Sustaining democracy: the moral burden of citizenship

When debates become polarised, it can be tempting to treat political opponents as obstacles rather than fellow citizens. Yet as Robert B. Talisse explains, this refusal to engage with the other side not only carries negative implications for democracy, but also produces ineffective, conformist coalitions that are incapable of realising their political aims. If citizens want to achieve their goals in a democracy, they must find a way to work with their opponents

Semantic Descent: More Trouble for Civility

Civility is widely regarded as a duty of democratic citizenship. This Article identifies a difficulty inherent within the enterprise of developing an adequate conception of civility. Challenging the idea civility is the requirement to remain calm, peaceable, or dispassionate in political debate, it is argued that that civility is instead the requirement to address one’s political arguments to one’s interlocutors. In this way, civility is a second-order requirement, a norm governing our conduct in political disagreement. From there, a conceptual problem for civility so understood is raised, the problem of semantic descent. It is argued that any plausible conception of civility is prone to being “weaponized,” transformed into a partisan device for incivility. The general upshot is that as important as civility is for a well-functioning democracy, its usefulness as a diagnostic tool for repairing political dysfunctions is limited

Epistemic Abstainers, Epistemic Martyrs, and Epistemic Converts

An intuitive view regarding the epistemic significance of disagreement says that when epistemic peers disagree, they should suspend judgment. This abstemious view seems to embody a kind of detachment appropriate for rational beings; moreover, it seems to promote a kind of conciliatory inclination that makes for irenic and cooperative further discussion. Like many strategies for cooperation, however, the abstemious view creates opportunities for free-riding. In this essay, the authors argue that the believer who suspends judgment in the face of peer disagreement is vulnerable to a kind of manipulation on the part of more tenacious peers. The result is that the abstemious view can have the effect of encouraging dogmatism

Semantic Descent: More Trouble for Civility

Civility is widely regarded as a duty of democratic citizenship. This Article identifies a difficulty inherent within the enterprise of developing an adequate conception of civility. Challenging the idea civility is the requirement to remain calm, peaceable, or dispassionate in political debate, it is argued that that civility is instead the requirement to address one’s political arguments to one’s interlocutors. In this way, civility is a second-order requirement, a norm governing our conduct in political disagreement. From there, a conceptual problem for civility so understood is raised, the problem of semantic descent. It is argued that any plausible conception of civility is prone to being “weaponized,” transformed into a partisan device for incivility. The general upshot is that as important as civility is for a well-functioning democracy, its usefulness as a diagnostic tool for repairing political dysfunctions is limited