I'm puzzled by the recent prevalence of "Jonah is right" comments from liberals. Jonah is precisely wrong here, in both his reasoning and his ultimate conclusion, and although Matt raises a good reason for objection, it's ultimately an insufficient one.

Jonah uses a lazy heuristic in his point about MLK, where religous speaker = religious arguments = exactly the kind of religious arguments we'd expect to hear today, viz., narrow appeals to specific religious ideology. Yet if MLK did, in fact, base his religious appeals on sectarian thinking it didn't seem to bother King's many Jewish fans; it seems far likelier that his rhetoric was as universalist as we remember it, religious overtones notwithstanding. Which makes sense: arguments for full political equality for blacks appealed to narrower set of 1950s Americans than did arguments for Christian decency. What King did in framing his arguments with religious tones was to say, This is not an issue of material benefits for us, as blacks, but the logical consequence of something we all believe, as Christians and Americans.

Jonah's logical shortcut allows him to presume his conclusion, which is that sometimes sectarian arguments are permissible in a liberal society. But King is really a far better example of political arguments gaining legitimacy as they appeal to broader swaths of the population. (Accessible-to-all isn't a requirement of literally "all"; 90% or so might be sufficient, I should think.)

Now, as Matt points out, that may be tactically significant, but not important from a philosphical perspective. And he may be right, but he hasn't shown it yet. The "consequence of enticing people into offering more-or-less bad faith arguments in favor of their positions" is surely perverse from the standpoint of personal morality, but that hasn't been sufficient to show political immorality since Machiavelli came along. Accessibility-to-all doesn't just have tactical advantages, but it serves a morally significant purpose of making citizens feel as though their government is responding to all citizens equally, and so inspiring feelings of confidence and legitimacy, even when the underlying factual assumptions are mistaken. From a personal perspective, it's a sin and a lie; from the perspective of the governors, with duties to the whole of the polity, it's necessary and even a good thing. Gross hypocrisy? That's one way to describe it, but another is representative democracy.

A perennial example is the appropriations process. A great many legislators will support projects that benefit their own districts, and their real reasons for supporting those projects is precisely that they benefit their own districts; yet the reasons given in public appeal to more universal values of protecting the public welfare, etc. Repugnant, to be sure, but think of how much damage it would do to our national polity if representatives described the appropriations process as though it were merely the consequence of naked political power moves. More honest, sure. But it would do tremendous psychic harm to the notion that we're one nation, after all.

Notice also that Matt worries about Rawlsian universalism (although I learned it as Dworkin's notion of integrity) when it extends beyond the tactically useful, as encouraging deliberate hypocrisy for the sake of political advantage. But I would assume that deliberate hypocrisy would make the most use of it when it's tactically useful. What the Rawlsian project is trying to do is impose the requirement upon all citizens at all times, not just when it serves political purposes. The harm of doing that, I would think, would be pretty minimal if you're only worried about self-interested actors who would be self-interested in any event.

Finally, there's also an undeniable material benefit to the Rawlsian talk, in that it constrains the sphere of acceptable reasons for governmental actions. Requiring political arguments to be framed in universalist terms can be seen as a sort of procedural requirement---not necessary in and of itself, but historically proven to tend to yield good results.

In summary, there are arguments against Rawlsian universalism, but Jonah hasn't made any such argument with any clarity, and although Matt has made one, it isn't convincing.

"Repugnant, to be sure, but think of how much damage it would do to our national polity if representatives described the appropriations process as though it were merely the consequence of naked political power moves."

Wait, really? If the appropriations process is in fact the consequence of naked political power moves, and if the American people generally recognize that fact (as I believe they do), then what good is accomplished by pretending otherwise? All it does is give voters yet another reason to assume that everything they hear from politicians is bullshit, and that, it seems to me, is far more damaging to our national polity.

And after all, our government was designed on the assumption that all parties would be seeking to aggregate the power and benefits of government to themselves, and therefore depended on checks and balances rather than virtuous self-sacrifice to prevent abuse of the system. So if our politicians admitted that they were seeking to enrich their constituents at the expense of others (which is after all more or less their job description, in so far as some things really are zero-sum), then maybe they would have a little credibility for a change, and we wouldn't have to fall over ourselves praising "The Straight Talk Express."

