Although critics often argue that the new atheists are arrogant, dogmatic, closed-minded and so on, there is currently no philosophical analysis of this complaint - which I will call 'the vice charge' - and no assessment of whether it is merely a rhetorical aside or a substantive objection in its own right. This Chapter therefore uses the resources of virtue epistemology to articulate this ' vice charge' and to argue that critics are right to imply that new atheism is intrinsically (...) epistemically vicious, and it ends with some remarks about the rationality of allowing such intrinsically vicious doctrines to feature within public debate about important matters concerning science, religion, and politics. (shrink)

This book features the contribution of major European research projects on the governance and ethics of Nanotechnology. They focus on the responsible development of nanotechnology and on the understanding of public debate.

Ethical issues in healthcare and biomedical research are often a matter of public debate. This entry will explore several prominent views on how such debate should be conducted within pluralistic democratic societies. It begins by considering John Rawls’s account of public reason. It then examines how this account applies to the controversial issues of abortion and physician-assisted suicide, where one can see why some have objected to this view, especially with regard to the way it requires (...) citizens to bracket their comprehensive moral, religious, and philosophical doctrines. Next, this entry will consider some alternative approaches that endorse more expansive forms of public reason that allow greater room for appeals to comprehensive doctrines. While one might expect that many of the controversial issues in bioethics will continue to be a matter of public debate going forward, it will be seen that a necessary step towards making progress in these debates is to get clear on how such debate should be conducted. (shrink)

This paper focuses on eristic in political debate of the forensic, or confrontational, type. First, some findings on the enactment and persuasiveness of hostility in a series of Danish TV-debates 1975–85 are presented, including a list of the clearly hostile debater's characteristics and a subdivision of conspiracy arguments. This presentation serves to illustrate that hostility is less persuasive than argumentation practitioners and theorists tend to assume. Next, the widespread notion of debate as a genre half-way between the quarrel (...) and the critical discussion is challenged in a discussion of Douglas N. Walton's distinction between types of dialogue. It is maintained that the normative model of confrontational debate excludes the quarrel and that debate should not be perceived as second-rate critical discussion. (shrink)

Despite the fact that bioethics is, basically, an interdisciplinary scientific field, it is deeply intertwined with less objectivistic, yet important, threads of morality and religion. From the beginning, in the United States, the language of bioethics has been shaped by theologians and people who do not neglect the religious approaches of particular scientific issues. This paper examines the possibility of using religious and nonreligious terminologies in the bioethical discourse, paying close attention to the American bioethical debate. I shall argue (...) that no democratic, pluralistic societies of today should favor only one jargon of a sole moral tradition, as this attitude leads to the discrimination of others that are also affected by such discourse. Mutual tolerance is the way that can provide a violence-free territory for the discussion about different value-based moral systems and traditions (such as Christianity and Islam or, in a broader perspective, religion and irreligious humanism). (shrink)

Self- affirmation techniques can help reduce arrogant behaviour in public debates. This chapter consists of three sections. The first offers an account of what speakers owe to their audiences, and of what hearers owe to speakers. It also illustrates some of the ways in which arrogance leads to violations of conversational norms. The second argues that arrogance can be understood as an attitude toward the self which is positive but defensive. The final section offers empirical evidence why we should (...) expect self-affirmation to reduce defensiveness and thus the manifestation of arrogance in debate. (shrink)

Empirical Logic and Public Debate supplies a large number of previously unpublished papers that together make up a survey of recent developments in the field of empirical logic. It contains theoretical contributions, some of a more formal and some of an informal nature, as well as numerous contemporary and historical case studies. The book will therefore be attractive both to those who wish to focus upon the theory and practice of discussion, debate, arguing, and argument, as well (...) as to those readers who are primarily interested in applications to a particular field, such as ethics, political philosophy, feminist philosophy, or the history of philosophy. (shrink)

