Robert Goodin on the Epistemic Boundaries of Condorcet's Jury Theorum

WPES February 19, 2010

Introduction

Bob Goodin is one of the leading lights of contemporary political theory, so it was a special treat for the Washington University Political Theory Workshop to welcome him to present his paper, "Epistemic Aspects of Representative Government."  

Goodin's paper - which traces the boundaries of Condorcet's Jury Theorum as it engages with the Federalist hypothesis on the effects of representative selection and deliberation - is a bit atypical for the workshop in that a number of its conclusions are either supported by or directly follow from mathematics.  Goodin chuckled that he left that work for his paper's coauthor, Kai Spiekermann.  As Goodin described the division of labor, "If you ask me hard mathematical questions, I'll take a note, and Kai will get back to you."

Paper Summary

The reason behind the paper's use of mathematics is that, while the Jury Theorum is interesting analytically, its real substance comes when applied to numbers that actually correspond to the modern world.  Math allows Goodin to ask such fascinating and relevant questions as, "how much more competent do American legislators have to be than their much more numerous voters in order for them to be more likely to make a correct decision?"  Goodin argues that the disparity is so great that legislator superiority on the basis of selection effects flirts with impossibility.  

There remain, however, deliberation effects, since the smaller, more coordinated group might be in a better position to uncover evidence, generate new choice possibilities, or engage in what Goodin terms "premise probing."

Respondent

Andrew Rehfeld was the respondent to Goodin's paper.  [To read his full comments, click here.]  After a comprehensive summary of the paper, Rehfeld commented that he admired the precision developed in Goodin's paper but remained skeptical of its real world relevance: "even if all [of the paper's analysis] is right, it leaves too much out of the epistemic picture."  As examples, Rehfeld cited the problems of partisanship and opinion leaders, which seem inadequately considered in the Condorcet model. 

Rehfeld also suggested that Goodin's argument would be strengthened by broadening the paper's account of the Federalist conjecture.  In addition to selection and deliberative effects, James Madison argued that constituency size was a key factor in ensuring that voters could not effectively communicate with their representatives. Knowing, that they cannot get their representatives enact their selfish wishes, voters would be more likely to choose the representative who would be the best "deliberator and decider for the public good."  Thus, Madison argues that voters would be better at selecting representatives than voting on laws simply because it is the former vote where they chose not on the basis of "what is best for me?" but rather "what is best for all?"  

Group Discussion

Clarissa Hayward of WUSTL Political Theory raised the possibility that in addition to making "correct" decisions, making consistent decisions is also important.  By this logic, representatives may benefit from specialization in that they are in the best position to make decisions that best fit as part of a coherent strategy in a way that voters do not.  Goodin responded that the Condorcet Jury Theorum's definition of correctness would seem to preempt this logic and that he thought that voters were at least as likely to be consistent as representatives.

Ian MacMullen pointed out that even though Goodin's paper finds reason to support representative deliberation, the logic does not imply that representatives should make the final decision.  Rather, the CJT means that representatives should merely make the results of their deliberation public (such as a narrowing the number of alternatives) and then let the masses make the final decision.  Goodin agreed and said he would likely state MacMullen's point explicitly in his next draft.

Conclusion
WPES has been trying to bring in Robert Goodin since its inception, and his presentation certainly met our high expectations.  Goodin's paper was an impressive synthesis of contemporary and traditional political theory, and his presentation made for a very fruitful workshop.  


-Greg Allen

James Bohman on Intergenerational Democracy

 WPES February 12, 2010


Introduction
What do the citizens of a democracy owe their descendants?  That's the central question in James Bohman's paper, "Intergenerational Democracy: Environmental Insecurity as Intergenerational Domination"  Bohman, who spent much of his career defending the benefits of democracy over other systems of government, has now turned his focus to the limitations and drawbacks of democracy.  Last year he presented a paper to WPES which argued that democracies are no better and potentially even worse at addressing the problems of illegal immigration.  This year, he is working on the problems that democracies face over long spans of time, namely, how the mistakes of one generation can restrict the choices and capacities of those that follow.  In this, Bohman was inspired by Edmund Burke, who in discussing the French Revolution, argued that any generation needs to see itself not as the sole master of democratic power and that sovereignty must be shared with future generations.


