A common theme in Jason’s blog posts on public reason (in response to some of my own) is that public reason liberals aren’t alone in trying to do a kind of second-order moral theory – resolving conflicts between people with substantive and conflicting moral views. As Chris Freiman puts it, “One need not be a public reason liberal to care about resolving conflicts in mutually acceptable ways.” I. PRLs Develop Criteria for Second-Order Moral Theories Public reason liberals have understood this point for a while. Indeed, in Justice as Fairness, Rawls is arguing against second-order utilitarianism, not first-order utilitarianism (which he says is part of moral philosophy rather than “moral theory”). Restricted utilitarianism in particular (average utility with a floor, constrained by first principle liberties) is a serious alternative to Rawls’s view, on Rawls’s own accounting. And my view is that Restricted Utility is obviously superior to Rawls’s justice as fairness. And indeed, based on Rawls’s criterion in Political Liberalism. I’m pretty sure that it is a reasonable view. The key, as Chris notes, is that in second-order moral theory, we are trying to satisfy a mutual acceptability requirement (which I call a public justification). What I’d add is that there are criteria that a successful second-order moral theory must meet. PRLs appeal to a host of considerations to try an argue that their second-order approach has the right structure, such as stability and civic friendship. The way this usually goes is to inquire into human moral or political psychology in order to figure out what sort of principles or rules can be mutually acceptable in a sustained way. Then a mutual acceptability requirement is grounded in an account of our psychology. There are three big theories on offer: for Rawls, we look into our conception of the person, citizen, and society; for Habermas, we look into the norms of dialogue and communication, and for Gaus, we look into our practice of moral responsibility and the moral emotions. The point is that public reason liberals have a method or several methods for how to do second-order moral theory, and they think that, say, fascist principles can’t meet the relevant criteria. In my view, the problem with Rawls is that he doesn’t do hard empirical work of figuring out what kinds of norms and principles would satisfy our real moral psychologies. He speculates. Habermas is better because he appeals to sociology and communication theory for help, as well as some interesting moral psychology. But Gaus is the best because he takes the social science the most seriously. Indeed, after rereading The Order of Public Reason again in prep for a grad seminar, I think Gaus is just head and shoulders above the other two in this regard. (Yes, yes, Gaus was my advisor, but still.) II. My Meager Trust-Based Contribution I am small fry public reason guy. But in two of my books (Must Politics Be War? and the forthcoming sequel Trust in a Polarized Age) I have arguments that a particular kind of public justification requirement is essential to get people with diverse perspectives to be trustworthy in each other’s eyes. Only when we have mutually acceptable norms can we all have reason from our own perspective to follow common rules, which enable us to identify each other’s behavior as trustworthy because we can all follow the same rules from our own diverse convictions. I take justice pluralism (reasonable disagreement about justice) seriously enough that I don’t think any public conception of justice is going to be stable or uncontroversial enough to serve as the public basis for resolving our first-order moral disputes. Instead, I focus on a range of basic rights, like freedom of association, private property, and democracy. If I had to choose from the standard options, restricted utility is the way to go. Indeed, I’d maximize average utility over very long time periods, a bit like Tyler Cowen in Stubborn Attachments. But I don’t stop with justice pluralism. Instead of hand-waiving about the costs of foregoing public justification, I argue that the costs can actually be approximated by looking at the kinds of value that social and political trust provide, in particular the instrumental value they provide, as documented in the empirical trust literature. If I’m right, this will be among the first attempts to show what foregoing public justification actually costs. And then, in principle, we ought to be able to measure the trust-generating properties of different second-order moral principles for organizing diverse orders where people disagree about first-order moral issues. III. Succeeding at Second-Order Moral Theory So, I think now I’m at least directly responding to J in his own eyes. If everyone is doing second-order moral theory, or could if they wanted, they will have to meet certain standards because second-order moral theory like an acceptability requirement to perform the role the theory is supposed to perform. Fascism will be terrible at that. Justice as fairness won’t be very good at it. Restricted utility is attractive. But a fragmented, rights-based approach is probably best.

