Political Philosophy Podcast Symposium: Fall 2008 | CFP: 31 July 2008

I’d like to invite submissions for a semester-long online symposium of papers in political philosophy during Fall 2008 that I would like to host on the website. The idea is that each week a paper will be podcasted on the website by the author and receive comments in response. Symposium submissions will be subject to a process of blind review by a committee of members of the website. Papers in all areas of political philosophy and theory are welcome.

The aim of the symposium is to utilise the resources at our disposal to create a conference experience accessible to every academic in the world, both as a presenter and as a participant. Conference participation is an important part of our research activities as academics, but logistical difficulties and expenses can sometimes make conference travel impossible, especially at the international level. The function of the symposium is to create an online conference in a format designed to elicit as much feedback from fellow academics as possible whilst creating no significant financial or logistical difficulties for participants whatsoever. Those selected will be able to present their papers to an unlimited number of colleagues without having to leave their offices. The papers will be presented on a weekly basis to allow a reasonable time period for comments. The papers will be podcasted to make them as accessible as possible to a wide audience.

I’ve included a little podcast of my own to demonstrate that it can actually be a fairly easy thing to do. Just click the button below. Granted, few of us will ever sound like a professional radio announcer but the medium should be functional enough for our purposes.

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University of York: 17-18 July 2008

A two-day conference on the nature and significance of death, organised by the philosophy departments of the Open University and the University of York, is to be held on the Heslington campus of the latter on 17-18 July 2009.

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Episteme: 26-27 June 2009 | CFP: 15 January 2009

Something that may be of interest to political philosophers working on the significance of disagreement:

Episteme will holds its sixth annual conference at Northwestern University on 26-27 June 2009. The 2009 meeting will focus on the epistemological significance of disagreement. Confirmed participants include Michael Bergman (Purdue), Stewart Cohen (Arizona State), Sherrilyn Roush (Berkeley) and Roger White (MIT).

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Via the University of Chicago Law Faculty Blog:

The website for the UC Conference on Torture, Law, and War now has audio and video of conference presentations available. Participants include the philosophers Nancy Sherman, Marcia Baron, Claudia Card, David Sussman, Scott Anderson, and Jeff McMahan, amongst others. Albie Sachs (South African Constitutional Court) gave the keynote address, “Four Tales of Terrorism.”

Via Thom Brooks and Brian Leiter, Martha Nussbaum in conversation with Bill Moyers here on liberty of conscience. Given Moyers’ other recent associations, this clearly makes Nussbaum unelectable.

University of Kent: 3-5 July 2009 | CFP: 2 February 2009

Via Simon Kirchin at Ethics Etc., something that may be of interest to political philosophers:

Many philosophers are familiar with the distinction between thin and thick concepts. Canonical examples of thin concepts include goodness and badness, rightness and wrongness. There are supposedly many examples of thick concepts, including cruelty, kindness, beauty, elegance, and curiosity. A number of issues arise in relation to thin and thick concepts. Many might be familiar with a key debate, namely how one should construe the relationship between thick concepts’ supposed descriptive aspects and their supposed evaluative aspects. Do we have here two separable elements, or are they best characterized as essentially inseparable, resulting in a form of evaluation that is more specific than that found in thin concepts?

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NPSA: 13-15 November 2008 | CFP: 15 June 2008

Via Fritz Allhoff at the Philosophy Google Group:

The Northeastern Political Science Association will hold its 40th annual meeting on November 13-15, 2008 at the Omni Parker House Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts. Proposals for papers, panels, or to serve as a chair and/or discussant must be submitted before June 15, 2008 through the NPSA submission website. (Once on the submission website, create a username and password and follow the instructions.)

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Here is the June JPP:

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The March issue of JPP has been available for a while, and the June issue has just come out, so I thought I would post both. There are many people who use these links to access the articles, but unfortunately I cannot be relied upon to post them timeously. If anyone would like to “take over” a journal and post a notice when a new issue comes out, please feel free to volunteer. It is one way to keep on top of new articles coming out in the journals one may wish to be reading anyway.

