Sincerità o Affidabilità? Ripensare la deliberazione

Sincerity is a key notion within theories of deliberative democracy and a crucial feature of those approaches to public reason that give deliberation a prominent role for the functioning of a just and legitimate democratic society. Indeed, among political theorists sympathetic to the deliberative project, sincerity has been defended in various manners: as a fundamental criterion of validity to identify shared social and political understandings (Habermas 1984); as a means to achieve the practical benefit of promoting free discussions and open debates (Freeman 2000, 383); as an expression of respect among citizens stating their equal membership in the sovereign political body (Cohen 1997, 416); as necessary to sustain the value of civic friendship (Rawls 1997); as an antidote to rhetoric and manipulation (Quong 2010, 265); as a tool to secure relations of trust among citizens and to generate shared commitments (Goodin 2008, 263). Despite such common appraisal of sincere behaviour in democratic deliberation, few theorists have put forward a clear and definite account for it. It seems that norms of sincerity are at most stipulated to solve problems linked with the moral integrity of citizens (Greenawalt 1988; Murphy 1998; Eberle 2002) or strategic actions (Cohen 1989). Two interesting and recent attempts to provide a distinct argument for sincerity in deliberation are Schwartzman\u2019s Principle of sincerity in public justification (SPJ) (2011) and Gaus\u2019s defence of convergence in public reason as a way to ensure sincerity in public discourse (2011, 288-292). In this paper, I question and reject both accounts and propose a substitute for principles of sincerity in general. First, I tackle Schwartzman\u2019s proposal and argue that both his conceptual and his instrumental arguments fail. Drawing from a consensus model of public justification, Schwartzman defends an idea of public reasons as shared, in the sense of drawn from a common set of liberal political values. Accordingly, he proposes a principle of sincerity requiring citizens to offer public reasons they sincerely think are sufficient to justify their preferred norms. In this way, citizens can have other convictions and even express such beliefs in public deliberations, as long as they also provide reasons they believe are public and with an adequate justificatory force. To defend such a view, Schwartzman argues that SPJ is simply an instantiation of the principle of respect: if one is to respect her fellow citizens, she ought to conform to the principle of sincerity. However, the problem is that, conceptualized in this way, SPJ is in tension with the wide view of public reason and the related idea of reasoning by conjecture (Rawls 1997) Schwartzman explicitly claims to adhere to (2012). Indeed, the wide view of public reason and the principle of sincerity cannot be both implied by the principle of respect because if reasoning from conjecture is pursuable, it is not true that the principle of respect always require conforming to SPJ. The second argument Schwartzman advances for SPJ is instrumental in kind and it relies on the idea that the principle of sincerity is justified because of the benefits it brings to deliberation. Schwartzman thinks that actual knowledge of the reasons presented in public justification is necessary to deliberate correctly because it permits to uncover mistakes in reasoning and to discover potentially defeating counterarguments to one\u2019s position. However, the link between sincerity and the epistemic enhancement of deliberation cannot help to be controversial for, although it seems reasonable to think that deliberation improves citizens\u2019 decisions, would not it be better to have open access to all sort of reasons? The point is that if what is important of deliberation is to evaluate and verify the correctness of political positions and their justifications, then all reasons should be, in principle, admissible for all reasons could help improving the understanding of political principles and decisions. Turning to Gaus\u2019s argument, I argue that convergence in public justification is incompatible with sincere deliberation because, although some sort of philosophical relativism about reasons might support it, it is nevertheless over-demanding and unrealistic in the actual context of deliberation. Convergence approaches to public justification rely on the idea that for reasons to be public there is no need to enjoy some property of shareability (Vallier 2011), but simply to be intelligible (Gaus 2011). In this sense, public reasons are those reasons that others can recognize as belonging and consistent to one\u2019s sound, and logically coherent, set of beliefs. On this account, when citizens deliberate, they need not to find reasons sharable by all members of the citizenry. Rather, they need to offer each other reasons consistent with their respective sets of beliefs and deep convictions. Although it might seem that convergence in public justification may well be suited to secure sincerity in deliberation, it is not clear whether it can admit of sincerity at all. The problem lies in the actual possibility of being sincere in believing a fellow citizen justified when one does not share her set of beliefs and considers it wrong. To rebut this objection, a convergent theorist can endorse some version of moral relativism, but this move is nevertheless highly problematic. Indeed, it would be incoherent for a political theorist like Gaus, who intends to avoid metaphysical problems and ontological debates (2011, 14, 233), to embrace such a controversial account of the nature of moral reasons. Moreover, the relativist strategy has a problem of practice when it comes to sincere convergence: even if relativism was true, it is not possible to expect all people to endorse it. Accepting a relativist framework of understanding is not only controversial at the philosophical level, but also incredibly demanding of citizens for it would require them to consider the normative status of their beliefs the same as that of others. In discussing both Schwartzman and Gaus\u2019s proposals, I argue that sincerity, as a general notion, is not only controversial, but also practically irrelevant when it comes to the political domain. Indeed, in being linked with citizens\u2019 intentions and inner mental states, which are impossible to ascertain, sincerity ends up being unworkable. As a substitute, I propose a principle of reliability in deliberation (PRD) apt to achieve those political goods theorists have associated with sincerity. Indeed, it is undeniable that manipulation in deliberation is undesirable, given that it constitutes a problem for the relation of trust among citizens and the possibility of deliberation itself. If citizens knew others were to deceive and manipulate them, it would be reasonable for them to refrain from discussion. So, drawing from Audi\u2019s idea of reliability as a virtue (2008), I specify some normative features that citizens need to display in order to secure the possibility of deliberation and shelter mutual trust by excluding the possibility of tricking others. In particular, PRD requires citizens to be stable in their commitment to reach the best justification they can for their claims, and to engage in deliberation after careful reasoning and judgment; to be predictable in their behaviour when they engage in deliberation, in their reactions to other people\u2019s arguments, challenges, and the possibility of disagreement. Finally, it requires them to be correct most of the times, by not advocating for ideas clearly in opposition to general normative understanding, and by not lying about the factual content of the reasons they propose. PDR does not require citizens to offer the best reasons they have, or the ones they find most convincing in defending those laws they want to enact, maintain, or remove. Rather, citizens need to have justifications for their proposals and can offer different reasons to convince their fellow citizens to agree with them, provided that they are not based on false evidence or in opposition with general normative understandings. PRD neither demands nor prohibits citizens to be sincere about their reasons, but it bans cheating. In the end, the reasons why we care about sincerity in deliberation concern the need to prevent manipulation and cheating among citizens. To achieve that, it is sufficient to use a less controversial and more parsimonious concept than that of sincerity, as the notion of reliability is

