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Deep moral disagreements must sometimes be worked through, rather than around. In The Ethics of Disagreement, I first examine a particular case in which a deep disagreement must be worked through, and then draw on work in philosophy of mind and epistemology to set the philosophical foundations for two approaches to deep disagreements that promise to help us make our way more virtuously through them.

Illiberal persons resist liberal values, and so also liberal justice, but liberals cannot in good conscience simply overlook their commitment to liberal justice to accommodate disagreement with the illiberal. Insofar as we do insist on liberal justice, however, illiberal persons become subject to coercive legislation whose justificatory merits they are not positioned to appreciate. Liberal political theorists often dismiss concerns about this justificatory alienation of illiberal persons as irrelevant to the legitimacy of liberal legislation. However, in “The Liberal Duty to Deliberate with the Illiberal,” I argue that our own liberal commitment to political autonomy militates against such a dismissal. I contend that liberal theorists have only been able to coherently dismiss worries about illiberal citizens’ lack of autonomy under liberal democratic law because those theorists harbor false stereotypes about what the political character of illiberal persons is like. I challenge these stereotypes by discussing the figure of Seyyid Qutb (1906–1966), an illiberal Islamic political thinker, and argue that concerns about the political autonomy of persons like Qutb generate a duty to engage them in Deep Deliberation that is aimed at reconciling them to the liberal justificatory bases of their coercion.

It is difficult to maintain mutual goodwill in conditions of deep moral disagreement, but preservation of such goodwill is critical to maintaining the resolve to work through it—whether via Deep Deliberation or in any other way. To maintain goodwill, parties to a moral disagreement must be able to (at least) understand their opponents as motivated by considerations they sincerely apprehend as moral reasons. But how do we come to understand our opponents as sincerely morally motivated in this way, when their “reasons” seem outlandish and alien to us? To answer this question, we need to know what it is for someone to appreciate a consideration as a moral reason, and that is the question I address in my second chapter, “The Phenomenal Appreciation of Reasons.” In this chapter, I draw on the resources of philosophy of mind to argue that to appreciate a consideration as a moral reason to φ is to present it under the light of a particular phenomenologically- mediated mode of presentation: one that presents the relevant consideration via the light of a felt directive force “pointing” towards φ-ing—lending weight to it, or soliciting it—in a particular authoritative way. If I am right, then to be able to understand another person as motivated by a consideration she sincerely takes to a be moral reason, you must be able to simulate what it is like to have that consideration “call out” to you (as it does to her) with a solicitive force directed at φ-ing.

In the course of working through deep moral disagreements, parties must consider and be ready to revise their initially opposing answers to the question of what ought to be done. Importantly, their disagreement arises not in the context of solitary contemplation about abstract truths, but rather in the context of shared social space where opposing judgments often give rise to practical social costs for disagreeing parties. In my final chapter, “An Introduction to Socially Problematic Disagreements,” I argue that the social costs of disagreement generates special norms of belief revision that epistemologists studying disagreement have problematically failed to acknowledge. In particular, I argue that the social practical costs of a disagreement can sometimes give us compelling reasons to hold open questions about the truth of opposing parties’ views—even when the relevant questions could, judging purely from an epistemic perspective, reasonably remain closed.

Deep moral disagreements may never be fully resolved, but their costs are consequential, and so there is nevertheless merit in endeavoring to work through them. By approaching our deliberations with appropriately open minds and charitably understanding hearts, we may manage to forge a flourishing society— even without resolving all our differences.

ETD_9132

doi:10.7282/T3W099JG

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Marilie Coetsee

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.