Purpose Algorithms are in the mainstream media news on an almost daily basis. Their context is invariably artificial intelligence and machine learning decision-making. In media articles, algorithms are described as powerful, autonomous actors that have a capability of producing actions that have consequences. Despite a tendency for deification, the prevailing critique of algorithms focuses on ethical concerns raised by decisions resulting from algorithmic processing. However, the purpose of this paper is to propose that the ethical concerns discussed are limited in (...) scope and suggest that it is not clear what concerns dominate the debate. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses a systematic mapping study approach to review articles appearing in leading UK national papers from the perspective of the ethical concerns over a period of one year. The articles are categorised using a widely cited framework detailing a taxonomy of ethical concerns. The UK context is important because of UK public policy initiatives around AI. Findings The research presented in this paper contributes the first systematic mapping study of articles appearing in leading UK national papers from the perspective of widely accepted ethical concerns such as inscrutable evidence, misguided evidence, unfair outcomes and transformative effects. Originality/value The research presented in this paper contributes the first systematic mapping study of articles appearing in leading UK national papers from the perspective of the ethical concerns. The UK context is important because of UK public policy initiatives around AI. To review the media content from the perspective of ethical concerns, this paper uses the synthesised conceptual map of ethical concerns developed by Mittelstad et al. Given the dominance of that framework, this paper’s contribution is also an important instantiation and experimental validation of using that conceptual map. (shrink)

Social media platforms have been vested with hope for their potential to enable ‘ordinary citizens’ to make their judgments public and contribute to pluralized discussions about organizations and their perceived legitimacy :60–97, 2018). This raises questions about how ordinary citizens make judgements and voice them in online spaces. This paper addresses these questions by examining how Western citizens ascribe responsibility and action in relation to corporate misconduct. Empirically, it focuses on modern slavery and analyses online debates in Denmark on (...) child slavery in the cocoa industry. Conceptually, it introduces the notion of cosmopolitanism as a general disposition of care and responsibility towards distant others, conceived as a prerequisite for the critical evaluation of corporate responsibility in the Global South. The analysis of online debates shows that citizens debate child slavery in terms of individual consumer responsibility rather than corporate responsibility. Corporations are not considered potential agents of change. As a consequence, online citizen debates did not reflect a legitimacy crisis for the cocoa industry, as debates over responsibility were overwhelmingly concerned with the agency of the Western individual, the individual agency of the speakers themselves. Participants in debates understood their agency strictly as consumer agency. (shrink)

Public debates about abortion emphasize choice. Privately, when people face that decision, how much choice do they feel they have?We are part of a team who provide abortions at the oldest public ho...

The main aim of this article is to analyze the social circulation of discourses on non-hegemonic cultural practices, in particular, on what is called “trash TV”, and how they are connected to struggles over cultural and social hierarchies. To do so, it takes a specific event as starting point: the injunction that the CNMC filed against Mediaset to adjust the contents of Sálvame Diario to the requirements of what is known as the “child protection time slot”. This paper uses constructionist (...) framing to analyze how this event was discussed by different social actors. Our analysis shows that while the CNMC and the press painted the conflict as a legal issue, Sálvame and social media users focused their discussion on the social acceptability of celebrity gossip media and their viewers. (shrink)

This paper articulates a general distinction between two important communicative ideals—expressive sincerity and discursive integrity—and then uses it to analyze problems with political debate in contemporary democracies. In the context of philosophical discussions of different forms of trustworthiness and debates about deliberative democracy, self-knowledge, and moral testimony, the paper develops three arguments for the conclusion that, although expressive sincerity is valuable, we should not ignore discursive integrity in thinking about how to address problems with contemporary political debate. The (...) paper concludes with a brief discussion of a strategy for improving discursive integrity within public political debate by reflecting on which principles of responsible public debate would promote better democratic decision making. (shrink)

Anger dominates debates in the public sphere. In this article I argue that there are diverse forms of anger that merit different responses. My focus is especially on two types of anger that I label respectively arrogant and resistant. The first is the characteristic defensive response of those who unwarrantedly arrogate special privileges for themselves. The second is often a source of insight and a form of moral address. I detail some discursive manifestations of these two types of anger. (...) I show that arrogant anger is responsible for attempts to intimidate and humiliate others with whom one disagrees. Whilst resistant anger can be intimidating, it is also essential in communicating moral demands. (shrink)