Bohman thinks that Burke's ideas have a special relevance when considered in light of global warming, since climate change has consequences that are "very bad and very difficult to reverse."  Assuming that the worst predictions of global warming scientists are true, the present, polluting generation "dominates future institutions by disregarding their interests as a future, temporary possessor of power in democratic institutions."


Respondent 
Bohman's respondent was WashU's own Ian MacMullen.  MacMullen broke the paper down into four key themes:

1. Conceptualizing the problem of intergenerational democracy as a challenge to democratic theory.
2. Drawing Connections and analogies between intergenerational domination and other intragenerational forms of domination.
3. Illustrating the theoretical point as it applies to environmental policy.
4. Critiquing various possible solutions to the problem of intergenerational domination.

MacMullen summarized the central claim of the paper is that democracies can enact laws with irreversible harms but that this is undemocratic after taking into account the interests of future generations.  Unfortunately, the most intuitive solutions to the problem seem inadequate.  A constitutional solution, for instance, is always subject to the problem of amending the constitution.  

Because of this, MacMullen commented that the paper seems to imply that an institutional solution seems impossible.  That, however, leads to the problematic conclusion that the interests of future generations are relegated to a minor detail that present deliberators are meant to be conscious of when making policy.  In other words, intergenerational domination might just be "another illustration of the need for deliberative procedures."  MacMullen was left unsure of how deliberative procedures would need to substantively differ in order to properly address the problem.  In his words, "is it just that they're supposed to think differently, or is there actually some concrete institution that will need to be different in order to properly share sovereignty?"  Bohman stated that there were institutional remedies that could be useful, but that none of the ones he has thus far examined divide power sufficiently.

General Discussion

Matt Mancini raised the important point of how the present generation is supposed to know what the needs of future generations will be.  Mancini said that he we would likely be astounded at what 19th century, slave-owning America expected 21st century America to need.  Ironically, the choices that a country makes in order to protect its descendants could very plausibly end up making them worse off.  Bohman conceded that this ignorance was a problem, but said that certain issues, like environmental catastrophe, seemed to be more clear cut that others.

Carl Wellman asked a more fundamental question about whether groups which don't have a clear definition and are unorganized can have unique rights.  In other words, since future generations do not have a defined boundary (as they do not yet exist) there can be no group rights but only individual rights, which seem to be irrelevant in the case of individuals which do not yet exist.  Bohman argued that the citizens of the future were still a group and a corporate body.

Chad Flanders questioned the paper's framing in terms of nondomination as opposed to merely harm or injustice.  In his view, even if we ruin the planet, that is not a form of control over opportunities so much as a form of harm by limiting them.  Here Bohman simply dissented.

-Greg Allen

Zach Hoskins on "Fair Play, Political Obligation, and Punishment"

WPES: February 5, 2009

Introduction
Unlike last week's presenter, Zach Hoskins' paper didn't result in a free voyage to any exotic locale (though I'm sure he'd be grateful for opportunities you know of).  The paper does, however, represent the first chapter in Hoskins' dissertation, and I suppose one could think of that as the beginning of the end of a very different sort of journey.  If the high-quality, extremely lucid argumentation in this first chapter is indicative of what we can expect from the rest of his project, I have no doubt that Hoskins' story will have a happy ending.

[Click Here For a Copy of Zach Hoskins' Paper]

Argument Summary 
Hoskins' dissertation touches on all the main questions on the legal institution of punishment - why punish, who and how, but this paper tackles the more fundamental question of whether or not a society may be justified in punishing at all.  Hoskins' argues that it can, but he finds fault with prior attempts to do so.  He plants his own account of punishment under the "fair play" category, which attempts to frame the issue as connected to obligations engendered by the benefits of societal cooperation.  Hoskins' summarizes the fair play account as follows: "the fact that each member benefits from the compliance of other members generates an obligation to reciprocate by similarly complying" (3).  
Hoskins' version of fair play, however, is an atypical one in that it includes compliance with the practice of punishment as one of the cooperative practices from which individuals in a society benefit.  In other words, citizens are obliged to comply with punishment (either by refraining from breaking the rules or by accepting the resulting punishment) because they benefit from others' doing so. 


