The status of scientific knowledge in political liberalism is controversial. Although Rawls argued that the noncontroversial methods and conclusions of science belong to the kind of reasons that citizens can legitimately call forth in public deliberation, critics have observed that the complexity and elaborateness of scientific arguments drive them away from the spirit of public reason, i.e., that which should reflect judgments that are the product of general beliefs and forms of reasoning found in common sense. In other words, scientific (...) claims remain as inaccessible as esoteric or religious reasons. This paper contends that this objection can be met by introducing a crucial assumption, drawn from W. V. O. Quine and the ‘naturalized epistemology’ tradition: that scientific reasoning and everyday reasoning are not two different epistemic categories but rather form a continuum. The former is just a filtered or refined version of the latter. Accordingly, evidence-based scientific reasoning is common to all citizens, regardless of their actual acceptance of specific scientific claims. Following the Quinean Assumption, political liberals may argue that, unlike religious or esoteric sources of knowledge, scientific reasoning is the expression of a cognitive operation that is fundamentally shared across comprehensive doctrines and politically reasonable individuals. (shrink)

There have been persistent philosophical efforts to demarcate the province of science. Fewer attempts have been made to explore whether these demarcation strategies are consistent with the liberal promise of religious neutrality. Within this framework, most liberal political theorists seem to agree that hypotheses suggesting supernatural agency should remain outside the purview of science by principle. In their view, this rule of methodological naturalism is neutral in the relevant sense, since it is silent towards ultimate questions. This paper examines whether (...) this is so, especially when discussing the content of the science curriculum in public education. In this context, advocates of the status of Intelligent Design creationism as a scientific theory argue that MN arbitrarily dismisses a type of supernatural agency that is fundamental to several branches of theistic belief. Drawing on Thomas Nagel’s position, the paper contends that MN assumes a meta-scientific position to which either god does not exist, or god does not intervene in cosmic history. To that extend, MN cannot be reconciled with LPRN. However, this conclusion does not entail that hypotheses that suggest supernatural agency must be included in the science curriculum. Creationist theories may remain excluded to the extent that they fall short of the standards that are required for a proficient scientific account. But, crucially, it will not be their religious character what keeps them out of the classroom, but a series of pseudoscientific wrongs which are non-exclusive to supernaturalistic hypotheses. The paper thus suggests the exploration of an alternative demarcation strategy, one that is consistent with LPRN. (shrink)

Most debates surrounding the teaching of creationism in the science classroom have been addressed under a standard frame: whether creationism is science or religion. As creationism suggests supernatural causation, it has been understood as beyond the purview of science, and therefore as religion. This argument for methodological naturalism has been increasingly challenged by philosophers of science as a demarcation criterion. The disaggregation approach introduced by Cecile Laborde provides an alternative framework to address this debate. It suggests that the problem with (...) creationism lies in its epistemic inaccessibility, as it is a theory with weak explanatory capacity that has been superseded by Darwinian evolution. Thus, the exclusion of creationism from the science classroom is not grounded in its religious character, but rather in a set of epistemic shortcomings, which are shared by other fully secular pseudoscientific theories. In the same way that religion is not special as a legal-political category under Laborde’s analysis, creationism in the curriculum should not be treated as special either. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

The philosopher Akeel Bilgrami’s notion of identity is original and challenging to liberal political theory, but still largely unaddressed by it. In a nutshell, Bilgrami characterizes identity as holding certain values and commitments with a crucial addendum: as we want to continue living by those values and commitments in the future, we erect some social and legal barriers to prevent them from change. Liberals of a Millian and/or Rawlsian cast of mind, in turn, arrange political institutions to enable such change, (...) as they assume that we are the kind of creatures that change their minds. In this sense, the identitarian and the liberal mindset are, as the philosopher claims, “mirror opposites”. This article engages with Bilgrami’s view in two senses: on the one hand, it highlights some potentially problematic areas that may call for further clarification and reinterpretation of the liberal canon, as well as offering other set of tensions that arise with non-liberal philosophical traditions. On the other hand, it contends that Bilgrami’s ultimate claim is not merely that the identitarian mindset is more rational than the liberal mentality, as he does, but that it makes political demands that should be assessed against the liberal ideal of justification. While it may be the case that identitarianism is rationally superior to certain versions of comprehensive liberalism, the paper concludes that it loses out to political liberalism, to the extent that Bilgrami’s identitarianism is willing to display the state’s coercive muscle in oppressive ways, in a way that political liberalism does not. (shrink)