I have never understood the idea that religious arguments should be excluded because they are not "accessible to all." What's the difference supposed to be between a Christian argument, which is not "accessible" to me because I'm not a Christian, and a utilitarian argument, which is not "accessible" to be because I'm not a utilitarian?

Someone might answer that utilitarianism is a secular philosophy while Christianity is religious, but that's just begging the question. Plenty of people think Christianity can be demonstrated empirically or that theism can be demonstrated logically -- which is just the same thing that plenty of people think about utilitarianism. Religious arguments against abortion are wrong because the religions are wrong, not because there's some meaningful property of "accessibility" above and beyond "validity" and "truth."

Didn't Rawls presume that you would not know where you would end up in society? Thus an argument that only had a sectarian basis might put you at disadvantage if you did not end up subscribing to that creed.

The appeal to Dr. King while often made in this context is misplaced. Yes Dr. King used religious language to persuade people of the rightness of his cause. However, is appeal was to the American ideal. He called on Americans to live up to their creed and become inclusive in regard to Blacks and other minorities. This was not a religious argument but an American one.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

It seems to me there should be a difference between an argument that arises out of religion, and an argument completely dependent upon religion. Also (or maybe alternately) there should be a difference between an argument from a religious position and an argument from religious authority.

Saying 'human life is sacred--and therefore abortion is wrong' is one kind of argument--and 'The Bible says witches should be killed' is another kind.

All philosophies have assumptions/tenets/axioms, and religions can be treated as philosophical systems--which is what makes ecumenical dialogue possible. (It also gives rise to the Coulterish 'liberalism is a religion too--and it's heresy!' fallacy.)

But religions aren't simply philosophies--and the appeal to authority is one of the big divergences.

You can say 'the divine purpose of human sex is procreation' and talk even with a Dawkinsite for whom it isn't--but who may agree with you--kind of. But arguing 'homosexuality is a sin--the Bible says so!' is not going to work.

'Jonah Goldberg is an idiot,' is, of course, self-evident.

So long as we are discussing utilitarian viewpoints (see other comments below), consider what John Stuart Mill would have said on the subject: no opinions should be repressed at all; all opinions should be subject to public debate. Mill would argue that repressing opinions disables people from understanding why certain opinions are wrong, as understanding why an opinion is right or wrong is useful for society and leads to progress. In other words, we should allow people to make religious arguments so we can demonstrate why these arguments are wrong, or why they cannot apply universally. Persuasion, not accessibility, is the name of the utilitarian game.

On your 2): Goldberg's assertion is probably true, even though no majority of Americans can be described as "opposed to abortion" in the sense of being opposed to abortion rights. That's because anti-choice folks, even if they're a minority, turn out to vote, and that's the issue they vote on.

Anything crude is entirely filthy to us philosophers. So there.

With all due respect Rawls is NOT a utilitarian. His project draws inspiration from Kant.

Here is a religious "argument" for you:

1) The Bible says :He that curseth his father or his mother shall surely be put to death (Exodus 21:17)
2) The Bible is the Word of God
3) The Word of God must be obeyed
____________________________________________Therefore Next time your kid tells you to fuck off, you have to kill him.

I rest my case

Polling shows that a majority of Americans CAN, in fact, be described as "opposed to abortion", in the sense that, while they might not agree with the ultimate aims of the pro-life movement, at least agree that it's pushing in the right direction.

So long as the courts artifically maintain a policy status quo that's far from the political center, they at the same time assure that the majority of the public, if they have to chose sides, land in the pro-life camp. Lending that camp more political clout than it's true aims would otherwise justify.