Paper Commentary from Discussant Nate Adams
Nate Adams is one of Hoskins' fellow graduate students in the Washington University Philosophy Department.  After summarizing the paper in far more (and far better) detail than I have here, he offered some penetrating questions to Hoskins' paper.  First, Adams asked why individuals could not reject the benefits of collaborative society and thereby also reject their obligations to contribute and cooperate to it.  Hoskins paper quotes Klosko as stating "because the benefits [of defense] are indispensable, [a person] could not say he does not want them" (26), but Adams disagreed that such overwhelming utility foreclosed the possibility of rejection.  Even if such a course would be unwise, it is not incoherent and therefore remains an available option.  As such, they are not obligated to cooperate.  Adams went even further to suggest that Klosko's argument ultimately collapses to a consequentialist one.  


Adams also pressed Hoskins to expand upon one of the potential objections that the paper addressed.  Since Hoskins' account of punishment derives from society, it doesn't provide any explanation for whether or not punishment would be permissible in the state of nature or in any situation outside of a well developed society.  Hoskins conceded that his intuitions on the state of nature are foggy but suggested that punishment may be justifiable in wholly different ways in non-societal cases.


I thought Adams' strongest criticism dealt with Hoskins' formulation of compliance with punishment: a citizen might agree that punishment generally is necessary for the functioning of society, but the individual might also think that the punishment for some particular crime (say, jaywalking) is far out of proportion and therefore does not actually entail a moral obligation to comply.  


General Discussion
Jeff Brown astutely pointed out that Hoskins' paper could be interpreted as going against the democratic tradition since it seemed to indicate that even a religious despot could give rise to moral obligations to comply with laws and punishments.  Somewhat surprisingly, Hoskins' agreed, stating that the obligations to accept punishment result from the existence of benefits of societal compliance with the law - not from the procedures by which the laws were made.  This could theoretically exclude antidemocratic or tyrannical laws, but that depends on empirical and not theoretical questions.


Julia Driver followed up on Brown's point by pressing Hoskins' on cases where individuals do not necessarily benefit from the law.  She provided the example of Columbian drug lords, who are the explicit enemies of the Columbian government and could much more easily engage in their trade in its absence.  Driver asked, since they do not benefit from the law, doesn't Hoskins' account say they are under no obligation to accept punishment for violating it?  Hoskins agreed that the conceptual possibility of individuals who are on balance worse off from the law would be problematic, but he was skeptical of the possiblity of such a case in real life.


Adrienne Davis was receptive to Hoskins' fair play account and suggested that it also offered a prescription for excuses and exceptions to punishment.  In her view, if a person violates a law due to circumstances that would lead any reasonable person to also violate the law, then Hoskins' account does not require their being punished.  Jeff Brown, however, interjected to say that this explanation raised the specter of consequentialism.  


Conclusion
Zach Hoskins is one of the most consistent and active participants in the political theory workshop, and his contributions are always very worthwhile.  I don't think I'm alone in thinking that this paper is a special accomplishment.  Looking over it again before writing this post, I was struck by how Hoskins is able to maintain crystal clear writing and yet still densely pack substantive contributions into every paragraph.  If you didn't already read the paper before, I hope you'll take the opportunity to do so now.  Truly, he doesn't waste a single sentence, and we all wish him the best as he finishes his dissertation.


-Greg

Carl Wellman on Religious Human Rights

WPES: January 29, 2010

Introduction
Professor Carl Wellman is an institution unto himself in the Washington University Philosophy Department and a longtime member of the workshop community, so it was a true pleasure to have him present a paper at last Friday's workshop.  Wellman originally presented the paper at an international conference at Mofid University in Qom, Iran, a city well known as one of the leading intellectual centers of the Middle East.  Both the leading conservative and leading liberal Imams in Iran are schooled there.  Wellman that one of the most notable details of his trip was discovering that the Muslim participants in the conference are typically well versed in western political theory (e.g. Rawls).  By contrast, westerners typically had no familiarity whatsoever with work by the Muslim political theorists and philosophers.  Hopefully that disparity will be lessened as international conferences like the one in Qom become more popular.