Imagine you’re in a tough marriage. You disagree with your spouse about many issues of great importance, like how to raise the kids, how to spend money, and so on. Imagine that, after all your efforts, you just can’t agree. But you don’t want to get divorced. The goods of life together are too great, and divorce would be messy, costly, and probably not make either party any happier. So you decide to go to a marriage therapist. The marriage therapist is another human being, just like you, and has her own parochial concerns, just like you, and she is a member of a profession which disagrees pretty seriously about the best and most effective forms of marriage therapy. The therapist helps you to see that your arguments aren’t going anywhere and that you’re going to have to find some way to get along before the relationship is destroyed and your concern for one another is depleted. The therapist offers you compromises, ways of living where you don’t have to resent one another, where your hurt and pain can be brought into a manageable state, even if you have to readjust your expectations for having a good marriage. Eventually you find a way you can live together. You’re disappointed. You mourn the marriage you always wanted, but you continue to live your life with the one you love. Now imagine that you’re a peace negotiator in a bloody and brutal war. The two sides can’t seem to conquer one another, and they’re nearly to the point of exhaustion. You represent one side, and you meet with the negotiator on the other side. The two of you have a strong bias, but you also recognize that peace is the best path forward. Of course, you start off by offering different kinds of peace treaties, and indeed hail from different schools of thought in military negotiation. But eventually you’re able to hit on a peace agreement that will stick and allow people to get on with life. An equilibrium that is not optimal from anyone’s point of view, but that everyone can accept. There is nothing at all confusing or hypocritical or dishonest about these jobs. Being a therapist or a treaty negotiator builds on our capacity to take the perspective of others and come to some resolution of our disputes, which we do all the time. Of course, we all have our biases, and of course we may not have the best theory of resolving marital or martial conflicts. But at least we’re trying. There is a role in any culture for peace-makers, and we usually have lots of institutions devoted precisely to that task. For whatever reason, Jason Brennan thinks that any political philosophy that tries to play this role in ideological conflict isn’t just wrong. It’s bullshit and wastes the profession’s time. It is revealing that, in his most recent post, Brennan actually identifies two roles that approximate the relationships I’ve described: constitutional interpretation and biblical interpretation. People have fought quite a bit about what the constitution means, and so people develop theories of what the constitution means in order to resolve disputes. Of course, their theories are imperfect, but this meta-discourse is better than having everyone operate on their own private judgment about what the constitution means or not having a constitution at all. Similarly, biblical interpretation is a gigantic part of how Christians, Jews, etc. figure out how to associate with one another and worship together; they choose (not often enough) to engage one another in respectful dialogue rather than just declaring everyone who disagrees with them heretics. Brennan is suspicious of both practices on the grounds that they just ratify what the interpreter already believed, but I don’t see any reason to think this extreme degree of suspicion is warranted. There is nothing more fake, hypocritical, or dumb about what the public reason liberal is trying to do than what the therapist or the treaty negotiator is trying to do. Brennan’s alternative seems to be just to duke it out and hope you win. I think the alternative of pursuing public justification is the better way to go.