For Christsake Rawls is NOT a Utilitarian

Political Liberalism is explicitly non-Kantian. The popular view is that he wrote PL to get away from the explicitly Kantian underpinings of A Theory of Justice (his more famous work). I have a friend working on a doctoral dissertation about why A Theory of Justice need not be read as assuming uniquely Kantian claims, but once he is published he will be a minority of one here. Either way, Rawls in PL is not a Kantian liberal, just a liberal. Also, not responding to kosmotropic, but Rawls at no point claims that religious arguments should be repressed. He simply says that if you only address religious arguments to those who do not share your religious beliefs in order to justify a peice of legislation then you are not showing them the respect they deserve as a fellow citizen. If they lose and all you can say to them is that more people buy into your presuppositions then buy into theirs, then they have no reason to identify with the outcome, and thus any coercion the state applies to them with regards to that outcome is unjust. Rawls in PL explicitly states that you the government cannot restrict speech in such a way. PL is primarily about the duties of good citizenship.

Did you mean to be asking a question about knowledge? Almost no one thinks that the truth of the proposition is impacted by what some individual takes to be evidence for it.

Rawls was in the business of constructing a practical utopia. He was trying to say what the best political situation we could hope for was, given human limitations. Given this as a goal, the fact that people are insincere now does not mean that it is not bad if his practical utopia requires insincerity. If it does, then presumably it fails to do what it intends to do, unless you think human beings cannot help being insincere, but that sounds wrong.
Basically Rawls needs a home run and you are congratulating him for a single.

People are generally not receptive to arguments based on unacceptable premises. For this reason, Rawls is probably correct. If the purpose is to change the mind of someone who favors the legality of abortion (and does not believe in God or read the Bible), arguments that are Biblically based will not be effective.

The reason people make "bad-faith" arguments is because people are often unwilling to even have the discussion with someone whose motives are known and run counter to their own. Certainty of rightness becomes petrified such that people cannot even engage in civilized discussion without simply resorting to ad hominem attacks that have little bearing on matters at hand. (I witnessed this at a "debate" between Sean Hannity and Jerry Springer a few months ago in Indiana. What a waste of time... both debaters were embarrasments.)

The reputation of a person making an argument should have no bearing on the argument itself. We would be shocked and terribly suspicious if an Ann Coulter made an argument similar to an EJ Dionne, and rightly so. This doesn't mean the argument itself has no validity.

With this in mind, I often find myself (as a Christian) faced with making an argument against behavior I consider immoral. If my audience is largely Christian, and they know I am as well, they're understandably more receptive, just as the readership of TPMCafe will be initially receptive to arguments made by Matt Yglesias. The problem is that of reputation: if my audience knows I'm a Christian and they are not, it becomes very difficult to be heard, even if my argument is not based on religion.

My Point is this If a religious fanatic says:

Beelzebub says that Murder is wrong. Therefore murder is wrong. The fact that the premise of the argument is not good grounds for believing the conclusion does not mean that therefore the conclusion is false. If The New Testament says that thou shall not covet thy neighbors wife, the fact that the New Testament says it is wrong is not an reason for maintaining it wrong. You should not covet they neighbors wife regardless of what the New Testament says about it. In short contrary to popular belief (promoted by the right wingers and fundies) what is right or wrong has nothing to do with what God purports to say in the Bible. If God said in the Bible that molesting children is permissible, that would be so much the worse for God, not so much the worse for children. Generally speaking, any ethics based on Divine Command, is bogus. That does not mean that God or the scripture can get it right about some ethical issue, which often is the case. But the fact that ‘Moscow is the Capital of Russia’ (although true) cannot be logically derived from squirrels munching in the bushes and the fact that ‘Murder is wrong’ cannot be derived from inscriptions in an old book which purports to be the word of God does not mean that therefore Moscow is NOT the capital of Russia or that Murder is NOT wrong. Even granting it is the word of God, Murder's wrongness is not dependent of what God says is right or wrong. Socrates made that point way back when.

Since Rawls has passed... may I suggest

Politics and Vision : Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought
by Sheldon S. Wolin

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691126275/qid=1150475068/ sr=12-6/103-4763409-8459846?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