Most literature about vaccine hesitancy has been focused on parental attitudes. Less attention has been devoted to both scientists and experts who raise criticism about immunization policies and intervene in the public debate. This consideration aims to balance the current emphasis in the literature on parents’ attitudes about vaccination, offering a complementary angle to reframe and widen the controversy. Focusing on scientists and experts, an unattended complex picture of multiple attitudes towards vaccines and vaccinations has been discovered through (...) a qualitative content analysis of texts related to the harsh public debate, held between March 2017 and November 2018, triggered by the legislative proposal of making ten vaccinations mandatory for children. Unlike oversemplications that misleading dichotomies reproduce, the analysis reveals nine different positions along the continuum of immunisation attitudes, ranging from radical acceptance of vaccinations to radical rejection, which constitute a fuzzy set. Consequently, a twofold reality emerges: on the surface, the conflict seems between pro-vaxxers versus hesitant, pro-choice and anti-vaxxers; beneath it is amid standardized versus a varieties of contextual and personalised approaches to health. (shrink)

Governments have used several mechanisms to deal with intractable policy conflicts about issues in bioethics. One mechanism is the installment of an ethics committee and another one is the organization of public debates. Often, ethics committees have an implicit or explicit role in the stimulation of such public debate. However, this role is not self-evident and we therefore analyse the relation between committees and public debate. What should the function of biotechnology ethics committees be, how (...) does this relate to their composition, and to what extent are these functions met in practice? To this end, we have examined the three national committees of the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Australia in the field of animal and plant biotechnology. We argue that there is often a mismatchbetween the goals one wants to reach by stimulating public debate and the way this has been given shape, partly through ethics committees. In fact, installing (biotechnology) ethics committees is to a certain extent a premature move that contains rather than stimulates public debate. (shrink)

_Legitimate Differences_ challenges the usual portrayal of current debates over thorny social issues including abortion, pornography, affirmative action, and surrogate mothering as _moral_ debates. How can it be said that our debates oppose principles of life to those of liberty, principles of liberty to those of equality, principles of equality to those of fairness, and principles of fairness to those of integrity, when we as Americans share all these principles? Debates over such issues are not, Georgia Warnke argues, moral debates (...) over which principles we should adopt. Rather, they are interpretive debates over the meanings of principles we already possess. Warnke traces the structure of these debates with reference to the work of Jane Austen, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jürgen Habermas, and Bernard Williams. In separate chapters on surrogate mothering, affirmative action, abortion, and pornography she articulates new understandings of the meanings of some of our principles and shows the equal legitimacy of some different interpretations of the meanings of others. Finally, she suggests that the orientation of American public policy ought to be directed less at finding single canonical interpretations of our principles than at accommodating different legitimate understandings of them. The perspective offered by _Legitimate Differences_ should have a significantly beneficial effect on public discussions. (shrink)

En "Science, Truth and Democracy" (2001) y Science in a Democratic Society" (2011a), Philip Kitcher propuso un modelo de "ciencia bien ordenada". A través del desarrollo de un ideal filosófico, la ciencia bien ordenada de Kitcher tiene como objetivo consolidar los requisitos de la democracia, así como de la práctica científica. El presente artículo trata de seguir este modelo ideal desde una perspectiva más empirica: ¿Hasta qué punto podemos aplicar dicha teoria en el plano de la política científica y de (...) los marcos institucionales? El enfoque se centra en un estudio de caso de un debate público sobre nanotecnología que tuvo lugar en Francia. (shrink)

In Legitimate Differences, Georgia Warnke argues that we can make important progress in resolving a number of seemingly intractable political debates about various contested social issues if we stop viewing them as debates between defenders of different moral principles, and start seeing them as debates among defenders of different interpretations of the same set of moral principles. Competing interpretations of literary texts can differ and disagree and yet all be legitimate. Thus, if debates about social policy questions turn out to (...) be merely debates about how to interpret moral principles, Warnke claims, then it will be possible for citizens on different sides of these issues to recognize the legitimacy of the positions of their opponents. Through extensive discussions of the public debates in the U.S. about abortion, surrogacy, affirmative action, and pornography, she argues that taking such an interpretive turn will allow us to appreciate that it is possible for many sides in such debates to be defending legitimate positions. (shrink)