Discussant Summary and Commentary 
The respondent for Wellman's paper was Professor Gregory Magarian of WUSTL Law.  He broke the paper down into three central component: 
(1) providing moral justifications for the core rights and attendant implications of religious liberty as outlined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (e.g. Mill's experiments in living argument), 
(2) discussing problematic limitations of the religious component International Covenant (e.g. religious incitements to violence), 
(3) describing the causal relationship between religious rights and peace.


The International covenant enshrines two components to religious rights - the right to freely adopt a religion and the right to outwardly manifest religious traditions and practices.  Magarian summarized the paper as mostly concerned with the manifestation of religion, but this is justified since manifestation has the most notable social effects and moral consequences.  


Magarian's comments on the paper reflected his legal background in providential ways.  For instance, he brought up the attendant risks resulting from the way that the International Covenant eschews the separation of church and state in favor of having the state protect the church.  He also noted that the Covenant included "morality" on the Covenant's list of "important countervailing interests" that could justify restricting religious liberty.  Magarian pointed out that many cultures imply deep ties between the concepts of religion and morality.  This seems to leave open the chance for states to mask persecution of religious minorities because the minority's religious practices conflict with the majority religion's moral doctrines.  Magarian also encouraged Wellman to acknowledge that paper's arguments about the connection between religious rights and peace ultimately require an empirical evaluation.


General Discussion
Chad Flanders of SLU law opened the general discussion by questioning whether or not the religious protections in the International Covenant were necessary at all.  In his thinking, the document already enshrines protections for "association and conscience" which would seem to imply religious protection.  Professor Wellman conceded that Flanders' interpretation was a plausible one, but Wellman argued that there were strong pragmatic and historical reasons to give religion special consideration.  WPES director Frank Lovett followed up on Flanders' point by offering the counterexample of conscientious objectors to military conscription.  Since secular humanists are not allowed to avoid the draft, Lovett argued that such practices imply there is something distinct about religion beyond mere pragmatic concerns.  Professor Wellman agreed the case was problematic but said that the actual problem was that the reasons why religion should be considered a special case was "overdetermined" but that it is difficult for courts to choose one of these explanations in practice.

Building upon a question from Ian MacMullen - who asked about the relationship between religious tolerance and the promotion of peace - I asked professor Wellman about whether his account was only that religious intolerance caused conflict or whether he also believed that religious tolerance promote peace.  Wellman conceded that he hadn't considered the point and that it was worth looking into further, but lightheartedly stated that he "wouldn't bet on it."

Zach Hoskins raised the interesting point of why Wellman's paper made a distinction between the freedom to adopt a religion and the freedom to change religions since the former seems to imply the latter.  Wellman responded that many cultures do not actually equate these two.  He provided the example of Muslim cultures which often are willing to protect the right to adopt a religion, but still ban the possibility renouncing Islam.


Conclusion
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights is a legal document that assumes preexisting human rights.  Professor Wellman's paper goes a long way to elucidating the justifications and implications of those rights both as they actually are and as they exist in the covenant.  We look forward to seeing the paper in its final form in his forthcoming book.


-Greg Allen

Hayward and Watson on State "Recognition" in Identity Politics

WPES: January 22, 2010

Welcome back to another semester of the Washington University Political Theory Workshop!  This past Friday, WashU. Political Theory's own Clarissa Hayward and Ron Watson kicked off 2010 with a provoking paper that probed the implications resulting from commonly used terminology in the literature on Identity.  The paper is an outgrowth of Hayward and Watson's collaboration in the summer of 2008, during which Watson was Hayward's research assistant.  In their view, the debate over whether or not states should respond to the problem of identity by "recognizing" certain identities is framed incoherently.  

[Click here for a copy of "Against Recognition: Identity Politics and Non-Domination"]

Paper Summary

The current debate on identity recognition implicitly suggests that there exists a true identity which the state can actually recognize.  As Hayward and Watson point out, however, the many identity communities composing the state are often as internally divided as the state itself.  There are no "true" traditions and practices which compose the true boundaries of any identity community, and choosing narratives or traditions to support with state resources favors some sects of an identity community while disadvantaging the narratives and traditions of other sects.  That argument hints at their next point, that recognition cannot be done in isolation.  States inevitably "help produce and reproduce" identities in an ongoing process, and the literature on identity is therefore disadvantaged by wrongly implying that states can passively view that which they actively shape.  

