Science and Public Reason

Science and Public Reason PDF Author: Sheila Jasanoff
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136288406
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
This collection of essays by Sheila Jasanoff explores how democratic governments construct public reason, that is, the forms of evidence and argument used in making state decisions accountable to citizens. The term public reason as used here is not simply a matter of deploying principled arguments that respect the norms of democratic deliberation. Jasanoff investigates what states do in practice when they claim to be reasoning in the public interest. Reason, from this perspective, comprises the institutional practices, discourses, techniques and instruments through which governments claim legitimacy in an era of potentially unbounded risks—physical, political, and moral. Those legitimating efforts, in turn, depend on citizens’ acceptance of the forms of reasoning that governments offer. Included here therefore is an inquiry into the conditions that lead citizens of democratic societies to accept policy justification as being reasonable. These modes of public knowing, or “civic epistemologies,” are integral to the constitution of contemporary political cultures. Methodologically, the book is grounded in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). It uses in-depth qualitative studies of legal and political practices to shed light on divergent cross-cultural constructions of public reason and the reasoning political subject. The collection as a whole contributes to democratic theory, legal studies, comparative politics, geography, and ethnographies of modernity, as well as STS.

Science and Public Reason

Science and Public Reason PDF Author: Sheila Jasanoff
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136288406
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Get Book Here

Book Description
This collection of essays by Sheila Jasanoff explores how democratic governments construct public reason, that is, the forms of evidence and argument used in making state decisions accountable to citizens. The term public reason as used here is not simply a matter of deploying principled arguments that respect the norms of democratic deliberation. Jasanoff investigates what states do in practice when they claim to be reasoning in the public interest. Reason, from this perspective, comprises the institutional practices, discourses, techniques and instruments through which governments claim legitimacy in an era of potentially unbounded risks—physical, political, and moral. Those legitimating efforts, in turn, depend on citizens’ acceptance of the forms of reasoning that governments offer. Included here therefore is an inquiry into the conditions that lead citizens of democratic societies to accept policy justification as being reasonable. These modes of public knowing, or “civic epistemologies,” are integral to the constitution of contemporary political cultures. Methodologically, the book is grounded in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). It uses in-depth qualitative studies of legal and political practices to shed light on divergent cross-cultural constructions of public reason and the reasoning political subject. The collection as a whole contributes to democratic theory, legal studies, comparative politics, geography, and ethnographies of modernity, as well as STS.

Religion and Public Reason

Religion and Public Reason PDF Author: Maureen Junker-Kenny
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110347326
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
This book compares three approaches to public reason and to the public space accorded to religions: the liberal platform of an overlapping consensus proposed by John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas’s discourse ethical reformulation of Kant’s universalism and its realization in the public sphere, and the co-founding role which Paul Ricoeur attributes to the particular traditions that have shaped their cultures and the convictions of citizens. The premises of their positions are analysed under four aspects: (1) the normative framework which determines the specific function of public reason; (2) their anthropologies and theories of action; (3) the dimensions of social life and its concretization in a democratic political framework; (4) the different views of religion that follow from these factors, including their understanding of the status of metaphysical and religious truth claims, and the role of religion as a practice and conviction in a pluralist society. Recent receptions and critiques in English and German are brought into conversation: philosophers and theologians discuss the scope of public reason, and the task of translation from faith traditions, as well as the role they might have in the diversity of world cultures for shaping a shared cosmopolitan horizon.

Natural Law and Public Reason

Natural Law and Public Reason PDF Author: Robert P. George
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 9780878407668
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
"Public reason" is one of the central concepts in modern liberal political theory. As articulated by John Rawls, it presents a way to overcome the difficulties created by intractable differences among citizens' religious and moral beliefs by strictly confining the place of such convictions in the public sphere. Identifying this conception as a key point of conflict, this book presents a debate among contemporary natural law and liberal political theorists on the definition and validity of the idea of public reason. Its distinguished contributors examine the consequences of interpreting public reason more broadly as "right reason," according to natural law theory, versus understanding it in the narrower sense in which Rawls intended. They test public reason by examining its implications for current issues, confronting the questions of abortion and slavery and matters relating to citizenship. This energetic exchange advances our understanding of both Rawls's contribution to political philosophy and the lasting relevance of natural law. It provides new insights into crucial issues facing society today as it points to new ways of thinking about political theory and practice.

