Keith Dowding has developed an account of deliberative persuasion leveraging 'reliability conditi... more Keith Dowding has developed an account of deliberative persuasion leveraging 'reliability conditions' distinguishing persuasion from manipulation. The central idea is that proper reasons offered for deliberation must be shared reasons: reasons the speaker holds as grounding the proposition, and believes should motivate the receiver's assent too. I present two puzzles for this account. The first queries the level at which reasons should be shared to count as persuasive. The second concerns the breadth of reasons for a given proposition-should a speaker have many, only some he sees as shared, may he choose just any of these to present?
Much liberal-democratic thought has concerned itself primarily-even exclusively-with coercive int... more Much liberal-democratic thought has concerned itself primarily-even exclusively-with coercive interference in citizens' lives. But political actors do things-they engage in influential speech, they offer incentives, they mislead other actors, they disrupt the expected functioning of decision-making mechanisms etc.-that fall short of coercion, yet may nonetheless call for normative evaluation and public justification, precisely because they serve to purposively alter citizens' beliefs, intentions and behaviour. With this article, I explicate a conception of political manipulation to capture this sort of interference, and to distinguish individual manipulation from the manipulation of nonindividual agents like committees, institutions and states. The account, beyond being necessary for further work on the ethics of political manipulation, should prove useful to both normative thinkers interested in power, justice and the ethics of democratic decision-making, and empirical scholars in search of a conceptual apparatus to sharpen their investigations into the exercise of subtle forms of political power.
In this paper I develop a critical view of the development and state of research ethics in politi... more In this paper I develop a critical view of the development and state of research ethics in political science. The central problem is that political scientists have inappropriately followed the lead of clinical biomedical research ethics in thinking about their own designs. Specifically I argue that the focus on institutional and group decision-making contexts distinctive to political research presents normative problems not well-addressed by clinical biomedical approaches. First, I make the case that research ethics as it has been conceived won’t capture all that might be wrong in political research designs because some of the potential harms/wrongs will be to political norms and institutions and thus will violate political (though not individual ethical) rights/values/etc. Second, I rebut the challenge that principles of justice and equipoise standard to biomedical research ethics might be suitable for political research. And third, I argue that political theorists and philosophers must involve themselves in empirical political science research ethics if we’re to effectively communicate the stakes of these research designs to practitioners, consumers, funders, and editors who remain steeped in the norms of biomedical research ethics.
Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, Aug 2016
In A Theory of Justice John Rawls argues that self-respect is “perhaps the most important” primar... more In A Theory of Justice John Rawls argues that self-respect is “perhaps the most important” primary good, and that its status as such gives crucial support to controversial ideas like the lexical priority of liberty. Given the importance of these ideas for Rawls, it should be no surprise that they have attracted much critical attention. In response to these critics I give a defense of self-respect that grounds its importance in Rawls's moral conception of the person. I show that this understanding of self-respect goes well beyond giving support to the lexical priority of liberty, also supporting Rawls's still more controversial view of public reason. On my account, taking self-respect seriously requires the coercive enforcement of public reason. This is a novel argument for public reason, in that it grounds the idea in justice as fairness and mandates its coercive enforcement.
Despite a rich and diverse literature on the revitalization of Indigenous legal traditions and co... more Despite a rich and diverse literature on the revitalization of Indigenous legal traditions and constitutional orders, no one has yet looked at modern Aboriginal constitutions in Canada. This essay draws upon the comparative constitutional design and Aboriginal politics literatures to describe and analyze the texts of 14 Aboriginal constitutions. The findings suggest that these constitutional documents are similar to non-Aboriginal ones in many ways. Specifically, both deal with similar political problems and try to express and protect local political cultures. In short, they represent practical attempts to marry Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal constitutional orders and legal traditions in the contemporary context. Students of Aboriginal politics and law should pay greater attention to these documents, and especially to their origins and evolution over time.