With this in mind, Hayward and Watson's paper discusses the criteria that states should use in order to to determine how to go about shaping identity, arguing that states should do so in ways that are consistent with democratic non-domination.  The paper not only makes use of the nondomination literature, but also puts forth substantive revisions to Philip Pettit's original framework (1999).  Whereas Petit's account of nondomination focuses primarily on the dominator's capacity to arbitrarily interfere with the dominated's choices, Hayward and Watson argue that this leads to results which are "counterintuitive to the point of absurdity" because the account only allows for the possibility of nondomination in situations where there exist institutional restraints--which may or may not be effective.  This wrongly excludes the restraining influence of social norms--which may actually be more determinative of outcomes than institutions.  Hayward and Watson's discussion of identity accordingly utilizes a formulation of nondomination that requires "the social capacity to revise power relations."

WPES Respondent: David Speetzen

The discussant for Friday's paper was David Speetzen of WUSTL Philosophy.  Speetzen also presented a paper in the fall 2009 semester of WPES.  [Click here to read the summary of Speetzen's paper and workshop discussion.]    Speetzen's comments ranged widely over every aspect of the paper and were more substantive than can be done justice in this post.  However, one of the most notable comments Speetzen made dealt with the paper's portrayal of the literature on recognition.  


Hayward and Watson quote an Oxford English Dictionary definition of recognition as "acknowledging [identity's] existence or truth," but Speetzen held that this was not wholly applicable to the authors writing on identity. Speetzen pointed out that all the writers who discuss the methodology of state recognition focus on government intervention programs, which seems to anticipate Hayward and Watson's criticism that recognition cannot be done in a vacuum.  Hayward and Watson responded that this still assumes that there is an authentic identity which can be recognized.

General Discussion

Jim Bohman of SLU Philosophy opened the general discussion questioning Hayward and Watson's standard of whether or not domination can be challenged.  Bohman pointed to the useful example of untouchables in India, who are legally allowed to challenge their discrimination, but in social practice are still systematically dominated.  Accordingly, Bohman termed the paper's standard as necessary, but not sufficient.  

Ian MacMullen of WUSTL Political Theory questioned the overall framing of the project.  Though the paper's title claims to be "against recognition," MacMullen felt that the paper did not oppose the act of recognition but rather pointed out that recognition is never the sole way that a state interacts with group identities.  In MacMullen's words, the paper reads as a cautionary note on the dynamic nature of recognition: "it is a moving target, and you're moving it by aiming at it [...] but this doesn't mean that states don't recognize identity or that they shouldn't."  Watson agreed that the paper is a cautionary note in the way MacMullen suggested, but Watson also felt that the paper goes even further in ways that aren't suggested within the recognition framework.  

Kit Wellman of WUSTL Philosophy raised an interesting side discussion about the how the right of individuals to dissociate from their identity might interact with the paper's proposed framework.  Hayward said that the right to exit should be thought of as including two aspects, disassociation from group membership ("I'm not part of this group") and disassociation from group practices ("the things that you associate with membership this group do not apply to me").  

Conclusion

This semester of workshops is off to a strong start.  Both attendance and participation at the first session were very high, and this is doubtless due to the quality of the paper put forth by Hayward and Watson.  We wish them the best of luck with their project's next steps.

-Greg Allen

Christina Tarnopolsky on Plato's Noble Lie

WPES: December 4, 2009


[For High-Resolution photos, click the picture]

Today at the Political Theory Workshop Christina Tarnopolsky of McGill University presented a paper entitled "Plato's Mimetic Republic: A Preliminary Treatment of Plato's Preliminary Treatment of the Gennaion Pseudos."  This was the final workshop for the fall semester, so let me start by congratulating Dr. Frank Lovett on finishing his first semester as director of the Political Theory Workshop.    The semester has been a terrific one.

[For a copy of Tarnopolsky's paper, click here]

Tarnopolsky's paper puts forth a rather unconventional interpretation of Plato's Republic.  Whereas the "traditional" view of Plato sees his Republic as a lengthy argument against democracy, Tarnopolsky argues that Plato's concerns with democracy - such as its tendency to devolve into demagoguery and flattery - are not actually that far removed from our own.  