According to the Principle of Techno-Geek Proportionality, for every million times a nerd gets excited about “the latest thing” the world might change once. Central bank digital currency (CBDC) may be that once. There is nothing new about digital money, but there may be many profoundly new things about CBDC. This is especially so for “retail” CBDC – that is, CBDC freely available to the public rather than “wholesale” CBDC, which is restricted to some registered users and central bank (...) systems. At the moment, the vast majority of money in existence takes the form of deposits at Santander, Barclays and the other commercial banks. As the Bank of England makes clear, most of this is originally produced when a bank extends a loan and creates a sum as a deposit which the borrower can then spend. This money flows around our payments system and the money supply, albeit there is more to money supply than just this, grows as cumulative debt grows and shrinks as debt is paid down. In the UK (and equivalents apply in any modern economy that has commercial banks), though we rarely think about it, since the money is denominated in s and the central bank essentially guarantees that it will exchange at par for central bank money, most of what we think of as money is really Santander or Barclays etc. credit units. Retail CBDC could change this state of affairs and the issues are sufficient to require public debate – not only regarding the scope of the technology but also the role and adequacy of central banks. This, in turn, provides an opportunity to discuss the nature of process. (shrink)

Jürgen Habermas has argued that religious views form a legitimate background for contributions to an open public debate, and that religion plays a particular role in formulating moral intuitions. Translating religious arguments into “generally accessible language” (Habermas, Eur J Philos 14(1):1–25, 2006) to enable them to play a role in political decisions is a common task for religious and non-religious citizens. The article discusses Habermas’ view, questioning the particular role of religion, but accepting the significance of including such (...) counter-voices to the predominant views. Furthermore it is pointed out that not only religious but also numerous secular views stand in need of translation to be able to bear on policy matters. Accepting Habermas’ general framework, I raise the question whether experts (such as clinicians working in relevant specialised areas of care) participating in political debates on biomedical issues have a duty to state their religious worldview, and to what extent the American government decision to restrict embryo stem cell research is an illegitimate transgression of the State-Church divide. (shrink)

In Science, Truth and Democracy (2001) and Science in a Democratic Society (2011a), Philip Kitcher proposed a model of “well-ordered science”. Through the development of a philosophical ideal, Kitcher’s well-ordered science aims to consolidate the requirements of both democracy and scientific practice. This paper is an attempt to follow this ideal model in a more empirical perspective: how far can we use such a theory in the realms of scientific policy and institutional frameworks? The focus is put on a case (...) study of a public debate on nanotechnology which took place in France.En Science, Truth and Democracy (2001) y Science in a Democratic Society (2011a), Philip Kitcher propuso un modelo de “ciencia bien ordenada”. A través del desarrollo de un ideal filosófico, la ciencia bien ordenada de Kitcher tiene como objetivo consolidar los requisitos de la democracia, así como de la práctica científica. El presente artículo trata de seguir este modelo ideal desde una perspectiva más empírica: ¿Hasta qué punto podemos aplicar dicha teoría en el plano de la política científica y de los marcos institucionales? El enfoque se centra en un estudio de caso de un debate público sobre nanotecnología que tuvo lugar en Francia. (shrink)

In two important books, _Science, Truth and Democracy_ and _Science in a Democratic Society_, Philip Kitcher has proposed a model of “well-ordered science”. The well-ordered science aims to match at the same time the requirements of democracy and those of the scientific practice. The goal of this paper is to confront this philosophical model to the reality of science policy and institutional frameworks. The focus is put on a case study: a public debate on nanotechnologies which took place (...) in France a couple of years ago. (shrink)

