Reasonable Disagreement Research Articles

마이클 핸드의 계약주의적 도덕교육론: 비판적 고찰

This paper examines the potential and limitations of a contractarian theory of moral education through a critical analysis of Michael Hand’s theory. In his book, A Theory of Moral Education, Hand endeavors to address the problem of indoctrination in moral education with a novel contractarian justification. According to Hand, there is a reasonable disagreement concerning both contents and justifications of morality, which makes moral education vulnerable to the risk of indoctrination. To avoid this pitfall, it is imperative to justify the core morality that is not subject to a reasonable disagreement. The justification for the core morality is based on the premise that it is the most effective means of mitigating the tendency of human societies to generate conflict and erode cooperation. Hand argues that this contractarian justification enables the formulation of a theory of moral education that does not lead to indoctrination. I identify the key challenges and difficulties associated with Hand’s theory by examining three criticisms: firstly, that indoctrination is inevitable in moral education; secondly, that the contractarian justification is not sufficiently robust; and thirdly, that it narrows the scope of moral education. In conclusion, the contractarian theory of moral education will have a greater success only if it addresses the inherent limitations of contractarian justifications and reflects the findings of moral psychology.

Making Sense of Racial Membership

AbstractWhich individuals belong to a racial group, and what determines membership? I argue that questions about membership are importantly different from questions regarding the ontology of racial categories and invite a distinctive line of inquiry. But there's a formidable challenge to providing determinate and consistent answers to membership questions: Many phenomena documented in sociology and psychology generate reasonable and systematic disagreement about membership that cannot be adjudicated by an influential variety of social constructionism. While the puzzle of racial identity remains, we emerge with a new appreciation for how racial membership is a distinctive part of it.

Strategy Is Only Partly an Illusion: “Relative Foresight” as an Objective Standard for Evaluating Foreign Policy Competence

Abstract Foreign policymakers must grapple with complexity, uncertainty, and subjectivity. These challenges raise the possibility that “strategy is an illusion”: that there is no reliable method for assessing skill at managing international politics. By contrast, we show that researchers can objectively evaluate a critical component of foreign policy competence using a standard we call “relative foresight,” defined as decision-makers’ ability to anticipate consequences of their choices as compared to alternative views based on similar information. Relative foresight can be measured without relying on value judgments or subjective probabilities. By contrast, other common frameworks for gauging foreign policy competence, such as comparing leaders’ behavior to the rational actor model or assessing procedural rationality, almost always leave room for reasonable disagreement. We demonstrate that relative foresight provides a useful tool for evaluating major foreign policy choices through case studies of Barack Obama’s decisions regarding the Afghan Surge and the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound. Our framework has broad implications for research on normative, prescriptive, and descriptive dimensions of foreign policy analysis.

Public Reason, Bioethics, and Public Policy: A Seductive Delusion or Ambitious Aspiration?

Can Rawlsian public reason sufficiently justify public policies that regulate or restrain controversial medical and technological interventions in bioethics (and the broader social world), such as abortion, physician aid-in-dying, CRISPER-cas9 gene editing of embryos, surrogate mothers, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis of eight-cell embryos, and so on? The first part of this essay briefly explicates the central concepts that define Rawlsian political liberalism. The latter half of this essay then demonstrates how a commitment to Rawlsian public reason can ameliorate (not completely resolve) many of the policy disagreements related to bioethically controversial medical interventions today. The goal of public reason is to reduce the size of the disagreement by eliminating features of the disagreement that violate the norms of public reason. The norms of public reason are those norms that are politically necessary to preserve the liberal, pluralistic, democratic character of this society. What remains is reasonable disagreement to be addressed through normal democratic deliberative processes. Specific issues addressed from a public reason perspective include personal responsibility for excessive health costs, the utility of a metaphysical definition of death for organ transplantation, and the moral status of excess embryos generated through IVF and/or their use in medical research.

The ethical canary: narrow reflective equilibrium as a source of moral justification in healthcare priority-setting

Healthcare priority-setting institutions have good reason to want to demonstrate that their decisions are morally justified—and those who contribute to and use the health service have good reason to hope...