Tarnopolsky (center) argued that Plato is not 

the authoritarian many portray him as.


[To see Christina Tarnopolsky's personal blog, click here] 

The respondent for Tarnopolsky's paper was Eric Brown of WUSTL Philosophy.  In a presentation that was undoubtedly among the best in the history of the Political Theory Workshop, Brown staunchly (and quite humorously) defended the anti-democratic interpretation of Plato's views.

Eric Brown's response was a tour de force.

This week on the WPES blog we have a special treat for the political theory community.  Brown and Tarnopolsky have offered to share their follow up emails to each other with the whole workshop group.  Both are well worth reflecting on at length, and they give a fantastic insight to both presenters' ongoing thought process.
-Greg Allen


Eric Brown's Post-Workshop Email to Christina Tarnopolsky:


Christina,

Since you asked about the way I ended my remarks, I realize that I probably put my point too glibly.  Since I have accused you of wishful thinking, I wanted to acknowledge that I am working with some wishful thinking, too.  But I think we are wishing for very different things.  You are wishing for a democratic Plato.  Your wish is fulfilled if Plato's dialogues point to the endorsement of a particular (set of) claim(s).  I am wishing for a philosophically rich Plato.  My wish is fulfilled if Plato's dialogues offer some powerful arguments for stimulating conclusions (and I find more stimulation in conclusions that I *disagree* with). That's the point of wishing for a Plato whose Socrates occasionally outrages us: I want him to be committed to claims I reject so that I can consider his reasons for those commitments.  To my mind, a Plato who writes every so cleverly to shroud his view that it would be nice to have a democracy of critically reflective citizens is much less interesting than a Plato who cleverly argues for views that I find repellent.  But de gustibus non disputandum est, probably.

I also wanted to follow up on a few points from the discussion, and I've cc'ed Andrew, Frank, and Ian in case they want to jump in.  I hope you'll forgive my bluntness.  I've long been intrigued by esoteric readings of Plato--I took classes from Bloom and Cropsey as an undergraduate, and have read more than a few esoteric interpretations--and I've long been frustrated by how little actual dialogue there is between those scholars who are more fond of esoteric readings and those who are less so.  Please read this as a clumsy attempt to build a dialogue of that sort.

First, three small points about the details of the noble lie.

1. I think that the concern about the words pseudos and apate is a red herring.  A pseudos is a falsehood, and a pseudos told by someone who knows that it is a falsehood as if it were true is a lie.  The founders of the sketched city are to tell a falsehood that they know is a falsehood as if it were a truth.  That is, they are to tell a lie.
2. I take it that the citizens are supposed to believe the whole lying story--that they were born of the earth and that a god mixed different metals in different citizens' souls.  You might have suggested that they are supposed to see through the obviously false bits here and to accept the upshot, and you might have supported this thought by saying that *of course* no one could be expected to believe that they were born in the earth and divinely injected with metal.  This went by fast, and I am not sure I heard you right.  But if I did, I disagree heartily.  The supporting thought is plainly false.  People are ludicrously credulous. Right now, millions believe in transubstantiation, and a staggering number of Americans believe that Obama was born in Kenya.  In Plato's time, many Greeks believed that their grandfather's grandfather's grandfather or so was the son of Zeus.  Indeed, in ancient times, as Socrates suggests, there were groups of people who believed that they were born of the earth.  It is surely possible to imagine a society in which everyone believes that they are born of the earth and divinely injected with metals.  I agree that it would not be easy to get a group of people who currently do not believe this to believe it.  But that is exactly what Socrates and Glaucon say, and the difficulty they highlight is an excellent reason for thinking that the point is to persuade the citizens to swallow the whole story and not just the inner normative truths of the story.
3. I think that the question of whether the rulers lie to the citizens is more complicated than you make it seem.  Socrates is clear that the founders of the city are initially to tell the whole city the lying story.  But the story will be repeated to future generations after the founders have died.  Who will repeat it?  I presume the rulers.  Now, will these rulers believe the story, or will they tell a story they know to be false as if it were true (that is, will they lie)?  There is some reason to think that at least some of the rulers will be in the latter category, since Socrates and Glaucon are clear that the rulers will be especially difficult to persuade.  Maybe the future rulers who repeat the story will believe the story hook-line-and-sinker.  But there's no evidence to warrant this conclusion, and thus no evidence that the rulers who repeat the story are not lying.  Indeed, the hints tell the other way.