"This is a significantly expanded edition of one of the greatest works of modern political theory. Sheldon Wolin's Politics and Vision inspired and instructed two generations of political theorists after its appearance in 1960. This new edition retains intact the original ten chapters about political thinkers from Plato to Mill, and adds seven chapters about theorists from Marx and Nietzsche to Rawls and the postmodernists. The new chapters, which show how thinkers have grappled with the immense possibilities and dangers of modern power, are themselves a major theoretical statement. They culminate in Wolin's remarkable argument that the United States has invented a new political form, "inverted totalitarianism," in which economic rather than political power is dangerously dominant. In this new edition, the book that helped to define political theory in the late twentieth century should energize, enlighten, and provoke generations of scholars to come. Wolin originally wrote Politics and Vision to challenge the idea that political analysis should consist simply of the neutral observation of objective reality. He argues that political thinkers must also rely on creative vision. Wolin shows that great theorists have been driven to shape politics to some vision of the Good that lies outside the existing political order. As he tells it, the history of theory is thus, in part, the story of changing assumptions about the Good. In the new chapters, Wolin displays all the energy and flair, the command of detail and of grand historical developments, that he brought to this story forty years ago. This is a work of immense talent and intense thought, an intellectual achievement that will endure."

I understand the point, it is just a statement that the 'denying the antecedent' fallacy is in fact a fallacy. To that extent the point is common sense. I thought you were going after the only slightly deeper philosophical question about whether, when we believe in something true, we should count as knowing it when our belief is based on bad evidence. So should we say that the person who believes adultery is wrong because the Bible tells them so doesn't know that adultery is wrong, because the Bible is, we are assuming, not good evidence for such things?

As for Divine Command Theories, I agree that they are wrong, but this is not shown by anything you have said here. You are begging the question against the Divine Command Theorist, becuase you are assuming from the outset that appeals to authority are bad evidence, and so it just follows that Divine Command Theory is false. Socrates similarly does not disprove Divine Command Theory (for a single God anyway), but seems to assume that it is false. People try to read in the good argument that Divine Command Theories suggest that the Divine Being is to some extent ammoral, since they picked what the moral law was, presumably from a non-moral standpoint (otherwise you get a regress), but it is not clear that he is making this argument. I do not have my collected works of Plato with me on vacation so I will not be able to debate the interpretational particulars with you.

I don't know whether you do philosophy professionally. I know that I do. So let me tell you that you are the one who does not know what he is talking about. You are dealing with an introduction to Ethics view of the logical space. There are two key points to make. One, not all non-utilitarians derive moral value from Reason. For examples see most virtue ethicists. Michael Slote, Richard Taylor, Elizabeth Anscombe, and especially Bernard Williams are especially good examples. These peopel do not think, as Kant does, that the moral law is derivable from reason alone. They also do not think the Principle of Utility is valid. So there is that. The fact that Rawls is not a utilitarian (I am assuming that you think there are only two camps in ethics-kantian and Utilitarian- because I never claimed that Rawls was a utilitarian, only that in Political Liberalism he is not a Kantian. The only way to infer from that claim that I also thought he was a utilitarian is to think that there are only two things a person can be. This is just obviously false. Ask any professor of philosophy and they will tell you so.) does not show that he is a Kantian. It just doesn't. This is actually something that is usually tought in an intro Ethics or intro Political theory course, so you really ought to know this, unless you are completely pretending to know anything about philosophy.
Point two, Rawls is pretty explicitly not doing moral philosophy in Political Liberalism. He also claims to not be doing it in A Theory of Justice, though he realizes that his argument relies on some moral claims, and has consequences for moral argument. Part of the point of Political Liberalism is to provide an account of liberalism that does not rely on any comprehensive doctrines (that includes moral ones).
To cure your ignorance go check out the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Also, befoe you pretend to know more than a person on a subject, you should probably make sure they don't get paid to teach it and write about it. In case you think I am lying my name is patrick mayer and I am a grad student at cornell. you can look me up.

1 "One, not all non-utilitarians derive moral value from Reason."

What on earth makes you think that that's my position. show me where I even remotely imply such a thing

2 "The fact that Rawls is not a utilitarian (I am assuming that you think there are only two camps in ethics-kantian and Utilitarian- because I never claimed that Rawls was a utilitarian, only that in Political Liberalism he is not a Kantian"

Again, totally false assumption, I merely said that Rawls' method is closer to Kant than it is to say Bentham or Mill. You seem to be having a debate with yourself or a straw man because it certainly is not me.

3. "The only way to infer from that claim that I also thought he was a utilitarian is to think that there are only two things a person can be."

