Dear All
This Wed at 3.30 in The Refectory we will hear Lina Eriksson
on "Deliberation across religious divides: What We should do about
Your God's commands"
Abstract:
It is often argued that deliberative democracy requires that the
reasons people use in discussions are of a certain kind: they ought
to be so called public reasons, that can be seen as reasons for
everyone participating in the discussion. If a person's opinion
cannot be sustained by an argument that anyone can take as a reason
valid for them, that person must transform his or her argument into
something that others can, in fact, see as reasons for them as well.
But critical voices have been raised, claiming that this requirement
is undemocratic in that it constrains some people from putting
forward their point of view as they see it. However, if traditionally
non-public reasons are to be allowed in the discussion, it raises the
question of how, exactly, others are to engage with these reasons.
This paper explores the ways in which a particular kind of religious
claim that we should do X because God says so - can work in
deliberation among people of different religious faiths. It discusses
both the possibilities, politics and democratic ethics of questioning
such claims, and considers the extent to which they can be taken into
account without being questioned. Unfortunately, the conclusion is
that this kind of claim does not work well in deliberation, even if
we want it to.
All Welcome!
And of course Mon (1PM S422) is a seminar joint between the
department seminar series and the Current Projects series -- Prof
Peter Godfrey Smith (Harvard). See Kristie Miller's email for details.
A/Prof David Braddon-Mitchell,
Department of Philosophy
Main Quad A 14
University of Sydney
NSW 2006
Persistent Internet identity: http://public.xdi.org/=db-m
fax +61 2 9351 6660
phone +61 2 9351 2372
Time in Sydney, NSW:
http://www.worldtimeserver.com/current_time_in_AU-NSW.aspx
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