Abstract
Should scientific facts and methods have an epistemically privileged status in public reason? In Rawls’s public reason account he asserts what we will label the Scientific Standard Stricture: citizens engaged in public reason must be guided by non-controversial scientific methods, and public reason must be in line with non-controversial scientific conclusions. The Scientific Standard Stricture is meant to fulfill important tasks such as enabling the determinateness and publicity of the public reason framework. However, Rawls leaves us without elucidation with regard to when science is and is not ‘non-controversial’ and more importantly, we are left without a justification for a stricture which excludes certain controversial beliefs and methods of inquiry from the realm of political justification. In this article, we offer what we deem to be the most plausible interpretation of Rawls’s Scientific Standards Stricture. We then use Rawls’s general theoretical framework to examine various potential justifications for privileging these ‘non-controversial’ scientific methods and conclusions. We conclude that no viable justification is available to Rawls.
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Notes
The full quote says: ‘[…] in making these justifications, we are to appeal only to presently accepted general beliefs and forms of reasoning found in common sense and the methods of conclusions of science, when these are not controversial’ (Rawls 2005, p. 224). We assume here that when Rawls says that we should ‘appeal only’ to non-controversial science, this implies that we should not appeal to controversial science, i.e. that controversial science is excluded from public reason. It is not just that non-controversial science is included or allowed, it is also that controversial science, or reasons at odds with non-controversial science, are excluded or disallowed.
Rawls has articulated the principle in the following ways: ‘…our exercise of political power is fully proper only when it is exercised in accordance with a constitution the essentials of which all citizens as free and equal may reasonably be expected to endorse in the light of principles and ideals acceptable to their common human reason’(Rawls 2005, p. 137); ‘Our exercise of political power is proper and hence justifiable only when it is exercised in accordance with a constitution the essentials of which all citizens may reasonably be expected to endorse in the light of principles and ideals acceptable to them as reasonable and rational.’ (Rawls 2005, p. 217).
Primarily when voting on fundamental political questions. Whether or when it applies to ordinary citizens when they advocate laws or policies that relate to fundamental questions is unclear. On this question we agree with Cristina Lafont, when she argues that ‘If citizens may not use religious or otherwise comprehensive reasons in their own personal deliberations to determine how to vote, it would be quite inconsistent to claim that they may do otherwise when they engage in public deliberations with others as part of the same reasoning process.’(Lafont 2007, p. 241). A favorable interpretation of Rawls’s position must broaden the scope of public reason as it applies to ordinary citizens beyond the voting booth. While very important for understanding Rawls’s account on public reason over-all, this discussion is not crucial to our particular discussion on science in public reason.
For a defense a version of the narrow interpretation see (Torcello 2011).
From here on we will use the terms ‘widely accepted’ and ‘non-controversial’ interchangeably.
Here it is pretty clear that ‘plain truths now widely accepted’ could not refer to truths accepted by scientists, but highly controversial in the general public.
For purposes of simplicity, we set aside the otherwise important question of whether or how numbers would matter in assessing the relevance of minority disputes for public reason.
Note that it could only be disagreements that are significant and long-standing in the general public that could render a scientific issue controversial in the context of public reason. The reason being that Rawls would not want public reason to be bound by sways in public opinion.
One may wonder why this strategy is included in the strategies that justify SSS in accordance with the liberal principle of legitimacy. The reason is that citizens who reject the ideas inherent in the public political culture of a liberal democratic society would fall outside the scope of reasonableness.
It should be noted that Rawls’s writings indicate that Rawls would justify SSS using a combination of some of the proposed justification routes. For purposes of simplicity, we treat them separately. It should also be noted that we do not see a combination of justification routes that would successfully justify the scientific standard criterion.
Anderson (2011) has made a contrary point that it is fairly easy for laypersons with access to the web to make second-order assessments about scientific consensus, she demonstrates this by showing how easy it is to acquire accessible information about the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming. So all the confused public has to do, is take the 5 min to visit Wikipedia. It seems, however, that global warming is a special case when it comes to readily available information on the internet. In the case of global warming the scientific consensus itself has been the subject of much public debate and media attention. Therefore we can expect Wikipedia to offer accessible information about the global warming controversy as well as the scientific consensus on the matter.
These examples are just meant to illustrate that scientific consensus is not always evident to the public. We don’t claim that these are public reason issues.
This argument extends to the slightly modified version of the accessibility criterion in which we interpret the criterion to mean not actual accessibility, but accessibility in principle. This point has been made by Eberle (2002, p. 260): ‘Mystical perception is thoroughly democratic in the relevant sense: just as any citizen enjoys cognitive capacities he could have employed to understand and evaluate scientific theories that bear on specific coercive laws, even though he cannot in fact, any citizen can perceive God in that he enjoys the cognitive faculties that he can employ to perceive God even though he does not in fact.’
Rawls holds that citizens cannot be reasonable if they are not also rational. According to Rawls ‘neither can stand without the other’ (Rawls 2005, p. 52). We examine Rawls’s notion of rationality separately in (e).
Of course many pragmatists have argued that certain types of scientific inquiry are indeed inherent to liberal democracy. Usually ‘scientific inquiry’ in this context refers to basic experimental or responsive modes of inquiry. We do not know of any pragmatists who argue that scientific methods and facts need to be currently widely accepted in order to count as inherent to democracy. In a different paper, we argue that a recent attempt by (Talisse 2009) to show that we are all committed to a certain basic type of (broadly speaking) scientific inquiry and that this commitment gives us all a reason to endorse liberal democracy is unsuccessful. (Jonch-Clausen and Kappel 2015).
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Acknowledgments
We appreciate the valuable input and commentary that the paper has received as it has been presented in its various stages. In particular we would like to thank Morten Ebbe Juul Nielsen, Martin Marchman Andersen, Sune Lægaard, Andreas Christiansen, Elizabeth Anderson as commentator at Scandinavian conference and Ph.D. course in normative political philosophy/theory (Nordic Network on Political Ethics-NNPE), Vejle, Denmark, José Luis Marti as commentator at EPISTO kick- off conference, ARENA centre for European studies, University of Oslo, Norway, participants at the workshop of Epistemology of Inclusion, University of Copenhagen, Denmark and the discussion group on legitimacy and pluralism at the University of Copenhagen.
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Karin Jønch-Clausen is first author and Klemens Kappel co-author of the paper. Karin Joench-Clausen has been responsible for the majority of the writing of the paper and its content and Klemens Kappel has contributed with substantial commentary and critical discussion.
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Jønch-Clausen, K., Kappel, K. Scientific Facts and Methods in Public Reason. Res Publica 22, 117–133 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-015-9290-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-015-9290-1