That's just a logically unsound argument. Those are not the only two logical choices. Look things over again on that. I was trying to get the record straight that Rawls is NOT a utilitarian, because a number of people are making that claim in this threat. That was the gist of my whole point. In fact if you really want to get down to it Rawls is a psychological egoist

4) "[sic].) does not show that he is a Kantian."

Inasmuch as Rawls holds reason (albeit instrumental) to be central to his method, he shares that with Kant. I never meant to imply that Rawls subscribed to, say, the doctrine of "The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals" or any such thing

5. "Point two, Rawls is pretty explicitly not doing moral philosophy in Political Liberalism"

No kidding. A Theory of Justice is a work of Social/Political philosophy and inasmuch as it is that, it presupposes ethical theory. I already mentioned that the Original Position assumes "self-interested" and rational" individuals. So implicit in his construction is ethical egoism. And Ethical Egoism is an ethical theory but certainly NOT Kantian.

"What the Rawlsian project is trying to do is impose the requirement upon all citizens at all times, not just when it serves political purposes. "

All Social/Political docrines are universal. If you mean that we are going to FORCE every single individual to abide by Rawlsian prescriptions, all I can say is good luck. Trying to stop "free riding" is a matter of law enforcement I think.

I am also here in replying to your last post.

Numbers 1-3 are easy enough to deal with. You presented only two possibilities as to what Rawls might be, one being a utilitarian naturalist, the other a Kantian. Given that I was saying he was neither, if you meant to be addressing an argument to me (since your comment was a reply to mine) and knew that there were alternate positions, it would have made sense to actually present the third possibility and say why Rawls was not that. You didn't. Further evidence for your thinking this is your critisizing me (and condescendingly trying to inform me of the issues) for thinking that Rawls was a utilitarian. I will repeat that the only way that you could have drawn the conlcusion that I thought he was a utilitarian, given that all I said was that he was not a Kantian (In PL), was to think that one is either a utilitarian or a Kantian. You obviously had trouble following the dialectic, since the argument you call invalid in your #3 was an argument I was attributing to you. So there is my evidence that you think there are only two positions open. If you knew there weren't, then it was something you manifestly failed to get across in your post.

As for your #4, it does not separate Rawls from utilitarians in thinking that Reason is central to ethics. Everyone except for mystics and romantics thinks this. Philosophical ethics pretty much by definition accepts this claim, that it is at least in part through reason that we come to know ethical truth. If you meant something else by 'central' then you need to be clearer.

I find your response to #5 odd, since I was all along talking about PL and not A theory of Justice, but I think it is clear that you misunderstand the role of the Original Position in a Theory of Justice as well. The reason we are all rationally self-interested behing the veil of ignorance is because it is a constraint on the Original Position that it build in no controversial assumptions about human nature. If it did it would not be a thought experiment both available to all citizens within a well-ordered society and a thought experiment which delivered uniform results. It is also explicit in part III of A theory of Justice, when Rawls presents his theory of the good, that he is not an ethical egoist.

And you were doing more than saying that Rawls was not a utilitarian, you were saying he was a Kantian. I said that was false for PL, and you responded with a comment that presumed to explain to me (incorrectly by the way since not all utilitarians are naturalists, and since some Kantians are) what the difference between the two were, while imputing to me the view that Rawls was a utilitarian. Redescribing your venture midcurrent is intellectually dishonest, and you shouldn't do it.

As for your complaint about my being shrill, I love this trick. You write an asswhole comment talking down to me, and it is my fault for getting pissed and pointing out the mistakes you made. So you should get to talk down to people, but no one else can talk down to you in response. That is great. And yes there are plenty of people in philosophy who would have dealt with you in a more even tone. Plenty of people in the world with more patience and less vanity than me. But don't fool yourself into thinking that the problem is with me alone. I have never responded to a student in the way I responded to you, because I have never had a student act like such a know it all when it was clear that they didn't know what they were talking about. You use the internet as a sheild so you can play this wise guy, but you haven't shown that you know anything substantial about the subject. Some people are good enough to give respect to everyone. I am not so good. I only give respect when a person acts as though they deserve it.