Today I’d like to put on my democratic theory hat and offer a critique of Jürgen Habermas‘ theory of deliberative democracy. Habermas gives his answer to the question of what kind of government we ought to have by appealing not to any specific goal or end that he thinks government ought to have, but by instead offering standards by which we can judge a procedure through which one would determine one’s society’s ends. I argue that Habermas relies too much on moral intuitionism to substantiate these standards and consequently provides insufficient reason why we should choose to determine our form of government by appeal to procedure rather than by appeal to result.
Category: Politics
Concerning the nature of man and the state, and how best the latter can be structured to augment the former.
Extraterrestrials and Katy Perry
According to a recent story in GQ, Katy Perry (American pop star extraordinaire) believes in aliens. It would appear that her song “ET” for “extraterrestrial” speaks to a genuine article belief in foreign life forms. In our culture, belief in intelligent alien life is often treated like belief in religion–you either have it or you do not, and in either case there isn’t much evidence one can muster for either side. But I’d like to have a little fun and ponder this question. What is the most reasonable position for a person to have on the existence of aliens giving existent non-conspiratorial evidence?
Shepherds vs. Wolves
Today I’d like to walk through a moral conundrum with the intent of questioning and shedding light on the way we think about endangered species and human/animal relations more broadly. As the title suggests, shepherds and wolves will play a key role.
Rethinking the Word “Privilege”
The word “privilege” has become ubiquitous in the United States, particularly among politically active left-leaning college students and graduates. Many different people are said to be “privileged”. There’s white privilege, rich privilege, male privilege, straight privilege, and so on down the line. We are frequently encouraged to “check” our privilege, to be more aware of the extent to which racial minorities, women, LGBT people, and the poor are denied the same access to resources and social treatment we enjoy and take as given. I agree with the social justice movement that it does people born into affluence some good to remember the widely divergent environments and social circumstances their fellow citizens must endure, but I absolutely hate the use of the word “privilege” for this purpose. Here’s why.
How Babies Learn Philosophy
Often, when subjectivists and nihilists claim that human beings construct their own conceptions of morality, they ignore the manner in which those constructions arise in the first place. How do people develop their moral beliefs? I argue that we acquire our initial beliefs through a process of social learning that all babies in all times and social contexts participate in. This kind of learning implies an inherent belief in the primacy of the objective, of the external world, and is inconsistent with the subjectivist view.
