Theories of Public Reason
Gabriele Badano (University of York); Blain Neufeld (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)
This panel seeks to bring together those working on issues related to public reason, broadly conceived. Public reason is an influential framework for understanding how liberal democracies can make fair decisions for diverse citizenries. There is now an extensive literature around public reason: alongside John Rawls’s well-known account, variants of the idea have been developed in the work of Gerald Gaus, Jonathan Quong, Andrew Lister, Kevin Vallier, Christie Hartley, Lori Watson, and others.
We intend for this panel to have a broad remit within this topic. So, we invite submissions contributing to any of the classic debates internal to public reason liberalism, including, e.g., the correct foundations of public reason requirements and the appropriate level of idealisation for public reason’s ‘justificatory constituency’. Relatedly, we are interested in the clash between competing approaches to public reason, as exemplified by the debates between ‘consensus’ and ‘convergence’ public reason liberals. Papers on the application of the idea of public reason to the international domain also are welcome. In addition, we are open to submissions that are critical of the public reason framework, for instance, from liberal perfectionist, realist, or agonist perspectives. Moreover, we would be interested in discussing key issues related to political liberalism, Rawlsian or otherwise, that go beyond the role of public reason within it. Possible examples include the nature of legitimacy, the debate between advocates of ‘egalitarian’ and ‘neo-classical liberal’ political conceptions of justice, and questions concerning the organisation of families within pluralist societies.
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11:00-12:30 |
Registration |
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12:30-13:30 |
Lunch |
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13:30-14:00 |
Welcome Speech |
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14:00-16:00 |
Session 1 Collis Thazib (University of Southern California): Whose Public Reason? Which Reasonableness? Emil Andersson (Uppsala University): Can Stability Help Us Determine to Whom Justifiability is Owed? |
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16:00-16:30 |
Tea and Coffee Break |
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16:30-17:30 |
Session 1 (continued) Constanza Guajardo (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) and Daniela Guajardo (University of Warwick): Reconciling Public Reason Liberalism with Animal Rights |
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17:45-19:00 |
Wine Reception |
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19:30 |
Conference Dinner |
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9:30-11:30 |
Session 2 Paul Billingham (University of Oxford): The Place of Epistemology in Public Reason Philippe-Antoine Hoyeck (McGill University): The Epistemic Commitments of Public Reason |
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11:30-12:00 |
Tea and Coffee Break |
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12:00-13:00 |
Session 2 (continued) Jesse Hamilton (UPenn): Public Reason and Science |
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13:00-14:00 |
Lunch |
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14:00-16:00 |
Session 3 Conor Clarke (Birkbeck, University of London): The Bad Influence Problem for Public Reason Justification Elizabeth Edenberg (CUNY): Responding to Misinformation by Building Trust: A Rawlsian Argument |
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16:00-16:30 |
Tea and Coffee Break |
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16:30-17:30 |
Session 3 (continued) Rossella De Bernardi (University of Genoa): Public Reason, Respect, and Civic Friendship |
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9:30-11:30 |
Session 4 Matheson Russell (University of Auckland): Games of Acceptance, Games of Acceptability: Deliberative Democracy’s Challenge to Public Reason Liberalism A. Sophie Lauwers (KU Leuven): Epistemic Injustice and Religion: Repercussions for Public Reason Norms for Democratic Deliberation |
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11:30-12:00 |
Tea and Coffee Break |
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12:00-13:00 |
Session 4 (continued) Blain Neufeld (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee): Political Liberalism and Ethos Justice |
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13:00-14:00 |
Lunch |
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14:00-16:00 |
Session 5 Daniel Beck (TU Dortmund University): On Realistic Utopias, Dialogues between Ideal and Non-ideal Theories and the Stability of Internal Political Liberalism under Non-ideal Conditions Gabriele Badano (University of York): Three Questions for Public Reason Liberalism |