Sincerità e affidabilità nel discorso pubblico : un problema del liberalismo giustificativo

L\u2019autrice analizza criticamente il principio di sincerit\ue0 proposto dai liberali giustificativi e mostra come esso non possa non essere considerato problematico e inefficace perch\ue9 fondamentalmente instabile e privo di una giustificazione coerente. In particolare, l\u2019ipotesi \ue8 che un tale principio sia insoddisfacente perch\ue9 il concetto stesso di sincerit\ue0 \ue8 controverso. La nozione di sincerit\ue0, infatti, \ue8 sfuggente e irrilevante dal punto di vista pratico poich\ue9 si riferisce agli stati mentali e alla vita interiore degli individui, che non sono mai veramente conoscibili. In questo senso, la critica non riguarda solo il liberalismo giustificativo e le diverse versioni del principio di sincerit\ue0 a esso associate, ma l\u2019idea stessa di utilizzare un concetto come quello di sincerit\ue0 nell\u2019ambito politico: l\u2019autrice pensa che, data la sua inservibilit\ue0 pratica, la sincerit\ue0 non possa essere un criterio adatto alla deliberazione pubblica e alla giustificazione di leggi e principi politici. Come sostituto del principio di sincerit\ue0 dei liberali giustificativi e a difesa di un discorso pubblico democratico, scevro da manipolazioni e imbrogli, si propone e si cerca di giustificare un principio di affidabilit\ue0 nella deliberazione, capace di assicurare relazioni di fiducia tra cittadini di una stessa societ\ue0 e un certo livello di stabilit\ue0 nel discorso pubblico. Il fine del saggio \ue8 di proporre una riflessione sull\u2019idea di sincerit\ue0 per avanzare criteri normativi per un\u2019ideale cittadinanza per societ\ue0 democratiche contemporanee profondamente caratterizzate dal disaccordo

The objective reason view defended

In this paper, I am interested in providing some defense of what has been called \u201cThe objective Reason View\u201d, namely the idea that justificatory reasons are agreement-independent (and, in turn, agreements do not affect the normative justification of political authority) for they are considerations given by or stemming from objective facts. To do so, I build on Fabienne Peter\u2019s paper \u201cFrom Objective Reason to Public Reason\u201d. I challenge some of her arguments and attempt to highlight some problems of the public reason view (without neglecting those affecting my preferred view, namely the objective reason one). Indeed, my aim is to propose a comparison between the two views in order to analyse and evaluate them. Philosophy is not an \u201call win\u201d game, all perspectives have their problems and the point is to understand which are those we care the most about. I want to argue that the objective reason view score more plausibility points than the public reason view, all things considered

