Moderate Idealization and Information Acquisition Responsibilities

Abstract

I argue that advocates of moderate epistemic idealization need some standards against which they can determine whether a particular individual P has a responsibility to acquire some specific piece of information α. Such a specification is necessary for the purpose of determining whether a reason R, the recognition of which depends on accounting for α, can legitimately be ascribed to P. To this end, I propose an initial sketch of a criterion that may be helpful in illuminating the conditions in which P might be said to have a responsibility to take α into account when searching for reasons to act or believe. I worry that reason ascriptions that are based on information acquisition expectations which are not captured by this criterion (and, hence, not legitimate reason ascriptions) may be open to charges of authoritarianism, especially when such a reason ascription prompts one person to demand that another act in a way that is responsive to the ascribed reason(s).

Public reason, non-public reasons, and the accessibility requirement

“…21. Some standards will arguably be society dependent (Tyndal 2016). I leave open the question of which, if any, standards could properly be construed as transcending societal norms, and hence be agent-neutral in a more robust sense.…”

Convergence liberalism and the problem of disagreement concerning public justification

“…This specification elucidates the standards of reasonableness, intelligibility and idealisation, in order to identify the reasons that citizens have for and against laws, and thus what laws are justified to them. For example, this specification must include an account of what Jason Tyndal (2015) calls ‘information acquisition responsibilities’. One’s view of when citizens have a responsibility to acquire particular pieces of information, such as scientific evidence, will dictate what information one imputes to the moderately idealised versions of those citizens.…”