Over the last few decades feminists, science and technology studies scholars and others have grappled with how to take materiality into account in understanding social practices, subjectivity and events. One key area for these debates has been drug use and addiction. At the same time, neuroscientific accounts of drug use and addiction have also arisen. This development has attracted criticism as simplistically reinstating material determinism. In this article we draw on 80 interviews with health professionals directly involved in drug-related (...) class='Hi'>public policy and service provision in three countries to identify the main ways the neuroscience of addiction (and thus the agency of the brain) is understood. We analyse these understandings using contemporary posthumanist theory to develop new options for conceptualizing matter in public responses to addiction. We close by calling for a new approach to addiction and the brain based on a process model of materiality and public debate. (shrink)

Instead of essentializing and defining what CSR “is”, we analyze CSR as a political discourse in which different actors struggle to fill the empty shell of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) with a legitimate interpretation. In this paper we take the current debate on CSR in Austria as an example to demonstrate how this debate is shaped by changes in the greater socio-economic environment. We suggest that this debate might be paradigmatic for the development of CSR in the (...) European/International context. We argue that the debate and the political moves concerning an implicit or an explicit concept of CSR are rooted in a more fundamental question: the societal (re-)embedding or disembedding of companies. (shrink)

I consider the problem liberalism poses for bioethics.Liberalism is a view that advocates that the state remain neutralto views of the good life. This view is sometimes supported by askeptical moral epistemology that tends to propel liberalismtoward libertarianism. I argue that the possibilities for sharedagreement on moral matters are more promising than is sometimesappreciated by such a view of liberalism. Using two examples ofpublic debates of moral issues, I show that commonly sharedintuitions may ground moral principles even if they may (...) be givendifferent weight by persons of different moral and religioustraditions. Nevertheless, the fact that the intuition andprinciple is widely shared may be sufficient to chart somedirections for public policy or cooperative action even if theydo not lead to complete agreement. As a result, I argue that aliberal communitarianism that presupposes a fairly minimalistepistemology is a legitimate approach to achieving sharedagreement in a pluralistic society. (shrink)

The work of scientists and doctors in advancing genetic research and its applications has been accompanied by plenty of discussion in the popular press—from Good Housekeeping and Forbes to Ms. and the Congressional Record—about such ...

The question of how society should deal with social conflicts arising from cultural differences persists. Should we adopt an exclusivist approach by excluding reasons based on specific cultural traditions from public debates about social policy, especially because these reasons do not appeal to the public at large? Or should we resort to an inclusivist approach by including reasons based on cultural traditions in public debate to give recognition to the diverse cultural identities of those who practice (...) these traditions? While these two approaches assign different roles to cultural traditions in public debate, both seem to welcome compromise between conflicting parties. This paper reviews contending normative approaches for dealing with conflicts in multicultural societies and explores the place of culture-based reasons in public debates designed to resolve conflicts. (shrink)

Governments have used several mechanisms to deal with intractable policy conflicts about issues in bioethics. One mechanism is the installment of an ethics committee and another one is the organization of public debates. Often, ethics committees have an implicit or explicit role in the stimulation of such public debate. However, this role is not self-evident and we therefore analyse the relation between committees and public debate. What should the function of biotechnology ethics committees be, how (...) does this relate to their composition, and to what extent are these functions met in practice? To this end, we have examined the three national committees of the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Australia in the field of animal and plant biotechnology. We argue that there is often a mismatchbetween the goals one wants to reach by stimulating public debate and the way this has been given shape, partly through ethics committees. In fact, installing (biotechnology) ethics committees is to a certain extent a premature move that contains rather than stimulates public debate. (shrink)

I discuss Arendt’s claim that science and its uses should become a matter of political discussion. The suggestion that science can be discussed and monitored by lay people is based on her interpretation of modern science. Modern science results from a flight from the human condition, which in her view should be reversed by means of the public debate. I conclude that Arendt’s political approach should in fact be called a moral approach. Arendt’s arguments can be reduced to (...) a traditional humanistic critique of science, interpreted as a version of Kant’s antinomy between the cognitive and the moral interests of reason, according to which scientists must be prevented from treating human beings as a natural species like any other. (shrink)