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I’m grateful to Zofia for the excellent summary and questions. Let me say something about her question in order:

On her (1): Zofia asks whether there is really much point to hopeless ideal theory if we really know it won’t be met. I wrote that one of the benefits of such theory is that we can surprise ourselves, but suppose we really do know that certain standards will never be met. She’s write that, since we’re limiting our concern here to standards that are not beyond people’s abilities, I would insist that it is usually pretty hard to really know that they won’t ever be met. But I hasten to emphasize that my defense of hopeless aspirational theory does not rest on this conjecture. The fact, if it is one, that a certain kind of normative political theory will never be met, is not a defect in the theory. More concessive theory is valuable and important too, of course.

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I have just posted a version of my SPEP paper from last fall to SSRN, “One View of the Dungeon: The Ticking Time Bomb between Governmentality and Sovereignty” The paper is a critique of one of the standard justifications for torture: “what if there were a ticking time bomb about to blow up Manhattan, and you have the terrorist. Would you torture him to save the lives of millions?” Versions of this argument show up in most efforts to justify torture, and its soundness has been thoroughly criticized by writers such as Kim Scheppele and David Luban. My paper takes a different tack, and tries to understand how the TTB functions as a rhetorical device. The gist of my argument is that it sanitizes the torture question of any real world difficulties, thereby making it appear as an act of governmental efficiency. I frame the paper in terms of Judith Butler’s work on administration detention policies, and in particular her appropriation of Foucault in that essay.

I’ve been accumulating a long file of writing notes and references since SPEP that do not appear in the current version of the paper; I suspect that I will end up with a second paper that goes into much greater detail on the efficiency arguments (as distinct from the rhetorical structure of the TTB scenario). But I am interested in what folks who have an interest in the topic think about the paper as it stands; part of my motivation in posting the current draft is to get myself kick-started into working on the next iteration.

Gordon

Summary

Much research demonstrates that voters are largely ignorant about the issues and institutions at stake when they vote. Some research also suggests that voters are selfish and irrational. Such poor voter performance might be thought to pose problems for an epistemic theory of democracy since if the performance is bad enough democracy may not deliver on its epistemic promise – it might fail to outperform choosing policies ‘with a roulette wheel’ (262). Estlund has two answers to the challenge posed by the reports about voters’ poor performance. The main answer consists in showing that there is in general value in theories that demand of people that they behave better than they in fact behave or are ever likely to behave.

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Thanks again to Jonathan for the very useful summary and comments. I’ll consider his three questions in order.

First, Jonathan raises a small exegetical question. Does Rawls suggest the kind of democracy/contractualism analogy of the kind I’m discussing? Nothing in my argument depends on this, but it’s still interesting. Here’s the passage I use in support of my claim that he uses the analogy:

The guarantee of fair value for political liberties is included in the first principle of justice because it is essential in order to establish just legislation and also to make sure that the fair political process specified by the constitution is open to everyone on a basis of rough equality. The idea is to incorporate into the basic structure of society an effective political procedure which mirrors in that structure the fair representation of persons achieved by the original position.

Jonathan says that Rawls could just mean that the original position is fair and so by mirroring it in actual political procedures would also be fair, and good in that way. This, Jonathan says, wouldn’t be the same as saying that since the choices in the hypothetical original position constitute justice, choices in a structurally similar real procedure would tend to be similar, thus tracking justice. So on Jonathan’s possible reading the fairness of the original position would be a kind of fairness that has nothing to do with the subsequent claim that choices made in that kind of fair procedure count as principles of justice for a social basic structure. That way this same kind of fairness could be thought of as a value in real institutions quite apart from anything about what kinds of substantive decisions they would make.

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Here’s a quick question I have about teaching jurisprudence. There’s an interesting literature on the nature of rights that will be familiar to many people, and I think it is a good thing for undergraduate jurisprudence students to be exposed to it. However, in addition to reading Hohfeld, Hart, Raz, and some others, one might wish that they had an easy way to apply the complexity of rights theory to their interpretations of the Bill of Rights (we’re talking about US students here), otherwise we lose a bit of traction with the kind of law that interests them most. As such, I want to start gathering suggestions for good readings on how papers such as “The Nature of Rights,” illuminate the constitutional right to free speech or the constitutional right to bear arms, etc. In short, what’s the best way to demonstrate to my students that wading through all that conceptual analysis can make a difference to how they think about their constitution? I’m sure there are some obvious readings, but I thought I would draw on the wisdom of those who have found particular papers fitting this bill useful and enjoyable to teach.

