Unravelling the Reasonable: Comment on Talisse

Abstract

This comment addresses itself to a central feature of Robert Talisse’s A Pragmatist Philosophy of Democracy (Routledge, 2008). In particular, I raise an objection to three claims: that the search for true beliefs requires extensive epistemic testing, that this requires a democratic social order, and that these first two claims are themselves a philosophically neutral articulation of every reasonable believer’s epistemic practices. I suggest some implications of this doubt for the conception of liberalism Talisse promotes in this book.