Keith Dowding has developed an account of deliberative persuasion leveraging 'reliability conditi... more Keith Dowding has developed an account of deliberative persuasion leveraging 'reliability conditions' distinguishing persuasion from manipulation. The central idea is that proper reasons offered for deliberation must be shared reasons: reasons the speaker holds as grounding the proposition, and believes should motivate the receiver's assent too. I present two puzzles for this account. The first queries the level at which reasons should be shared to count as persuasive. The second concerns the breadth of reasons for a given proposition-should a speaker have many, only some he sees as shared, may he choose just any of these to present?
Much liberal-democratic thought has concerned itself primarily-even exclusively-with coercive int... more Much liberal-democratic thought has concerned itself primarily-even exclusively-with coercive interference in citizens' lives. But political actors do things-they engage in influential speech, they offer incentives, they mislead other actors, they disrupt the expected functioning of decision-making mechanisms etc.-that fall short of coercion, yet may nonetheless call for normative evaluation and public justification, precisely because they serve to purposively alter citizens' beliefs, intentions and behaviour. With this article, I explicate a conception of political manipulation to capture this sort of interference, and to distinguish individual manipulation from the manipulation of nonindividual agents like committees, institutions and states. The account, beyond being necessary for further work on the ethics of political manipulation, should prove useful to both normative thinkers interested in power, justice and the ethics of democratic decision-making, and empirical scholars in search of a conceptual apparatus to sharpen their investigations into the exercise of subtle forms of political power.
In this paper I develop a critical view of the development and state of research ethics in politi... more In this paper I develop a critical view of the development and state of research ethics in political science. The central problem is that political scientists have inappropriately followed the lead of clinical biomedical research ethics in thinking about their own designs. Specifically I argue that the focus on institutional and group decision-making contexts distinctive to political research presents normative problems not well-addressed by clinical biomedical approaches. First, I make the case that research ethics as it has been conceived won’t capture all that might be wrong in political research designs because some of the potential harms/wrongs will be to political norms and institutions and thus will violate political (though not individual ethical) rights/values/etc. Second, I rebut the challenge that principles of justice and equipoise standard to biomedical research ethics might be suitable for political research. And third, I argue that political theorists and philosophers must involve themselves in empirical political science research ethics if we’re to effectively communicate the stakes of these research designs to practitioners, consumers, funders, and editors who remain steeped in the norms of biomedical research ethics.
Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, Aug 2016
In A Theory of Justice John Rawls argues that self-respect is “perhaps the most important” primar... more In A Theory of Justice John Rawls argues that self-respect is “perhaps the most important” primary good, and that its status as such gives crucial support to controversial ideas like the lexical priority of liberty. Given the importance of these ideas for Rawls, it should be no surprise that they have attracted much critical attention. In response to these critics I give a defense of self-respect that grounds its importance in Rawls's moral conception of the person. I show that this understanding of self-respect goes well beyond giving support to the lexical priority of liberty, also supporting Rawls's still more controversial view of public reason. On my account, taking self-respect seriously requires the coercive enforcement of public reason. This is a novel argument for public reason, in that it grounds the idea in justice as fairness and mandates its coercive enforcement.
Despite a rich and diverse literature on the revitalization of Indigenous legal traditions and co... more Despite a rich and diverse literature on the revitalization of Indigenous legal traditions and constitutional orders, no one has yet looked at modern Aboriginal constitutions in Canada. This essay draws upon the comparative constitutional design and Aboriginal politics literatures to describe and analyze the texts of 14 Aboriginal constitutions. The findings suggest that these constitutional documents are similar to non-Aboriginal ones in many ways. Specifically, both deal with similar political problems and try to express and protect local political cultures. In short, they represent practical attempts to marry Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal constitutional orders and legal traditions in the contemporary context. Students of Aboriginal politics and law should pay greater attention to these documents, and especially to their origins and evolution over time.
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Papers by Gregory Whitfield