The Winter 2008 issue of P&PA has been available for a while now:

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Summary
In this chapter, David wants to distinguish his epistemic argument for democracy from what he calls the democracy/contractualism analogy (I’m going to refer to this simply as the analogy or the analogy argument). The analogy rests on two key claims. The first is that justice or moral rightness is best understood via some version of moral or political contractualism. The second claim is that democratic outcomes have the capacity to track the requirements of justice or morality because democratic institutions can be arranged in a manner that is sufficiently similar the structure of the hypothetical choice situation of whatever theory of contractualism is favoured. David rejects the analogy because he believes this latter claim is false. If democracy does track justice (something David obviously doesn’t want to deny) it is not because democratic institutions mimic the features of a hypothetical contract scenario.

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Thanks to Loren for the great summary and questions. Loren is largely sympathetic, so, as a reward, this can be more brief than most weeks. But he does raise two concerns.

First, Loren proposes a way of avoiding the disjunction problem. He says that we might suppose there is one correct way of enumerating the alternatives, leading to n alternatives, and then take individual competence to be above 1/n. “After all, we might reply that the assumption of slightly better than random voter competence presupposes correct specification of the choice problem.” I’m not sure what a correct specification of the problem would mean. Suppose we are deciding about building a bridge. We could build a cheap bridge, an expensive bridge, or no bridge. Suppose the best thing is to build a cheap bridge. If we ask the voters to choose between these three options, random competence would be 1/3. If we give them two choices: Build a bridge (cheap or expensive), or build no bridge, random competence is .5. I don’t know what it would mean to say one of these is the correct way to put the question. In any case, Loren says that even if there is a correct or privileged way to enumerate the alternatives it would remain unclear who should get to make that decision. I don’t know how to evaluate that point because I don’t get the idea of a privileged enumeration. For all I can tell, if there is a privileged enumeration it might be beyond reasonable objection. So I might benefit from some clarification of this suggestion. Read the rest of this entry »

If your account of democratic authority uses the term “epistemic” then sooner or later you’re going to have to deal with the Jury Theorem. And here is where David takes up the gauntlet.

I’ve made that seem rather dramatic, but by this point in the book the gauntlet isn’t especially heavy! After all, in preceding chapters we’ve seen a model form of deliberation, a distinction between formal and substantive epistemic value, and a careful distinction between a “test” for finding the correct answer to some shared problem (such as majority rule), and a “testing system” (such as a constitutional democracy within which majoritarian decision procedures are embedded). The Jury Theorem, as tantalizing as it may be to some democratic theorists, does not appeal to discussion and argument, relies on claims about voter competence and the substantive correctness of some choices, and it applies in the first instance to specific tests (voting and majority or plurality rule), not to a testing system per se.

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Blain’s summary is accurate and helpful, and he raises several good questions. I take those up before turning to questions by the other participants.

Blain’s first worry is whether, in the absence of an account that would give us clear boundaries for the reasonable or the qualified, we are unable to go forward with this kind of approach at all. Is any way of going forward bound to be unacceptably ad hoc? I try to indicate an alternative to this defeatist position. I mention this methodological stance briefly in several places, including pp. 63-64, p. 217, and p. 286, note 3. Notice that the wish for clear boundaries is no particular support for Blain’s second concern, that the principle of acceptability should be defended by resting it on a deeper principle of respect. It might seem as though having such a deeper account would also give us the boundaries we want. But I see no general reason to think it would. Suppose the duty not to lie is based on the categorical imperative. That’s very little help in in knowing what the exceptions are to this duty, or whether (as Kant thought) there are none. Depth and specificity are quite independent features of moral theories.

