In this paper I analyze C?cile Laborde?s conception of justificatory secularism. Laborde points out that in her formulation and defense of the conception of justificatory secularism, she follows Rawls? conception of political liberalism to a certain extent. For that reason, I first provide a sketch of Rawls? conception of political liberalism. Then I focus on justificatory secularism, trying to show to what extent it displays similarities with the conception of political liberalism, but also how it differs. I am interested in whether justificatory secularism represents a better alternative to the conception of political liberalism or whether these two conceptions should be considered complementary.
In her book Democracy and Truth: The Conflict between Political and Epistemic Virtues, Snjezana Prijic Samarzija advocates a stance that not only political, but also epistemic values are necessary for justification of democracy. Specifically, she mounts defense for one particular type of public deliberation on epistemic grounds. In this paper, I will discuss the following issue: What connects this type of public deliberation to the wider context of (epistemic) justification of democracy? I will attempt to explain why Prijic Samarzija?s stance can be understood as a version of deliberative epistemic instrumentalism and to discuss the role played by the public deliberation within this framework.
In this paper I shall investigate the relationship between public reason and deliberative democracy, mainly as it is presented in Rawls?s later political theory. Against the critics who claim that Rawls has no deliberative democratic theory, I shall argue that he presented a complex view of public deliberation that contains a set of formal and substantive requirements derived from the idea of public reason. My main aim in this paper is to defend and further elaborate the thesis that Rawls?s later political theory is crucially important for deliberative democracy. Furthermore, in light of the recent literature on deliberative democracy, I examine the relevance of Rawls?s view for addressing some current problems, but also look at some limits of the public reason perspective.
In this paper I will discuss a recent attempt of justifying democracy and its authority. It pertains to recently published papers by Niko Kolodny, which complement each other and taken together practically assume a form of a monograph (Kolodny 2014a, Kolodny 2014b). It could be said that Kolodny?s approach is a non-standard one given that he avoids typical ways of justifying democracy. Namely, when a justification of democracy is concerned, Kolodny maintains that it is necessary to offer a kind of an independent justification. It is not so much that he insists that the usual approaches are wrong as much as that an independent justification is necessary in order to discern what it is that gives them their significance. Kolodny?s independent justification of democracy is based on the idea of social equality. In this paper I will try to reconstruct and critically assess Kolodny?s approach by paying special attention to the question of democratic authority.
This paper aims to clarify the meaning and importance of deliberation in theory of democracy. In particular, it will examine two meanings of deliberation, i.e. deliberation as discussion, and deliberation as reflective rationality. The author maintains that both meanings are of great importance for the theorist of democracy interested in solving the paradoxes of voting-based theories.
Someone might vote for an option that on his or her view best promotes his or her self-interest. But, someone might vote for an option that promotes what he or she sees as a common good. The point is that there is no necessity here. Empirically oriented investigations showed that people vote both for self-centered and prosocial reasons. On the standard account of deliberative democracy public discussion is oriented towards achieving the common good. In this paper I shall argue that there is no necessity in supposing that public deliberation will lead to consensus over the common good. If consensus over the common good is neither realistic, nor desirable feature of public deliberation, then the most that practically oriented deliberative democrats might hope for is an open debate which may influence post-deliberative voting. Or so I shall argue. On this account, deliberative democracy makes more probable that outcome of the voting procedure will reflect concerns over the common good. According to this conception the appeal to selfinterest is not ex hypothesi excluded. The role of public deliberation is to bring to the fore both self-centered and prosocial concerns, and eventually to show why prosocial concerns should override private concerns. But there is no necessity here. The most important thing is to have sound procedure for weighting the reasons that speak both for and against self-interested concerns.
Is there a sense in which society makes rational decision in a democratic way that is similar to individual rational decision-making? Social choice theory claims that rational social choice is not possible. Or, at least, that if possible, then the social choice must be dictatorial. I shall present a deliberative solution to the social choice problem. This solution is called deliberative, because it is based on the assumptions of deliberative democracy.
This paper aims to discuss psychological aspect of rational choice theory. The standard version of rational choice rests on a kind of psychology, since it operates with mental states. In standard davidsonian version it is claimed that we explain rational actions by stating proper desires and beliefs that caused the action. We will explore two challenges to the standard version that might be called cultural and naturalistic versions of rational choice. Satz and Ferejohn (1994) challenged standard version by stating that we can provide rational-choice explanations without relying too much on psychological assumptions. They argued in favor of moderate externalism, which should replace thin desire-belief model with thick structuralist conception. According to their model moderate externalism is compatible with realism about psychological states, while at the same time those states need not figure in the best rational choice explanations of actions. The focus of rational choice explanations therefore shifts to non-individual and non-psychological entities, such as firms in explaining economic behavior, parties in explaining functioning of democracy, etc. Although there is a place for psychological states within a moderate externalism, those states are not causally relevant. On Pettit?s account desires and beliefs figure in rational choice explanations merely as ?standby causes?. They explain resilience of certain behavior, not its actual cause. Quite contrary to standard rational choice theory, the programming model (Pettit, 2002) defines the neurophysiological level as more basic in explaining behavior. This means that higher-level psychological states are causally relevant for certain behavior only if certain lower-level neurophysiological producer obtains. In this paper standard rational choice theory will be defended against culturalist and naturalist criticism.
This paper aims to present Searle's conception of institutional reality as an important contribution to contemporary political philosophy and social theory. Its importance notwithstanding, the two objections will be raised concerning the central notion of collective intentionality. Searle thinks of this notion as crucial for explaining human cooperation and social reality. The first objection is that Searle missed to take into account the rationality assumption in his explanation of cooperation and human interaction. The second objection is related to the previous one. Additionally, Serle missed to investigate the role of autonomous moral agent in the procedure of constructing social reality. Given this shortcoming there is no possibility for addressing the question of justice within Serle's theory of institutional reality.
The aim of this paper is to investigate the role of mental causation in the context of rational choice theory. The author defends psychological aspect of rational explanation against the challenge of contemporary reductive materialism.
This paper aims to analyze Downs' conceptions of economic theory of democracy and rational voter. The author will defend the thesis that concept of duty as a solution for the paradox of not voting cannot be successfully integrated into the framework of economic theory of democracy.
The aim of this paper is two-fold: first, to analyze several contemporary theories of democracy, and secondly, to propose a theoretical framework for further investigations based on analyzed theories. The following four theories will be analyzed: pluralism, social choice theory, deliberative democracy and participatory democracy.