But those details are trifling next to the dialogue I really want to have. Let me return to the central, broad dispute between us.  You want to say that Plato favors some sort of democracy.  That is consistent, as you rightly say, with him criticizing other sorts of democracy or dysfunctional instantiations of a favored sort of democracy.  But the question is, why do we think that Plato favors some sort of democracy?  I mean, why do we think that Plato wants some significant political decisions to be given to all the members of a reasonably broad (for the time and place) citizenry?

That he favors critical thinking is no reason to think that he favors democracy.  (This I discussed in my comments.)  That he thinks that the masses can be persuaded that they don't have knowledge, that the philosophers do have knowledge, and that the philosophers should rule--in sum, that the masses can be made gentle toward the philosophers--is also no reason to think that he favors democracy.  (There is a huge difference between recognizing the need to secure the tacit consent of a group of people--something even a Stalin shows concern for--and turning over some significant political decision to that group--the bare minimum to expect of democracy.)  So why should we think that Plato favors democracy?  This is the question to which I would like to read an answer, and I don't recall an answer in the discussion earlier today.

Once we get an answer to that question, we would need to weigh its probative value against that of the reasons one can give to conclude that Plato does *not* favor democracy.  I gave two such reasons in my comments.  On the one hand, Aristotle treats him as an opponent of democracy and takes Socrates' sketch at face value, as something Plato endorsed.  I think you wanted to give an esoteric reading of Aristotle to devalue this evidence.  But what about my second point, the mass of evidence in Plato's dialogues that political decisions should be made by the wise and that most people are incapable of wisdom?  Is *all* of this evidence to be set aside?  Plato's characters don't mean what they say when they say these things?

I will now add, for good measure, a third general consideration in favor of thinking that Plato opposes democracy.  It seems to me that his psychology in The Republic explains why one should think that most people are incapable of wisdom and that democracy is necessarily doomed to flattery and corruption (so that the criticisms of Book Eight are supposed not just to apply to dysfunctional instantiations but to uncover the intrinsic weakness of all democracy).  In a nutshell, he thinks that most people are ruled by appetite, and he thinks that appetite cannot grasp anything but appearances.

To put all those considerations together, it seems to me that your reading requires you to "go esoteric" about Aristotle's treatment of Plato, about either a thesis about political power (that it should rest with the wise) or a thesis about the many (that they cannot be wise), both of which theses are repeatedly endorsed throughout the Platonic corpus, and about a very broad range of declarations in The Republic.  What reason could one have for doing all that?

One reason would be that reading accepting all this evidence straightforwardly is untenable.  If so, we would have to search for esoteric alternatives.  But today at least you did not try to show that more direct readings of Plato and democracy are untenable, and indeed one of my frustrations with the esoteric interpretations with which I am familiar is that they do not try to show that more direct readings of Plato and democracy are untenable.  This is one place--not the only place, but one place--where the dialogue fails to get off the ground.  Another reason for "going esoteric" on all of those matters would be that we have evidence of Plato's favor for democracy that is so strong that we should
look beyond the surface meaning of huge swaths of his work and of Aristotle's.  But I don't think that we have such evidence, and I did not hear you present any.

A final query.  On your view, Plato hides his commitment to democracy. Why?  He lives in a democracy.  Is he worried that the oligarchs will kill him as a traitor to his class?  Or is he just committed to communicating his preference for democracy to a select elite who can extract from his
dialogues the hidden message?  The first of these seems fanciful, the latter something close to self-refuting.  I would have thought that esoteric readings require some plausible story about why the author would hide his or her views.  What's yours in this case?

Thanks again for an unusually rich provocation.  I look forward to continuing our dialogue, and to reading your Gorgias book.

- Eric

Both Brown and Tarnopolsky had immensely enjoyable presentations

Thanks to the whole WPES community 
for a fantastic fall semester.