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A paper due out any month now in the Journal of Political Philosophy by Tamra Frei has got me thinking about the redundancy objection to Scanlon’s contractualism. I haven’t followed this debate closely, but I understand that some rather sophisticated responses to the objection have been offered on Scanlon’s behalf, with Michael Ridge’s receiving much of Frei’s attention. So I may be a bit out of my comfort zone here. Nevertheless, Frei’s response, which is rather simple by comparison, strikes me as both successful and rather plausible as an interpretation of Scanlon. I also think her argument can be bolstered by pointing to a couple passages she unfortunately does not discuss. However, if this response does succeed, there will be some reason to avoid the common practice of using the language of reasonable rejection to describe Rawls’s political liberalism. I’ll touch on this at the end of the post. Read the rest of this entry »

Montreal, May 1-3 2008

In collaboration with McGill University, The Centre de recherche en éthique de l’Université de Montréal (CRÉUM) is proud to invite everyone to attend its international conference on “Liberal Neutrality : A Re-evaluation”. The conference is open to the general public and no registration is required.

You will find here a Poster and a Programme.

Invited speakers:

Anthony Appiah; Richard Arneson; Arash Abizadeh; George Crowder; Charles Larmore; Jacob Levy; Stephen Macedo; Peter de Marneffe; Ruwen Ogien; Alan Patten; George Sher; Christine Sypnowich; Steven Wall and Daniel Weinstock.

+ Student session on Saturday.

Where and when ?

May 1 - 3, 2008
McGill University
Leacock Building
Room 232
855 Sherbrooke Street West

See http://www.creum.umontreal.ca/spip.php?article765 for details.

In this chapter Estlund asks the question whether an ‘epistocracy of the educated’ — whether, as J.S. Mill recommends, the educated should receive more votes than the uneducated — could satisfy the ‘qualified acceptability requirement’, that is, be a political principle to which no qualified objection could be levelled. Most epistocratic proposals are defeated because they could not satisfy the qualified acceptability requirement, as there exists qualified disagreement in pluralist societies over who counts as ‘wise’ with respect to political matters. Thus epistemic proceduralism rules out ‘invidious comparisons’ amongst citizens with respect to their normative political wisdom (as explained in chapter II). However, given the widespread view that a ‘good political education’ promotes good political decision-making, and that under Mill’s proposal all citizens would have at least one vote, can the Millian proposal for additional votes for the educated satisfy the qualified acceptability requirement?

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In order to ensure that there is sufficient time to discuss chapter 11, we’re going to delay the other scheduled posts for the reading group by one week. The revised schedule is as follows:

Chapter 12 ‘The Irrelevance of the Jury Theorem’

Apr. 7, 2008, Loren King

Chapter 13 ‘Rejecting the Democracy/Contractualism Analogy’

Apr. 14, 2008, Jonathan Quong

Chapter 14 ‘Utopophobia: Concession and Aspiration in Democratic Theory’

Apr. 21, 2008, Zofia Stemplowska

‘Author’s Comments’

Apr. 28, 2008, David Estlund

I wanted to put up a post where people could make suggestions for further reading groups, after the conclusion of the marvelous “Democratic Authority” discussion we’ve had. If there are many suggestions, I’ll put up a poll to see which are the most popular and likely to attract broad participation. Also, if there is a lot of interest in two quite different books, then nothing stops people from organising those groups separately.

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Thanks to Rebecca for the great summary and questions about this chapter, and to Jonathan and Ben for pitching in. The chapter proposes a way to combine, in broadly deliberative approach to democracy, a central role for an ideal deliberative situation with a similarly central place in democratic practice for activities other than deliberating. I suggest that an ideal deliberation can be used as a template by which to identify actual deviations. Where there are deviations that clearly insert power over reason in favor of a particular point of view, the epistemic core of my approach recommends efforts to restore the epistemic balance. Where this can’t be done by removing the skewing element of power, it can sometimes be done by injecting power on the other side of the question in a way that attempts to neutralize the first, skewing element. The thing to emphasize is that this will often be yet a further departure from the ideal deliberative situation. An abuse of power by a certain company or industry that tilts the political system in their favor might responsibly be answered by a boycott. A boycott is primarily an exercise of brute market power, and not a rational argument in response to the company’s view. I suggest that this is a way to keep deliberation in its place: central to the theory, less central to political practice.

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