Understanding the Limits of Explainable Ethical AI

Artificially intelligent systems are nowadays presented as systems that should, among other things, be explainable and ethical. In parallel, both in the popular culture and within the scientific literature, there is a tendency to anthropomorphize Artificial Intelligence (AI) and reify intelligent systems as persons. From the perspective of machine ethics and ethical AI, this has resulted in the belief that truly autonomous ethical agents (i.e., machines and algorithms) can be defined, and that machines could, by themselves, behave ethically and perform actions that are justified (explainable) from a normative (ethical) standpoint. Under this assumption, and given that utilities and risks are generally seen as quantifiable, many scholars have seen consequentialism (or utilitarianism) and rational choice theory as likely candidates to be implemented in automated ethical decision procedures, for instance to assess and manage risks as well as maximize expected utility. While some see this implementation as unproblematic, there are important limitations to such attempts that need to be made explicit so that we can properly understand what artificial autonomous ethical agents are, and what they are not. From the perspective of explainable AI, there are value-laden technical choices made during the implementation of automated ethical decision procedures that cannot be explained as decisions made by the system. Building on a recent example from the machine ethics literature, we use computer simulations to study whether autonomous ethical agents can be considered as explainable AI systems. Using these simulations, we argue that technical issues with ethical ramifications leave room for reasonable disagreement even when algorithms are based on ethical and rational foundations such as consequentialism and rational choice theory. By doing so, our aim is to illustrate the limitations of automated behavior and ethical AI and, incidentally, to raise awareness on the limits of so-called autonomous ethical agents.

Religious Belief, Occurrent Thought, and Reasonable Disagreement

Abstract This comment raises two worries for Crane’s view of religious beliefs and their contents. First, I argue that his appeal to inferentialism about the contents of dispositional beliefs cannot fully avoid the problem of inconsistent beliefs. For the same problem can be raised for occurrent thought, and the inferentialist solution is not available there. Second, I argue that religious beliefs differ from ordinary beliefs with respect to their justification in cases of peer disagreements. This suggests that noncognitivism about religious beliefs, which Crane opposes, is the correct view after all.

Rawls contra Rawls: legitimacy, normative impact, and the basic structure

In this paper, I contrast two approaches to political legitimacy, both influenced by Rawls. One is the classic political liberal picture, according to which a state is legitimate if its “constitutional essentials” could be endorsed by reasonable citizens. The alternative is the idea that what makes a state legitimate is primarily its success at organizing the basic structure in a way that is demonstrably favorable to the governed. Specifically, I suggest that a state is legitimate insofar as it organizes the basic structure in a manner that makes it easier for citizens to behave justly towards one another and adopt autonomous choices. I then move to demonstrate the superiority of this normative impact solution to the problem of legitimacy vis-à-vis political liberalism, even when reasonable disagreement about justice is factored in.

An egalitarian challenge to increasing epistemic value in democracy

The epistemic value of a political procedure—such as democracy or a civil trial system—depends on how well it performs in arriving at decisions that are correct by some independent standard. A core assumption in the literature on epistemic democracy is that boosting the epistemic value of such a procedure makes it better overall. Even though this assumption seems innocuous (and hence has not been discussed in much detail), we will argue that it is not beyond the pale of reasonable disagreement. For it is possible to increase the epistemic value of a political procedure in ways that give rise to egalitarian objections.

The Goal of Sexual Activism: Toleration, Recognition, or Both?

Sexual activism (for, e.g., participants in the LGBT+ or BDSM communities) is prima facie commendable, at least for the liberal. However, it is unclear whether the end goal of such activism is toleration or recognition. The argument of this paper is that, on the level of authoritative political and social-moral rules, toleration is the only justifiable goal, while recognition may be pursued as an ideal outside the sphere of political and social-moral rules, that is, in civil society. The argument builds on a Gausian public reason understanding of justifiability, emphasizing reasonable disagreement and a diversity of viewpoints.

Further Thoughts on Defining f(x) for Ethical Machines: Ethics, Rational Choice, and Risk Analysis

There is a tendency to anthropomorphize artificial intelligence (AI) and reify it as a person. From the perspective of machine ethics and ethical AI, this has resulted in the belief that truly autonomous ethical agents (i.e., machines and algorithms) can be defined, and that machines could, by themselves, behave ethically and perform actions that are justified from a normative standpoint. Under this assumption, and given that utilities and risks are generally seen as quantifiable, many scholars have seen consequentialism (utilitarianism) and rational choice theory as likely candidates to be implemented in automated ethical decision procedures, for instance to assess and manage risks as well as maximize expected utility. Building on a recent example from the machine ethics literature, we use computer simulations to argue that technical issues with ethical ramifications leave room for reasonable disagreement even when algorithms are based on ethical and rational foundations such as consequentialism and rational choice theory. By doing so, our aim is to illustrate the limitations of automated behavior and ethical AI and, incidentally, to raise awareness on the limits of so-called ethical agents.