Athenian citizens deliberate in the assembly, but the theatre also becomes a place for public debate. In addition to being a consequence of economic or cultural aspects, democracy is a consequence of the development of a democratic imaginary. Located in that imaginary, Greek tragedies, regarded as «democratic myths», work to reaffirm Athenian democracy. Far from being dogmatic, the tragic myth explores the contradictions of social and personal life and implicitly or explicitly seeks their correction. This dramatic genre encourages (...) participation from the spectator (citizen) that greatly exceeds the schematic reduction in Aristotelian theory of catharsis. Greek tragedy proposes the existence of an «audience», of spectators who need a sufficient level of maturity to make that assessment. Democracy is a path, or perhaps an active utopia, which should combine the political order with a coherent culture and art.Los ciudadanos atenienses deliberaban en la asamblea, pero también el teatro se convierte en un lugar de debate público. Porque una democracia (también la ateniense) no solo es consecuencia de aspectos económicos o de orden cultural, sino también del desarrollo de un imaginario democrático. Y es en dicho imaginario donde se inscriben las tragedias griegas, consideradas como «mitos democráticos» que servían para reafirmar la democracia ateniense. Lejos de cualquier dogmatismo, el mito trágico explora las contradicciones de la vida social y personal, y se pregunta, de manera expresa o tácita, por su posible corrección. Este género dramático induce a una participación del espectador (ciudadano), que va más allá de la esquemática reducción de la teoría aristotélica de la catarsis. El teatro griego propone la existencia de un «público», de unos espectadores que precisan de una gran madurez para emitir ese juicio. La democracia es un camino, o quizás una utopía activa, que debe conjugar el orden político con una cultura y un arte coherentes. (shrink)

A course in contemporary education issues is proposed as a valuable general education vehicle for citizenship education. Such a course offers the advantages of being inherently political and interdisciplinary, and relevant to students? life experience. Moreover, such a course would help satisfy the academy's responsibility to inform public debate about privatizing public education, an issue of national concern.

The rise of genetic techniques presents a great promise as well as some difficult dilemma's about how genetics will affect the way we will be able to live our lives. For this reason, in many countries, public debates are organized to reflect upon the development of predictive medicine. In this essay we focus on economist A. Hirschman's work on “exit, voice and loyalty” to analyse and enrich these public debates. We first introduce Hirschman's triad of concepts and focus (...) on the concept of “voice,” which refers to an institution's ability to allow clients to give feedback about products or services, and its ability to listen to the feedback given. We argue that voice is particularly important for the health care system in which predictive medicine is developing. Voice is crucial because how predictive medicine will become institutionalised is now in the process of becoming determined. However, in public debates about predictive medicine, voice tends to be reduced to providing people with the option of making a choice whether to use genetic techniques or not. We argue that this reduction of voice to choice is not very informative about predictive medicine and suggest an amendment of Hirschman's concept of voice, which we call “hesitant voice.” Hesitant voice attempts to be informative about the uncertainty people experience in addressing predictive medicine and topicalises the gradual, the embodied, the tentative character of voice in developing situations like that of predictive medicine. (shrink)

When reproductive and genetic technologies spurred an extended German policy debate, the issues at stake went beyond the technologies to include the very meaning of “ethics” and the respective roles of ethicists and of the public in thinking about ethical questions.

This article aims to contribute to the discussion on the Europeanization of public spheres. It is the starting point for an investigation into the role of the media in transnational debate in Germany. The study aims to determine whether the media function as either a motor of or an obstacle to Europeanization of national public debate, compared to other actors. Drawing on empirical data from the project ‘The transformation of political mobilisation and communication in European (...) class='Hi'>public spheres’, we analyze the communications through which political actors, civil society actors, and the media in Germany make public demands on European issues. Sources on which this investigation was built were the news and editorial section of two national quality newspapers, one tabloid and one regional newspaper in the period between 2000 and 2002. The findings show that the demands made by the media are generally more European in scope than those made by other political actors. Regarding the evaluation of EU integration and the frames that are advocated, the German press and the political elite are rather convergent. (shrink)