Respect and Justification: a problem for public reason liberalism

Public reason liberalism is the most influential position in the debate concerning the problem of reasonable pluralism. The core of this account relies on the idea that coercion must be justified to all citizens with reasons they can reasonably be expected to accept. Citizens ought to discipline themselves in public discourse because respect triggers a duty to support only those laws for which they have public justification. The notion of respect is pivotal to all forms of public reason liberalism, both consensus and convergence, for it frames the very idea of public justification (Rawls 1993; Gaus 2011). However, the concept of respect as used within public reason liberalism is controversial. In this paper, I question public reason liberals\u2019 defence of the link between respect and public justification, I argue that the idea of respect thereby employed turn out to be authoritarian, and show that the problem rests on a misunderstanding about justification. First, I tackle Rawls\u2019s account and argue that his famous distinction between reasonable and unreasonable citizens is problematic because it undercuts its own scope of justifying a political conception of justice to all. Indeed, since public justification is realized by agreement on shared reasons, only those reasonable citizens who prioritize political values over their comprehensive doctrine are given reasons they can accept. In this sense, since public justification is not possible with unreasonable citizens, the requirements mandated by respect do not hold towards them. Secondly, I engage with Gaus\u2019s latest theory and argue that his intelligibility requirement set on evaluative standpoints (2011, 279-282) is problematic. Given that the term \u201cintelligibility\u201d, as it is presented by Gaus, seems to denote more than mere comprehension, and that public justification should represent a test only for intelligible standpoints, the theory ends up being in contrast with his own idea that it is wrong to subject someone to rules she does not have reason to endorse. Both Rawls\u2019s and Gaus\u2019s theory intend the notion of respect as a duty to resist the temptation to subject others to one\u2019s private judgment. However, although it is correct to think that there is something morally objectionable to coerce another on the basis of one\u2019s beliefs, there is nothing wrong to coerce another on the basis of what I call one\u2019s reasons, namely on those features of the circumstances that make it the case for a certain law or policy to be wrong (Raz 1998; Enoch 2013). Since there is nothing authoritarian about issuing a certain demand on the basis that it is the case, not to abide by the rules of public justification is not by itself disrespectful. Moreover, in general, it seems that public reason liberals take for granted the idea that to respect one is to provide her with reasons she can accept. However, they fail to provide a real argument for such a claim and mostly rely on its intuitive appeal and misunderstand what justification is really about. Without a convincing argument from respect, public reason liberalism fails

Rispetto e giustificazione pubblica da una prospettiva oggettivista

The core of justificatory liberalism relies on the idea that coercion must be justified to all citizens with reasons they can reasonably be expected to accept. Citizens ought to disci-pline themselves in public discourse because respect triggers a duty requiring them to sup-port only those norms that enjoy public justification. In this article, I question the argu-ments justificatory liberals use to defend the link between respect and public justification, both in their consensus and convergence version. I argue that the idea of respect they em-ploy runs against their own premises in being inevitably authoritarian and that the re-quirements of public justification foster some disrespectful attitudes among disagreeing cit-izens. I contend not only that justificatory liberals lack an argument for the idea that to re-spect one person is to provide her with reasons she can accept, but also that the problem concerns a misunderstanding about justification. Although it is correct to think that there is something morally objectionable to coerce another on the basis of one\u2019s beliefs, there is nothing wrong in coercing another because things are such and such (as one believes). I conclude by drawing a distinction between justificatory liberalism and objectivist liberalism and their different conceptions of respect

