7/29/2019 Gaus and Vallier Script

1/4

I. Introduction: Does Justificatory Liberalism Imply Exclusion of Religious Reasons?Commitment to justificatory liberalism (hereafter JL), where all citizens are free and equal

and not to be forced to submit to the judgments of others without having a reason to acceptthat coercion. This commitment requires that not just any reason can be given to justify a

law/policy, but only those that the citizenry could deem acceptable. Religious reasons,

according to many JL theorists for laws are taken to be a species of the reasonings that areruled out of this acceptable category.

Gaus and Vallier (hereafter G/V) want to argue that the exclusion of religious reasons does

notfollow from the commitment to public justification. This (false) implication is based onthree errors:

Consensus: Every law must have a reason everyone accepts

Symmetry: The reasons for proposing a law have the same requirements asreasons for rejecting a law

Deliberation among citizens in constitutive of justification

G/V want to show that justificatory liberals are committed to far more permissive principles

of restraintif they are committed to principles of restraint at all (65).

II. Two characteristics of Justificatory Liberalism

A. Definition of Public Justification: L is a justified coercive law only if each and every

member of the public P has [at least one] conclusive reason for accepting L. (53)

1. Every adult member has a reason for accepting L that conclusively defeats all of the

reasons against L as well as any reasons for accepting one of Ls competitors.

A further stipulation for JLers is that the justification for laws takes place in an environment

of2. Reasonable pluralism, where citizens of roughly equivalent reasoning power and

access to the relevant evidence nevertheless come to different conclusions about the basic

questions of good and value (55).

Furthermore, this range of reasonable pluralism does not prima facie exclude religious

beliefs or any other kind of comprehensive beliefs about the ultimate values and good of life.

Key question: To what extent does the commitment to the having justified reasons (1)

constrain the reasons that might arise from beliefs in a reasonable pluralistic environment

(2)?

B. Spectrum of answers to this key question, from most restrictive to least(56):

1. Macedo: Only shareable1 reasons count as public justification. This need not

claim that acceptable reasons are in factshared by everyone, only that they are able to be

1 This section is loose in its use of public, shareable, and secular. For the sake of

clarification, I use the least controversial of these terms, public, except when an alternative

more clearly describes the persons position (eg. Macedo).

7/29/2019 Gaus and Vallier Script

2/4

shared.

2. Audi: Religious reasons are allowed provided that there is a sufficient publicmotive and rationale accompanying the religious reason.

3. Rawls: Religious reasons can motivate, as long as there is an attendant publicreason as well.

4. (Objection to 1-3) Wolterstorff: Many peoples reasonings for accepting a

particular policy cannot be cleanly divorced from the religious reasonings they have about anissue. To ask that they regard those religiously-based reasonings as second-rate is to

compromise the integrity of those beliefs. Religious reasonings should therefore be

allowedwithin the realm of public reasons and justificationspresumably unaccompanied byother, non-religious reasons. G/V seem to sympathize with Wolterstorffs position.

III. A. Error of Consensus

1. The Shareability Requirement: On a strong view of public justification (e.g.Macedo), a reason meets the standard of public justification if it is able to be shared by all

members of the public (57). The end goal of this standard is that ideally we would arrive at aconsensus of This standard is far too strong, as it is in tension with the commitment to

reasonable pluralism that JLers. To have a shared reason, on a strong JL view, one must first

have a conclusive reason that defeats all competitors. Ultimately, according to G/V, meeting

this standard would require everyone to reason in same way (58). And even if achieving aconsensus were feasible, it would go against the pluralism and reasonable disagreement that

JLers have said to be a permanent fact of life.

2. An Alternative: Mutual Intelligibility/Covergence: An alternative to the

shareabilty understanding of public justification is one of mutual intelligibility. The standardis not that the everyone share that justification as a decisive reason, but that those people whofall within the range of reasonable pluralism would be able to make sense of a vast range of

reasonings that might be employed to justify a proposal. Each reasoning need not be

conclusive in the sense of defeating all other reasonings.2 What is sought is not consensus of

one reason unilaterally justifying a proposal, but of a variety of different proposalsconvergingonto one proposal. This respects the pluralism amongst reasonable people and the

variety of reasoning they might use to support a particular policy

3. Objection to Mutual Inteligibility/Covergence

First, suppose I find out that a policy P that I support for reasonable reason R is also

supported by the evil Lord Morgoth for depraved reason D. Should this covergence with badjustifications lead me to withdraw my support of P altogether? G/V: Yes, withdrawing

support from a policy that is (validly?) supported by bad justifications is appropriate (60).