Human Rights Pluralistic Universality: A Bridge Between Global Norms and Cultural Diversity

ABSTRACT International law in general and human rights norms specifically are experiencing a wave of criticism from various fronts. One aspect of this is seen in the continuous debate on human rights universality and cultural diversity: there is growing discontent around tensions between global standards and local particularities. This article proposes to rediscover the pluralistic universality envisaged by the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 as an interpretative tool that can provide guidance for this dilemma. The declaration’s drafters understood universality as a set of commonly shared values that are essential for the respect of human dignity, but the content of which is open-ended and flexible enough to entertain a variety of notions of human flourishment. The drafters determined which concepts enjoyed universal acceptability and which did not by looking at a horizontal cross-cultural agreement, intercultural dialogue, and accepting reasonable disagreement on controversial subjects. The article proposes that their concept of universality and method for determining global standards could be used to address the tensions between the international and national spheres and enhance the legitimacy of the human rights system.

Legal Positivism for Legal Officials

AbstractThis paper makes a conceptual prescription: it argues that judges and lawyers should adopt a positivist concept of law, on normative grounds. The positivist view, I will argue, is more consistent with reasonable disagreement and majority rule than nonpositivist views, offers a better view of law’s moral standing, and is more consistent with what Dworkin called ‘integrity’ than non-positivism. As the paper explains, this is an argument about what I call the ‘operative’ concept of law. As such, the argument avoids potential problems for conceptual prescription, and shows why even those who adopt non-positivist views about the nature of law might accept it.

Reasonable Disagreement and Metalinguistic Negotiation

AbstractThis paper defends a particular view of explaining reasonable disagreement: the Conceptual View. The Conceptual View is the idea that reasonable disagreements are caused by differences in the way reasonable people use concepts in a cognitive process to make moral and political judgements. But, that type of explanation is caught between either an explanatory weakness or an unparsimonious and potentially self‐undermining theory of concepts. When faced with deep disagreements, theories on the Conceptual View either do not have the resources to explain them, or can only explain them by committing to a completely new theory of concepts where all moral and political concepts are a unique type of concept. This paper shows how the Conceptual View can avoid this dilemma by adopting what I dub the ‘Metalinguistic Strategy’ for explaining reasonable disagreement. The Metalinguistic Strategy uses recent innovations in the philosophy of language on metalinguistic negotiation to explain reasonable disagreements whether they be ordinary or deep disagreements as genuine disagreements whilst maintaining our ordinary ideas about concepts.

Political Liberalism and Reasonable Disagreement

On the standard version of political liberalism, the exercise of political power is legitimate only if it is justifiable to all reasonable persons. Correspondingly, reasonable disagreement about the moral doctrines underlying a law makes that law not justifiable to all reasonable persons. In this paper, I argue that political liberals are committed to understanding reasonable disagreement as being rational, rather than praiseworthy disagreement between morally reasonable person because other conceptions of reasonableness commit them to an incoherent triad of claims.

Small field output factor measurement and verification for CyberKnife robotic radiotherapy and radiosurgery system using 3D polymer gel, ionization chamber, diode, diamond and scintillator detectors, Gafchromic film and Monte Carlo simulation

The dosimetry of small fields has become tremendously important with the advent of intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) and stereotactic radiosurgery, where small field segments or very small fields are used to treat tumors. With high dose gradients in the stereotactic radiosurgery or radiotherapy treatment, small field dosimetry becomes challenging due to the lack of lateral electronic equilibrium in the field, x-ray source occlusion, and detector volume averaging. Small volume and tissue-equivalent detectors are recommended to overcome the challenges. With the lack of a perfect radiation detector, studies on available detectors are ongoing with reasonable disagreement and uncertainties. The joint IAEA and AAPM international code of practice (CoP) for small field dosimetry, TRS 483 (Alfonso et al., 2017) provides guidelines and recommendations for the dosimetry of small static fields in external beam radiotherapy. The CoP provides a methodology for field output factor (FOF) measurements and use of field output correction factors for a series of small field detectors and strongly recommends additional measurements, data collection and verification for CyberKnife (CK) robotic stereotactic radiotherapy/radiosurgery system using the listed detectors and more new detectors so that the FOFs can be implemented clinically. The present investigation is focused on using 3D gel along with some other commercially available detectors for the measurement and verification of field output factors (FOFs) for the small fields available in the CK system. The FOF verification was performed through a comparison with published data and Monte Carlo simulation. The results of this study have proved the suitability of an in-house developed 3D polymer gel dosimeter, several commercially available detectors, and Gafchromic films as a part of small field dosimetric measurements for the CK system.