Reconstructing Public Reason

Reconstructing Public Reason PDF Author: Eric MacGilvray
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674015425
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
MacGilvray argues that we should shift our attention away from the problem of identifying uncontroversial public ends in the present and toward the problem of evaluating potentially controversial public ends through collective inquiry over time.

Public Reason and Courts

Public Reason and Courts PDF Author: Silje A. Langvatn
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108487351
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 397

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Book Description
A comprehensive study of public reason for courts, with contributions from leading scholars in philosophy, political science and law.

The Law of Peoples

The Law of Peoples PDF Author: John Rawls
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674005426
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
This work consists of two parts: The Idea of Public Reason Revisited and The Law of Peoples. Taken together, they are the culmination of more than 50 years of reflection on liberalism and on some pressing problems of our times.

Experiments in Democracy

Experiments in Democracy PDF Author: Benjamin J. Hurlbut
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231542917
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
Human embryo research touches upon strongly felt moral convictions, and it raises such deep questions about the promise and perils of scientific progress that debate over its development has become a moral and political imperative. From in vitro fertilization to embryonic stem cell research, cloning, and gene editing, Americans have repeatedly struggled with how to define the moral status of the human embryo, whether to limit its experimental uses, and how to contend with sharply divided public moral perspectives on governing science. Experiments in Democracy presents a history of American debates over human embryo research from the late 1960s to the present, exploring their crucial role in shaping norms, practices, and institutions of deliberation governing the ethical challenges of modern bioscience. J. Benjamin Hurlbut details how scientists, bioethicists, policymakers, and other public figures have attempted to answer a question of great consequence: how should the public reason about aspects of science and technology that effect fundamental dimensions of human life? Through a study of one of the most significant science policy controversies in the history of the United States, Experiments in Democracy paints a portrait of the complex relationship between science and democracy, and of U.S. society's evolving approaches to evaluating and governing science's most challenging breakthroughs.

Free Public Reason

Free Public Reason PDF Author: Fred D'Agostino
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195097610
Category : Justification (Theory of knowledge)
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Free Public Reason examines the idea of public justification, stressing its importance but also questioning the coherence of the concept itself. Although public justification is employed in the work of theorists such as John Rawls, Jeremy Waldron, Thomas Nagel, and others, it has received little attention on its own as a philosophical concept. D'Agostino shows that the ideal behind this concept is constituted by many, sometimes competing, demands and that no formal way of weighing these demands can be identified. The notion of public justification itself is thus shown to be contestable. In demonstrating this, D'Agostino questions many current political theories that rely on this concept. Having broken down the foundations of public justification, D'Agostino then draws on the ideas of Dworkin and Kuhn as well as insights from feminism and post-modernism to offer an alternative model of how a workable consensus on its meaning might be reached through the interactions of a community of interpreters or delegates at a constitutional convention.

Public Reason

Public Reason PDF Author: Fred D'Agostino
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 502

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Book Description
The essays that make up this volume, explore the idea of public reason. The task of identifying a distinctively public reason has become pressing in our deeply pluralistic society, just because doubt has arisen whether what is good reasoning for one must be good reasoning for all. Examining the theories of Hobbes and Kant, and also using more recent work such as the comments and theories of John Rawls and David Gauthier, this book explores aspects of the idea of public reason. It explains public reason, and discusses areas such as pluralism, reasonable disagreement, moral conflict, political legitimacy, public justification and post-modernism.

Science and Public Reason

Science and Public Reason PDF Author: Sheila Jasanoff
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415524865
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
This book offers an empirically detailed, cross-nationally comparative account of the institutional logics and practices through which modern democratic governments construct public reason, that is, the forms of evidence and argument designed to persuade publics that legal and policy decisions are founded on reliable knowledge and expertise.