Assuming, however, that all participants are within the range of reasonable pluralismMorgoth surely isntthen even deep conflicts are able to come to some proposal that would

2 NB: For standard JLers, is a conclusive reasoning in C of law L one that defeats all

reasoning of not-L as well as defeating all non-C reasoning of L?

7/29/2019 Gaus and Vallier Script

3/4

mutually benefit all involved (61). Assuming some moderate sociability, some modicum of

convergence is possible.

4. Minimalist Proviso: When giving a proposal, one cannot have only a religious

justification. One must also believe in a non-religious justification that could plausibly

justify the proposal to the reasonable non-religious public (62) for the proposal in question tobe counted as a public justified proposal.

Questions about Convergence:

1. If stripping a proposal of its native religious reasoning compromises its

integrity (Wolterstorff), is grafting a non-religious reason onto a natively religious

reasoning equally compromising?

2. Does the Minimalist Proviso put substantial distance between this proposal

and the others (i.e. Rawls and Audi)?

3. Is the description of public justification given here adequately public?

B. Error of Symmetry

The Minimalist Proviso states that religious citizens cannot impose a law on others without

having a non-religious justification that the others might find plausible. This conforms with

the traditional liberal respect of persons that protects citizens from being coerced into

submitting to a law that is based solely on someone elses belief. The respect of persons, inother words, prevents people from being in a state of domination by others.

1. Symmetry:Thus, when a persons religious belief requires that they force uponothers a religiously but otherwise unjustified legislation, the respect of those persons overrides

the individuals religious beliefs. Yet some liberals think that the minimalist provision ofrequiring the public reasons for proposing legislation applies equally to rejecting legislation.This is the idea of Symmetry, that if religious justifications cannot legitimately stand on its

own when proposing legislation, then they cannot legitimately stand on its own when

rejecting legislation either. Put positively, if we require public, non-religious reasons for

proposing policies, then we require public reasons for rejecting them as well (StrictSymmetry)

2. Incosistencies of Symmetry with JL:a. undermines liberal commitment to non-domination, as it subjects one set of

reasonable values to dominion of another

b. Also undermines freedom of conscience and integrity which liberalism also claimsto defend.

c. If a liberal holds strict symmetry anda condition of unanimity (laws must be

unanimous to be permissible), therenders the public justification principle irrelevant.

3. constraints on coercive proposals must be different from those for rejections:

minimalist proviso applies only to proposals for coercive laws, not to rejecting them.

7/29/2019 Gaus and Vallier Script

4/4

Questions about Symmetry

1. If all religious values within the range of reasonable pluralism can serve as

defeaters for proposed justifications, then it seems we would almost need a de facto

consensus to actually get anything done.

C. Deliberation Constitutive of Justification

To many JLersin our case, both Rawls and Cohenthe vehicle of justification for how

people associate with one another is through public argument and reasoning. In line with this

is the Principle of Politics as Public Reasoning (3PR), that we decide our political policies bydebating with those who disagree with us (65). G/V think that we can separate justificatory

liberalism from deliberative democracy, which is closely tied to 3PR.

Two roles institutions can play in regards to making political choices:

1. Registering: accurately cataloging the views of the citizens about a given publicly

justified resolution.

2. Generating: take citizens views on an issue and then synthesize a publiclyjustified resolution. This is the market model of political institution.

No one person is in a position to gauge other peoples reasons for accepting or rejecting a

proposal. We have to discover this by confronting other peoples goals, values, what is a

potential defeater for them. We need to cast a net around as broad a range of information

from others as we can. To cut off any stream of information about other peoples values, etccan lead to distortion and misperceptions about where actual agreement exists (69).

G/Vs critique of deliberative democracy restrains certain inputs from being in play in publicdiscussion (i.e. religious beliefs/reasonings) sanitizes the public discussion before it even

begins: the best political institutions draw directly on the firmest knowledge by citizensboth of their own values, etc and the values of others (69). Every citizens individual input toa deliberation is imperfect, both in the sense of not always accurately depicting the citizens

wants and needs, but also not by itself producing anything resembling consensus or even

broad agreement. The task of governing should be taking those imperfect inputs and

generating something that has converging lines of support among citizens: to make chickensalad out of chicken shit

Objections1. G/Vs construal of Cohens Deliberative democracy seems like a strawman: Cohens DD

is significantly more hermeneuticand thus, generativethan just registering where each

person stands on X.