David Speetzen: Democratic Cosmopolitanism and Forcible Democratization

Introduction
Broadly speaking, there are two different ways of undertaking the task of rigorous political theory.  The first method begins with a philosophical conclusion in mind and then goes about exploring the warrants for such a conclusion.  The alternative method starts with a number of first principles and then traces the logical consequences of their interaction in order to reach a conclusion.  Political theorists utilizing the second technique will sometimes find themselves arguing positions very different from what they had initially expected to conclude.
  
David Speetzen's doctoral dissertation is an example of such an unexpected outcome. His dissertation with WUSTL philosophy was originally a rather mainstream Cosmopolitan evaluation of military intervention but has since undergone a 180 degree turn, with highly unexpected outcomes.  At the workshop last year, Speetzen presented a paper arguing that occupied Iraq should have been given representation in the U.S. Congress.  Though the paper persuaded few, his presentation forcefully and enjoyably challenged some broadly held assumptions of the WPES community.


Speetzen's most recent WPES paper, presented on November 20th, was similarly enlightening. It outlines criteria by which a country could justly convert another country to democracy by force.


Brandon Nelson's Summary and Response
Speetzen's discussant was Brandon Nelson, a graduate student in WUSTL Political Theory.  Nelson began by summarizing Speetzen's paper, which goes against the "traditional" view of when intervention is called for (rarely).   Speetzen derives this conclusion from the premise that democracy is instrumental to the protection and promotion of human rights and representative government.  As such, countries with the ability to promote democracy ought to do so, and when no preferable alternatives exist, this effort can rightly include use of military force.  


To explain his argument, Speetzen draws a helpful analogy between parenting and governing.  Generally, parents and governments should be accorded a large measure of independence, but in cases where they carry out their duties in an illegitimate manner, third parties have a moral obligation to intervene.  Speetzen holds that there is a further similarity in that the standards for what constitutes acceptable parenting or governing have risen along with the capacity of relevant actors to ensure better lives for children and citizens.  


In other words, the standards for what constitutes a "legitimate" government may change over time based on the social and economic capacity of a country to protect human rights and ensure adequate representation for its population.  The fact that these standards can shift complicates Speetzen's analysis tremendously, but it does seem to account for the intuition that not providing one's child an education is more morally acceptable in a society of starvation than in one of abundance.


After summarizing, Nelson raised a number of pointed arguments that challenged the fundamentals of Speetzen's thesis.  I'll mention two here: first, Nelson thought that the empirical literature which Speetzen had cited as evidence that democracies more effectively promote and protect human rights is virtually entirely based on states which became democracies of their own free will.  Since the human rights record of forced democracies is much more unknown, Nelson thinks Speetzen cannot rightly claim this empirical backing.


Second, Nelson brought up the hypothetical case of an authoritarian country which had a strong history of protecting human rights and is moreover popular among its people.  Speetzen acknowledged that this was potentially the strongest objection to his paper and said that this was conceivably a case where a country was legitimate though non-democratic; however, Speetzen thought that this may simply be a case where democracy was morally permissible but not justified.


The WPES Open Discussion
Marilyn Friedman of WUSTL philosophy opened the general discussion by raising the specter of imperialism - that the rationale of democratization could be used by the intervening country as cover for the pursuit of its own interest.  Friedman suggested that Speetzen consider including in his full dissertation a discussion of cosmopolitan safeguards to protect against such abuse.


Andrew Rehfeld of WUSTL political theory characterized the paper as NeoLockean since Locke argued that people have the right of revolution with a justification that resembled Speetzen's justification for intervention.  Rehfeld, however, also stated that Locke's right of revolution came with two caveats: (1) there must be a long train of abuses, and (2) the revolutionaries must have enough force to succeed.  Rehfeld thought that Speetzen's paper could benefit from a modified formulation of Locke's second precaution.  Speetzen agreed and is considering including this in his discussion where he states that the moral fact of whether a party should intervene is connected to the ability to accomplish goals.


Conclusion
Speetzen's paper is yet another example of his willingness to give to chase down the conclusions no matter where they lead.  While I can't say that I agree with all of his arguments, I don't think I'm alone in saying that examining the points of contention has given me a much richer and fuller understanding of my own views.  This is, of course, a hallmark of a worthy contribution to political theory, and I wish David the best of luck with the rest of his dissertation.


-Greg Allen