Science as Public Reason and the Controversiality Objection

Kappel, Klemens

doi:10.1007/s11158-021-09503-6

Cited by 7 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Torcello says that ‘it is important that we take care to limit our public arguments to those consistent with scientific consensus when arguing in the public sphere’ 10 (p 204). Reid 11 and Kappel 12 hold similar views.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…In such cases, the thought is that we can be ‘dogmatic’ and appeal to the authority of the sciences. While there are nuanced variations among the different versions of the scientific consensus view, the idea is perhaps most succinctly put by Kappel who says that ‘some policy-relevant factual proposition P is part of public reason if and only if there is consensus about P among scientific experts in the relevant well-functioning scientific institutions’ 12 (p 2).…”

Section: Empirical Claims In Public Justificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Public justification and expert disagreement over non-pharmaceutical interventions for the COVID-19 pandemic

Dahlquist

Kugelberg

2021

J Med Ethics

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A wide range of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) have been introduced to stop or slow down the COVID-19 pandemic. Examples include school closures, environmental cleaning and disinfection, mask mandates, restrictions on freedom of assembly and lockdowns. These NPIs depend on coercion for their effectiveness, either directly or indirectly. A widely held view is that coercive policies need to be publicly justified—justified to each citizen—to be legitimate. Standardly, this is thought to entail that there is a scientific consensus on the factual propositions that are used to support the policies. In this paper, we argue that such a consensus has been lacking on the factual propositions justifying most NPIs. Consequently, they would on the standard view be illegitimate. This is regrettable since there are good reasons for granting the state the legitimate authority to enact NPIs under conditions of uncertainty. The upshot of our argument is that it is impossible to have both the standard interpretation of the permissibility of empirical claims in public justification and an effective pandemic response. We provide an alternative view that allows the state sufficient room for action while precluding the possibility of it acting without empirical support.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Section: Empirical Claims In Public Justificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public justification and expert disagreement over non-pharmaceutical interventions for the COVID-19 pandemic

Dahlquist

Kugelberg

2021

J Med Ethics

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“…As a normative political principle or an exegesis of Rawls, CSPR is fairly popular among Rawlsians thinking about expertise (Torcello 2011;Bellolio 2018;Kappel 2021). It is therefore a natural starting point for a Rawlsian justification of scientific hedging.…”

Section: Consensus Science As Public Reasonmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One can also object to CSPR's "sufficiency claim": the idea that all scientific claims about which there is consensus can enter in to public justification. A number of authors have rejected this claim (Galston 1995;Jønch-Clausen and Kappel 2016;Reid 2019;Bellolio 2019;Kappel 2021). Jønch-Clausen and Kappel (2016) consider what happens when the general public rejects a scientific consensus.…”

Section: Consensus Science As Public Reasonmentioning

confidence: 99%

To Hedge or Not to Hedge: Scientific Claims and Public Justification

Ward,

Creel

2024

Philos. sci.

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Scientific hedges are communicative devices used to qualify and weaken scientific claims. Gregor Betz (2013) has argued – unconvincingly, we think – that hedging can rescue the value-free ideal for science. Nevertheless, Betz is onto something when he suggests there are political principles that recommend scientists hedge public-facing claims. In this paper, we recast this suggestion using the notion of public justification. We formulate and reject a Rawlsian argument that locates the justification for hedging in its ability to forge consensus. On our alternative proposal, hedging is often justified because it renders scientific claims as publicly accessible reasons.

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“…While political liberals might well lament this negative extrinsic outcome of their approach, they may still also continue to defend its intrinsic moral merits by suggesting that citizens who do not accept COVID policies on the basis of scientific reasons—and require specifically religious reasons to be persuaded to comply—are acting unreasonably in doing so ( Kappel, 2021 ). Since (as noted above) political liberals think that it is only morally essential that “reasonable” citizens should be able to give their autonomous consent to public policies, the (alleged) “unreasonability” of resistant religious citizens would function (within political liberals’ framework) to morally “offset” the negative outcomes that result from those citizens’ failure to accept salient COVID policies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Consensus, convergence, and COVID-19: The ethical role of religious reasons in leaders’ response to COVID-19

Coetsee

2022

Leadership

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Focusing on current efforts to persuade the public to comply with COVID-19 best practices, this essay examines what role appeals to religious reasons should (or should not) play in leaders’ attempts to secure followers’ acceptance of group policies in contexts of religious and moral pluralism. While appeals to followers’ religious commitments can be helpful in promoting desirable public health outcomes, they also raise moral concerns when made in the contexts of secular institutions with religiously diverse participants. In these contexts, leaders who appeal to religious reasons as bases of justification for imposing COVID policies may seem to fail to show respect for the autonomy of those who lack the relevant religious commitments, and—especially when a leader herself rejects the religious commitments she makes reference to to persuade others—her appeals to religious reasons may seem to constitute ethically problematic exercises of manipulation. This essay draws on the resources of contemporary political philosophy to analyze and respond to these concerns and concludes that they are not sufficiently well-founded. To the contrary, it contends that there are good moral grounds for leaders to appeal to religious reasons as (partial) bases of justification for why followers should accept COVID policies. In the course of the argument, this essay also highlights how contemporary political theory can enrich discussions about the distinctions between coercion, manipulation, and leadership. It thereby give insight not only into the ethics of leadership but also—at least by the lights of central theories of leadership like that of James MacGregor Burns (1978)—into whether and how appeals to religious reasons can figure into genuine exercises of leadership, in contrast with mere instances of the wielding of social power.

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Science as Public Reason and the Controversiality Objection

Cited by 7 publications

References 26 publications

Public justification and expert disagreement over non-pharmaceutical interventions for the COVID-19 pandemic

Public justification and expert disagreement over non-pharmaceutical interventions for the COVID-19 pandemic

To Hedge or Not to Hedge: Scientific Claims and Public Justification

Consensus, convergence, and COVID-19: The ethical role of religious reasons in leaders’ response to COVID-19

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