Deliberation without sincerity

Sincerity is a key notion within theories of deliberative democracy and a crucial feature of those approaches to public reason that give deliberation a prominent role for the functioning of a just and legitimate democratic society. Indeed, among political theorists sympathetic to the deliberative project, sincerity has been defended in various manners: as a fundamental criterion of validity to identify shared social and political understandings (Habermas 1984); as a means to achieve the practical benefit of promoting free discussions and open debates (Freeman 2000, 383); as an expression of respect among citizens stating their equal membership in the sovereign political body (Cohen 1997, 416); as necessary to sustain the value of civic friendship (Rawls 1997); as an antidote to rhetoric and manipulation (Quong 2010, 265); as a tool to secure relations of trust among citizens and to generate shared commitments (Goodin 2008, 263). Despite such common appraisal of sincere behaviour in democratic deliberation, few theorists have put forward a clear and definite account for it. It seems that norms of sincerity are at most stipulated to solve problems linked with the moral integrity of citizens (Greenawalt 1988; Murphy 1998; Eberle 2002) or strategic actions (Cohen 1989). Two interesting and recent attempts to provide a distinct argument for sincerity in deliberation are Schwartzman\u2019s Principle of sincerity in public justification (2011) and Gaus\u2019s defence of convergence in public reason as a way to ensure sincerity in public discourse (2011, 288-292). In this paper, I question and reject both accounts. First, I tackle Schwartzman\u2019s proposal and argue that both his conceptual and his instrumental arguments fail. Indeed, his principle is in tension with the idea of the wide view of public reason he defends and with the epistemological virtues he associates with deliberation. Secondly, I turn to Gaus and argue that convergence is incompatible with sincere deliberation because, although some sort of philosophical relativism about reasons might support it, it is nevertheless over-demanding and unrealistic in the actual context of deliberation he wants to address. In discussing such theories, I argue that sincerity, as a general notion, is not only controversial, but also practically irrelevant when it comes to the political domain. Indeed, in being linked with citizens\u2019 intentions and inner mental states, which are impossible to ascertain, sincerity ends up being unworkable. As a substitute, I propose a principle of reliability in deliberation apt to achieve those political goods theorists have associated with sincerity. Drawing from Audi\u2019s idea of reliability as a virtue (2008), I specify some normative features that citizens need to display in order to secure the possibility of deliberation and shelter mutual trust by excluding the possibility of tricking others. In the end, the reasons why we care about sincerity in deliberation concern the need to prevent manipulation and cheating among citizens. To achieve that, it is sufficient to use a less controversial and more parsimonious concept than that of sincerity, as the notion of reliability is

Should Political Philosophy be done without metaethics?

