Liberal Democracy, Autonomy, and Ideology Critique

Weberman, David

doi:10.5840/soctheorpract19972329

Cited by 10 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…This term is not popular these days, not even among, say, feminists who have been emphasizing the political and philosophical significance of what I would call false consciousness (talk of "deformed desires" or "adaptive preferences" sounds perhaps a touch more historically kosher). For exceptions in contexts very close to ours, see Walker (1995: 461), Weberman (1997), andCudd (2006). Here's Steven Lukes (2005: 13): "To say that such power involves the concealment of people's 'real interests' by 'false consciousness' evokes bad historical memories and can appear both patronizing and presumptuous, but there is, I argue, nothing inherently illiberal or paternalist about these notions, which, So let me mention the following important qualifications.…”

Section: Why It Matters Whether Adaptive Preferences Are Less Than Fu...supporting

confidence: 51%

“…98. Weberman (1997) and Terlazzo (2016: 221-22n46) make similar points. But nothing here is obvious.…”

Section: Back To Consent and Politicsmentioning

confidence: 77%

“…60. Weberman (1997) puts forward what he takes to be a historical nonmoral account. But his account utilizes such concepts as social domination, and it's hard to see how they in turn can be understood without a significant moral or at least normative component.…”

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confidence: 99%

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False Consciousness for Liberals, Part I: Consent, Autonomy, and Adaptive Preferences

Enoch

2020

The Philosophical Review

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The starting point regarding consent has to be that it is both extremely important, and that it is often suspicious. In this article, the author tries to make sense of both of these claims, from a largely liberal perspective, tying consent, predictably, to the value of autonomy and distinguishing between autonomy as sovereignty and autonomy as nonalienation. The author then discusses adaptive preferences, claiming that they suffer from a rationality flaw (they are typically formed for reasons of the wrong kind) but that it's not clear that this flaw matters morally or politically. What matters is whether they suffer from an autonomy flaw. To answer this question, the author develops an account of autonomy failure, according to which a preference is nonautonomous if an injustice played an appropriate role in its causal history. The author then discusses the moral implications—and in an initial way, the political ones as well—of proclaiming a preference, or consent based on it, nonautonomous in this way.

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Section: Why It Matters Whether Adaptive Preferences Are Less Than Fu...supporting

confidence: 51%

“…98. Weberman (1997) and Terlazzo (2016: 221-22n46) make similar points. But nothing here is obvious.…”

Section: Back To Consent and Politicsmentioning

confidence: 77%

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False Consciousness for Liberals, Part I: Consent, Autonomy, and Adaptive Preferences

Enoch

2020

The Philosophical Review

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“…Ideology critique, then, seeks ways to interrogate and explain ideological phenomena. Weberman (1997) points out that "meaning" in the context of ideology critique is associated not only with propositional logic, but with desires and attachments as well. Thus, ideology critique takes in more than simply cognitive content.…”

Section: Bargaining With the Machinementioning

confidence: 99%

Bargaining with the Machine: A Framework for Describing Encounters with Surveillance Technologies

Pallitto

2013

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Relationships between surveillance and inequality (e.g., as surveillance is used for domination, as surveillance affects subjects’ life-chances) have been a central concern of surveillance studies scholars. This concern with inequalities that are produced and sustained by surveillance runs parallel to the longstanding interest of many social theorists more generally with the unequal workings of power in nominally free societies. How is inequality sustained without resort to force? Why do people consent to subjugation? Some form of ideology critique is often employed to answer such questions. However, the work of Rosen (1996) and others has cast serious doubt on the ability of ideology critique to make good on its explanatory claims. Thus, it is necessary to explore other theoretical constructs that carry greater explanatory force as theorists investigate the disadvantageous effects of surveillance on its targets. In this essay, I argue for the use of an alternative framework – a bargaining paradigm – to articulate what happens in individual subjects’ encounters with surveillance technologies. “Bargaining” shifts the focus from systematic domination of social groups to individually situated subjects while also ascribing agency to individuals rather than depicting them as merely helpless victims of larger forces.

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“…Thus, as democrats, we should be wary of individual preferences that reinforce the oppression of women. 20 Other non-autonomous preference-formation processes should also give the democrat some reason to pause, at least. Peer-pressure, addictions, and the effect of (possibly unjust, immoral, or irrational) social norms on persons can cause them to prefer, or to express themselves as if they prefer, options that absent those constraints they would not prefer.…”

Section: Some Preferences Are Non-autonomously Formedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preference, Rationality, and Democratic Theory

Cudd¹

2002

The Blackwell Guide to Social and Political Philosophy

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Liberal Democracy, Autonomy, and Ideology Critique

Cited by 10 publications

References 0 publications

False Consciousness for Liberals, Part I: Consent, Autonomy, and Adaptive Preferences

False Consciousness for Liberals, Part I: Consent, Autonomy, and Adaptive Preferences

Bargaining with the Machine: A Framework for Describing Encounters with Surveillance Technologies

Preference, Rationality, and Democratic Theory

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