens an effective say in collective decision making by ensuring broad participation in political discourse. Deliberative opinion polling aims to meet this challenge by providing new opportunities for ordinary citizens to form educated opinions. This approach to broadening deliberation does not aim to control substantive outcomes, unlike conceptions of deliberative democracy that promote improved dialogue while also restricting the possible outcomes. But both classes of reform overlook the prevalence of democratic failures (...) stemming from social pressures that discourage open and honest communication. New avenues for dialogue will remain clogged unless supported by political institutions that protect dissenters, and by a political ethic that rewards candor. (shrink)

Taken as a model for how groups should make collective judgments and decisions, the ideal of deliberative democracy is inherently ambiguous. Consider the idealised case where it is agreed on all sides that a certain conclusion should be endorsed if and only if certain premises are admitted. Does deliberative democracy recommend that members of the group debate the premises and then individually vote, in the light of that debate, on whether or not to support the conclusion? Or does it recommend (...) that members individually vote on the premises, and then let their commitment to the conclusion be settled by whether or not the group endorses the required premises? Is deliberative democracy to enforce the discipline of reason at the individual level, as in the first possibility, or at the collective level, as in the second? (shrink)

The project we highlight in this article stems from our philosophical work on moral disagreements that appear to be—and sometimes are—intractable. Deliberative democratic theorists tout the merits of dialogue as an effective way to bridge differences of values and opinion, ideally resulting in agreement, or perhaps more often resulting in greater mutual understanding. Could dialogue mitigate disagreements about a controversial education policy such as affirmative action? Could it foster greater understanding? We conceived of a project that would simultaneously fulfill two (...) goals that we had as philosophers, education researchers, and aspiring public intellectuals. First, it would allow us to use philosophy in research, grounding our mixed methods research in a philosophically informed framework. The tools and analytic techniques that are particular to philosophers felt uniquely suited for an empirical study concerning political theory. Second, we aimed to use philosophy in the community. We were able to put our own expertise in philosophy and race-conscious education policy to good use by purposefully creating opportunities for diverse community members in our larger metropolitan area to engage in dialogue and deliberation with each other over the issue of affirmative action. (shrink)

Deliberative democracy is a noble project: an attempt to make citizens philosophize. Critics of deliberative democracy usually claim either that the proposed deliberation threatens an existing moral consensus or, instead, that deliberation is impossible amid power imbalances that oppress the weak. But another problem is that combining democracy and deliberation is inherently an attempt to engage publicly in a private activity—where sensitivity to each interlocutor may require a special form of address. Can this be done? Yes, in some contexts. The (...) tradition of esoteric writing has demonstrated that it is possible to layer one's discourse in such a way that all citizens can partake at a level that suits them. But writing for a public is not really deliberation among equals; it is leadership by the writer of the readers. Genuine dialogue among equals that takes account of their differences is, in contrast, inherently a private affair. (shrink)

Liberal political theory is widely believed to be an inadequate source of civic commitment and thus of civic education primarily because of its commitment to what is perceived as a pervasive individualism. In this paper, I explore the possibility that John Rawls’s later political philosophy may provide a response to this belief. I first articulate a conception of liberal politics derived from Rawls’s idea of reflective equilibrium that generates an overlapping consensus about political principles among those who hold a wide (...) variety of cultural and personal conceptions of the good. Next I develop the aims for civic education in a society that employs such a politics. Then I suggest the elements of the public school curriculum appropriate for such a civic education, including a robust multicultural education, intellectual reflection on the society’s history, and philosophical training that enables children to understand the events and policies of their nation as following from general political principles. I also consider the kinds of classroom practice that seem necessary to provide the motivation to engage in the process of the emergence of an overlapping consensus, including opportunities to develop and to reflect on the principles that may be included in the current consensus and to understand the way in which those principles relate to children’s developing conceptions of the good. Finally, I compare this conception of civic education to those of other liberal theorists. (shrink)