Over at 200-proof liberals, Jason Brennan offers another criticism of public reason liberalism. Central to public reason liberalism(s) is that idea of a public justification, a justification for a law or policy that is perspective-relative rather than truth-relative. It is a justification to persons as they see things, and not a justification that is necessarily sound and definitive. This means that some objectively good policies can’t be publicly justified because they’re not consistent with a wide range of moral perspectives; it also means that some objectively bad policies can be publicly justified because they are consistent with a wide range of moral perspectives. However, Brennan seems to think that any plausible account of public justification should tend to track sound justifications. If sound justifications exist, that can be made obvious to reflective perspectives; so what is publicly justified can be dispensed with in favor of what is justified based on the best or sound considerations. The mistake here is missing the importance of some common constraints on how we characterize the reasons people have to endorse certain laws and policies. Public reason liberals appeal to idealized reasons not to make persons be reasonable, but to give an account of people’s reasons that is true to their values without being subject to gross ignorance or bias (or at least, that’s how I see the public reason project). Public reason is after all not agreement, but rational justification that respects diversity of opinion. Public reason liberals assume that diversity of opinion on many social and political issues will persist even after a lot of reasoning. I remember Dave Schmidtz once commenting on Jerry Gaus’s The Order of Public Reason in a seminar, describing Jerry’s theory of idealization as what we would agree to do once it became blindingly obvious that we were never going to agree about what to do about some substantive disagreement. The point here, I think, is that idealization will still leave us with disagreements about whether there is a sound justification or two for a policy, even if there exists a sound argument in favor of the policy or against it. Public justification will not always track what is soundly justified as a result. With that, let me revise Brennan’s conversation to cover two cases: 1. where a utilitarian defender of a policy is able to answer objections to the satisfaction of moral, reflective perspectives, and then 2. a case where, after extended reasoning, someone has an objection. I’m usually boring, so I try to be funny here, but I bet I fail. I’m not as clever as Brennan is. — Utilitarian: We should do X. Public Reason Liberal: No. Some people disagree, even after significant reflection. U: Lots of people disagree about lots of things. For instance, I think PRL is a terrible, vacuous theory and the entire corpus of work has been a distraction. PRL: Yeah, you’re a wee bit over the top on this issue. But as you know, your view permits actions that are strongly at variance with what most people think is moral. We PRLs think that one kind of constraint on pursuing maximum value is that coercion must be justified to those who are coerced. That’s a way of manifesting respect for persons. U: Oh, you want a justification? Here you go, here is a philosophy book justifying my normative theory and here are 600 econ papers proving X works. What else could you possibly need? PRL: [to audience] Objections? Nobody? This looks like pretty good evidence. It seems like the case for this policy is pretty clear to everyone. Kantian Contingent? Kantian Contingent: we’re good. The utilitarian got the right policy for the wrong reasons, but hey, that’s pretty cool considering who we’re dealing with. PRL: OK, I checked, and no one seems to have any objections, so you win. The policy is publicly justified! U: [Receives Rawls Badge] Sweet! Hobbits: Wait, we don’t get it. We don’t have economics degrees, so we can’t follow the evidence and we don’t have much time. Too much philosophy makes one late for dinner. PRL: Wait a minute, U, we need to make sure that everyone has a sound deliberative route to see the case for the policy, and the Hobbits are having trouble. U: Fine, I’ll simplify things and offload what I can’t simplify onto people the Hobbits regard as experts. Are we good? PRL: Hobbits? Hobbits: yeah, U did a pretty good job. Sackville-Baggins: we don’t get it Other Hobbits: we knew it PRL: Damn it, everyone is ready to go. Sorry, U, but it’s no longer clear everyone can see the rationale. U: smh I hate these Sackville-Bagginses so f-ing much. Hooligans in disguise, I tell you. What don’t you agree? Sackville-Baggins: [conversing with themselves, obnoxiously] Kantian Contingent? We need your help. Kantian Contingent: Sure! Nothing like a long-winded inquiry into whether we know anything that will end in obvious failure! [Sackville-Bagginses and Kantian Contingent take forever] S-Bs and Kantians Together: after much consideration, we have identified a defeater reason showing that, for the S-Bs, U’s proposed policy is inferior to having no policy governing the matter at hand. While the objections to U’s policy have been largely answered, we nonetheless have found that it places undue burdens on some. PRL: well, U, looks like they’re not going to be convinced. And they really gave it ago. The Hobbits even enlisted the Kantians’ help. Time to pack it in and go to the bar. Oh, and please hand me your Rawls badge and your gun before you leave. U: Go to hell. I’m buying a guitar.