This paper defends a particular view of explaining reasonable disagreement: the Conceptual View. The Conceptual View is the idea that reasonable disagreements are caused by differences in the way reasonable people use concepts in a cognitive process to make moral and political judgements. But, that type of explanation is caught between either an explanatory weakness or an unparsimonious and potentially self‐undermining theory of concepts. When faced with deep disagreements, theories on the Conceptual View either do not have the resources to explain them, or can only explain them by committing to a completely new theory of concepts where all moral and political concepts are a unique type of concept. This paper shows how the Conceptual View can avoid this dilemma by adopting what I dub the ‘Metalinguistic Strategy’ for explaining reasonable disagreement. The Metalinguistic Strategy uses recent innovations in the philosophy of language on metalinguistic negotiation to explain reasonable disagreements whether they be ordinary or deep disagreements as genuine disagreements whilst maintaining our ordinary ideas about concepts.
One argument often made against capital punishment is that it would involve the risk of killing innocent people and that such a mistake cannot be corrected in ways that other punishments can. I call this the 'Irrevocability Argument'. In this article, I argue that the Irrevocability Argument is symmetrical with respect to capital punishment and active voluntary euthanasia. If the Irrevocability Argument works against capital punishment, then it also works against active voluntary euthanasia and vice versa. The main upshot of this is that it means at least some of the moral positions that people hold to treat them differently are untenable. Those who rely on the Irrevocability Argument as an argument against capital punishment are also committed to it as an argument against active voluntary euthanasia.
London, Routledge. 235pp, £120.00 (hb) £36.99 (pb) One strand of political philosophy has traditionally involved debates about whether utilitarianism, egalitarianism, liberalism, libertarianism, or communitarianism are the correct first-order theories that express what justice requires our fundamental political institutions to be. On another strand of political philosophy, the fact of deep moral and political disagreement in modern societies is taken seriously and so involves debates about the second-order theories that attempt to show the best way to resolve or manage disagreement between first-order theories (e.g. public reason liberalism or political realism, or procedural democracy). It is to this debate between second-order theories that Julian M€ uller's book provides an original and insightful contribution on behalf of polycentric democracy.As M€ uller (p. 2) sees it, modern democracies are 'modus vivendi arrangements' because they are constituted by institutions that are beneficial for resolving conflicts in the face of deep moral and political disagreement, and yet the subject of mutual dissatisfaction, because people would rather move to what they view as the ideal political order if they could persuade those who disagree with them. What causes modus vivendi arrangements is that modern societies contain reasonable people who disagree both about the empirical matters and about the fundamental moral and political matters that would settle what institutions under which they ought to live. According to M€ uller, the problem facing people in democracies is then how best to escape such arrangements? M€ uller's answer in the book is to adopt a polycentric democracy. Chapters 1-5 detail the problem of a modus vivendi, what will count as a solution, and how extant approaches fail. Chapters 6-8 introduce the idea of 'polycentrism' and argue for its epistemic merits over collective deliberation. Chapters 9-10 then apply 'polycentrism' to democracy and make the case for it on the basis of two arguments.To motivate his case for polycentric democracy, M€ uller canvases three representative second-order theories and argues all fail to show how reasonable people can escape a modus vivendi. This involves subjecting John Rawls's theory of Justice as Fairness in A Theory of Justice, Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson's theory of deliberative democracy, and James Buchanan's theory of constitutional economics, to what M€ uller (p. 20) calls the 'representatives of comprehensive doctrines test' (RoCD test). This is a test of whether a realistic jury representing the major philosophical and political factions in a democracy (eg. utilitarians, egalitarians, deliberative democrats, realists, classical liberals, and natural rights libertarians) would find the theory conclusively justified or a Pareto improvement over the current modus vivendi arrangements.
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