A core case for supermajority rules in constitutional adjudication

Abstract In this article, I present a conditioned argument—also called a “core case”—for using supermajority rules in constitutional adjudication. I hold that, given some assumptions, constitutional courts should replace majority rule with supermajority rules to declare statutes unconstitutional. I assume that (i) there are substantive standards for assessing the constitutionality of legislation; (ii) given reasonable disagreement, statutes should be presumed constitutional; (iii) my claims only apply to some constitutional adjudication systems; and (iv) my claims only apply to “well-functioning democracies.” Given these assumptions, I argue that constitutional courts should use supermajority rules to declare statutes unconstitutional for three reasons: first, supermajority rules may boost judges’ accuracy more than majority rule on mathematical grounds and on deliberative grounds; second, supermajority rules may increase constitutional courts’ reputation by signaling consensus; and third, supermajority rules may embody the presumption of constitutionality of legislation. I finish by tackling some possible objections. Specifically, I tackle the concern that, under supermajority rules, too many statutes that should be declared unconstitutional would stay constitutional; the concern that supermajority rules in constitutional adjudication could be used to erode a democracy; and the concern that, under supermajority rules, some declarations of unconstitutionality that one judges as correct may not have happened.

Defining Death Behind the Veil of Ignorance

In this article I examine the question of how a liberal state should go about defining death. Plausible standards for a definition of death include a somatic one based on circulatory criteria, death by neurologic criteria (DNC), and higher brain death. I will argue that Rawlsian "burdens of judgment" apply in this process: that is, reasonable disagreement should be expected on important topics, and such disagreement ought not be resolved via the coercive powers of the state. Nevertheless, the state must legislate a definition of death, and in doing so faces a "neutralist dilemma," that is, when there are multiple reasonable ways to move forward, only one can be chosen. I will examine a possible way to exit this neutralist dilemma. Finally, I will argue for DNC as the normatively preferred default definition of death. To do this, I will employ the Rawlsian heuristic of the "original position" and offer public reasons in favor of using DNC as the preferred default definition of death.

Catholic Hospitals Should Permit Physicians to Provide Emergency Contraception to Rape Victims as an Act of Conscientious Provision.

While many Catholic hospitals permit the prescription of the emergency contraception drug levonorgestrel for rape victims, some continue to prohibit this practice as a matter of institutional conscience. While the standard approach to this issue has been to offer an argument that levonorgestrel either is or is not morally permissible, we have taken a different tack. We begin by briefly describing and acknowledging that reasonable disagreement exists on this question (part one), and then arguing that the reasonable disagreement itself can serve as a compelling basis for Catholic leadership at hospitals that prohibit emergency contraception for rape victims to accommodate physicians who wish to provide levonorgestrel as a matter of conscience (part two). We end by anticipating and responding to some objections.

Determining Vaccine Justice in the Time of COVID-19: A Democratic Perspective

AbstractWhat does vaccine justice require at the domestic and global levels? In this essay, using the COVID-19 pandemic as a backdrop, we argue that deliberative-democratic participation is needed to answer this question. To be effective on the ground, abstract principles of vaccine justice need to be further specified through policy. Any vaccination strategy needs to find ways to prioritize conflicting moral claims to vaccine allocation, clarify the grounds on which low-risk people are being asked to vaccinate, and reach a balance between special duties toward countrymen and universal duties toward foreigners. Reasonable moral disagreement on these questions is bound to exist in any community. But such disagreement threatens to undermine vaccine justice insofar as the chosen vaccination strategy (and its proposed specification of vaccine justice) lacks public justification. Inclusive democratic deliberation about vaccine justice is a good mechanism for tackling such moral disagreement. By allowing residents and citizens to participate in the specification of abstract principles of vaccine justice, and their translation into policy, democratic deliberation can enhance the legitimacy of any vaccination strategy and boost compliance with it.