In recent years, some theorists have raised their distrust in metaethical research. Such worries include concerns about the intelligibility of metaethical discourse; claims about the meaninglessness of metaethical discussions; and finally the idea that metaethical debates are to be addressed by substantive theorizing only, namely that metaethical discussions are actually dealt by engaging in first-order, normative discourse. According to these worries, metaethics is either useless or just is a part of normative ethics and metaethicists are either hopeless, or simply in denial about what they are doing. Prominent examples of such convictions are Roanld Dworkin [Dworkin 1996, 2011] and Catherine Korsgaard [Korsgaard 2003]. I call this \u201cmetaethical quietism\u201d. Such aggressive attitude has also been prominent in mainstream political philosophy since Rawls. According to Rawls, political philosophy should not engage with questions of the ontology of morals, or metaethics in general, to be more practically useful. In this paper, I question whether quietism can be successful and argue that metaethical inquiry may be useful to normative theorizing. The paper proceeds as follows: first, I consider and rebut Dworkin and Korsgaard\u2019s arguments for metaethical quietism. Second, I compare them to Rawls\u2019s political liberalism and argue that, despite some common aims, Rawls\u2019s approach differs significantly from theirs. Finally, I consider whether metaethics can be useful to political philosophy. In attacking metaethics, Dworkin and Korsgaard have different aims. The first wants to rule out all forms of scepticism about values made possible by defending any kind of Archimedeanism. A theory is Archimedean if it purports to \u201cstand outside a whole body of belief and to judge it as a whole from premises or attitudes that owe nothing to it\u201d [Dworkin 1996, 88]. The latter, on the contrary, presents a theory of the practical function of moral concept as a broad charge against moral realism, intended as a metaphysical theory about normative entities, which exist independently of moral concepts. Despite such differences, they can be considered metaethical quietists for they share three main claims: 1) there is no metaethical grounding for normative ethics, thus morality is autonomous; 2) we should give up on metaphysics, moral theories need to be metaphysically light ; 3) moral philosophy is to provide normative judgments and practical solutions to moral problems and, thus, moral philosophy is to be considered eminently practical. Considering these three points, it might be possible to wonder whether Rawls\u2019s political liberalism should be considered a form of metaethical quietism. Indeed, holding that non-moral theses are irrelevant to the justification of moral theories, Rawls defends moral theory as a discipline independent from any philosophical inquiry [Rawls 1974]. Moreover, proposing a freestanding conception, neutral towards any moral and philosophical doctrine to provide the basis for an overlapping consensus, political liberalism explicitly aims not to appeal to any metaphysics to sustain itself [Rawls 1993]. Finally, political liberalism employs political constructivism, which \u201cdeliberately stays on the surface, philosophically speaking\u201d [Rawls, 1985]. However, despite these apparent similarities, there is a fundamental difference between Rawls\u2019s account and Dworkin and Korsgaard\u2019s metaethical quietism. Although Dworkin and Korsgaard present their positions as if they were opposing metaethics as a theoretical enterprise, they cannot help to work within its field. Dworkin presents a two-step argument against metaethics contending that the distinction between normative and metaethical claims dissolves because it is not possible to have a metaethical proposition neutral about the content of substantive moral claims. Metaethics fails to be neutral, the argument goes, if two conditions apply: if it is possible to find a plausible normative interpretation of metaethical claims; and it is also possible to demonstrate that metaethical claims are philosophically distinct from normative propositions. Contra Dworkin, it is important to stress that providing cases in which the two conditions apply is not enough to prove that all possible metaethical claims are in fact normative. Consider the following proposition \u201cthere is a right answer to the question whether X is morally right\u201d. This is a distinct metaethical claim, not committed to any normative view for it is consistent with both X being morally right, or X being morally wrong. More generally, it is possible to wonder whether anti-Archimedeanism can be defended without taking an Archimedean standpoint: does not anti-Archimedeanis need Archimedean leverage to be consistent? If Dworkin says that his anti-Archimedeanist position is indeed metaethical, his account is self-refuting. If he succeeds in showing that anti-Archimedeanism is actually a part of normative philosophy, it is not clear why he engages in a debate he considers non-existent. Korsgaard, on the contrary, argues for a sharp contrast between theoretical and practical reasonings, which have different kinds of content. In this sense, theoretical reasoning purports to describe reality, whether practical reasoning refers to the solution of a practical problem. Korsgaard seems to think that since theoretical and practical reasoning are different in content and metaethics regards itself as a theoretical discipline, it is misplaced. Indeed, moral concepts are practical and, thus, \u201cthere is [no] difference between doing metaethics and doing normative or practical ethics.\u201d [Korsgaard 2003, 121] However, if Korsgaard is aiming to go \u201cbeyond\u201d metaethical debates, it is not clear why she engages with and directly challenges traditional metaethical theories, such as realism and expressivism. Moreover, it is possible to argue that Korsgaard is just defending a peculiar metaethical theory, a sort of response-dependence realism [McPherson 2010]. Dworkin and Korsgaard endorse metaethical quietism in order to defend the idea that normative ethics is autonomous in the sense of not being influenced by non-moral theories. However, their views cannot really do without metaethics, so I now consider whether Rawls\u2019s political constructivism can achieve such aim. Rawls claims the autonomy of political philosophy and he maintains his political conception to be \u201crobust\u201d, so that changes in other related fields of inquiry do not challenge its justification. In this sense, Rawls is more radical than Dworkin and Korsgaard for he argues for the independence of political philosophy not only from metaethics, but also from substantive moral theories. Moreover, he does not question the value of metaethics per se: from his point of view, citizens can discuss metaethical questions as much as they want. However, a political philosopher who wants to provide a solution to a practical problem (in his case that of the stability for the right reasons in liberal pluralistic societies) needs to avoid such questions. Metaethical issues are misplaced in political philosophy because they rely on a different ground. This is why political constructivism does not compete with moral intuitionism or Kantian constructivism. It simply does not engage with questions about the nature of moral propositions. Here Rawls\u2019s proposal resembles Rorty\u2019s invite to \u201cstop the debate\u201d for it pragmatically does not work [see, Rorty 1982], and his attempt to reconcile different worldviews looks like a Wittgensteinian therapy for liberal societies. I call this, \u201cphilosophical quietism\u201d. It seems that quietism wants to secure the independence and autonomy of normative theory. The discussion above shows that such a strategy is at least problematic. And if metaethics can be considered an independent field of inquiry (though it may not be neutral) it seems that there are certain problems, relevant also to political philosophy, that need to be addressed by metaethical inquiry to be correctly evaluated. One the most long-standing problems in political philosophy is that of disagreement in pluralistic society, but disagreement is a traditional and inescapable subject for metaethicists. Indeed, it makes a difference whether disagreement is dealt from a relativistic, subjectivist, or objectivist perspective for this affects how moral disputes are to be considered and handled. If emotivism turns out to be correct disagreements are to be settled by persuasion, whereas if moral realism is true a posteriori argument are going to be weighted more than if error theory is correct. The point is that if political philosophers are to address the problem of disagreement, metaethical understanding is fundamental to assess the object of inquiry. Different understandings of disagreement, let them be more ore less consistent with our experience, imply different normative answers. In this sense, disagreement is a paradigmatic case for the need of metaethical understanding in political philosophy