Basing public decisions on controversial comprehensive doctrines

According to Rawlsians, it is wrong to make decisions in the public arena based on controversial comprehensive doctrines.

Here is a counterexample. We meet up with aliens who are incredibly truthful: not only have we never found one to lie, but we have never found one to even accidentally say the false. The aliens inform us that they have figured out whether controversial comprehensive doctrine D is true. We have very good reason to believe the aliens. The aliens inform us of a fanatical plan: Each state has two weeks to submit a statement to the aliens as to whether D is true. Those states that either fail to submit such a statement or who get the answer wrong will be completely destroyed. And then the aliens will leave.

It is obvious that the right thing for the state to do is to do its best to figure out whether D is true, and then on the basis of its best determination make the statement to the aliens. It is clearly wrong to refuse to answer, and it is also clearly wrong to simply guess without basing oneself on one’s best determination of the truth value of the comprehensive doctrine. It is clearly the right thing in this case to make a public decision on the basis of a controversial comprehensive doctrine.

Of course, this is a very special case: a case where what rides on the decision is so important that it trumps most other considerations. But we can lower the amount that rides on the decision and still keep the intuition. Suppose that instead the aliens promise to kill one per thousand people at random if we get the answer wrong. That should, I think, be enough to overcome any qualms we may have about using controversial comprehensive doctrines in public policy. But now there are real-world issues riding on controversial comprehensive doctrines where what is at stake is of a similar or greater magnitude. Abortion is a paradigm case.

Non-shareable reasons in the public arena

There is a lot of discussion about whether it is permissible to use reasons based on controversial comprehensive doctrines, such as religious reasons, in the public arena. But at least such reasons can be formulated in terms most people understand.

A different sort of challenge seems to be posed by reasons that the agent is unable to share, reasons such as hunches, feelings, etc. Not infrequently, we just see, or at least think we see, that something is the right decision, but cannot say why. And while on the one hand such reasons cannot very satisfactorily enter into discussion, on the other hand without them our public knowledge of what we should do will be deeply impoverished, and our public deliberation will be biased in favor of the opinions of verbally skilled elites. And it seems plausible that it is more important to get to the truth than to have a satisfactory discussion.

Of course, one could say that the fact that one has a hunch that something is to be done is itself a shareable, discussable reason, and hence acceptable in the public sphere. But now, I think, the notion of what is a shareable, discussable reason becomes largely trivialized.

Rawls and rationally intractable disagreement

Let me preface by saying I am not a political philosopher, and this may be off-base. Start by granting this claim for the sake of the argument:

1. The disagreement between comprehensive views is very long-standing and there is no progress to agreement, except when non-rational, coercive methods are applied to generate agreement or for other merely sociological reasons there happens to be cultural homogeneity.

(I don't know how to characterize merely sociological reasons.) Now consider two possible explanations of (1):

2. People's idiosyncratic or culturally-based preferences, as well as their presently-held comprehensive views, often significantly bias them in their disagreements between comprehensive views.
3. It is not possible to resolve the disagreement between comprehensive views by reason alone.

We now have at least three options: only (2) explains (1); only (3) explains (1); both (2) and (3) explain (1). How would we decide between these? Well, first observe that (2) is a truism. Moreover, (2) clearly is at least a part of the explanation of (1). So of the three options, the two that remain are:

• both (2) and (3) explain (1)
• (2) by itself explains (1)

I understand that it is important to Rawls' project that (3) be a part of the explanation of (1), because it is important to Rawls' project that (3) be true, and apparently the main evidence he adduces for (3) is that it explains (1).

But now the question whether (1) is explains by (2) and (3), or simply by (2), is to a significant degree an empirical question.

And there is an obvious experiment to test between these options. Take a bunch of intelligent and rational people without idiosyncratic and culturally-based preferences who do not adhere to any comprehensive views, and see if they come to agree to on a comprehensive view or against all of them--if they do, then (3) is not a part of an explanation of (1), and if they don't, then (3) is a part of an explanation of (1). And we cannot at present rule out the possibility that such an experiment would rule in favor of the hypothesis that (2) by itself explains (1).

But now note that this experiment is precisely the original situation of deliberation under the veil of ignorance. And note that we can say directly this. If it is an empirically open possibility that agreement on a comprehensive view or against all of them would arise in the original situation, then it seems to be an open possibility that the delegates would legislate in accordance with a comprehensive view or in ways that significantly impugn the freedom to follow comprehensive views. And that's unacceptable to Rawls.

Sound-bite version: Please don't infer that a debate would be unsettled in an idealized situation from the fact that it's unsettled in the real world.

But I probably don't know what I'm talking about.