Would you be able to provide a plainer language summary of the papers conclusions or arguments? I think I’m interested in the topics discussed in the paper. But it’s unclear me what the arguments actually are, so I’m inclined to disengage.
Take this sentence, which seems important:
“We argue that while the moral uncertainty approach cannot vindicate an exceptionless public justification principle, it gives us reason to adopt public justification as a pro tanto institutional commitment.”
I do not understand this and so I do not see how this is a valuable addition to the critical topic of moral uncertainty.
I know this doesn’t solve the actual problem you’re getting at, but here’s a translation of that sentence from philosophese to English. “Pro tanto” essentially means “all else equal”: a “pro tanto” consideration is a consideration, but not necessarily an overriding one. “Public justification” just means justifying policy choices with reasons that would/could be persuasive to the public/to the people they will affect. So the sentence as a whole means something like “While moral uncertainty doesn’t mean that governments (and other institutions) should always justify their decisions to the people, it does mean they should do so when they can.”
Oops, one correction: “public justification” doesn’t mean “justification to the people a policy will affect”, it means “justification to all reasonable people”; “reasonable people” is roughly everyone except Nazis and others with similarly extreme views.
Would you be able to provide a plainer language summary of the papers conclusions or arguments? I think I’m interested in the topics discussed in the paper. But it’s unclear me what the arguments actually are, so I’m inclined to disengage.
Take this sentence, which seems important:
“We argue that while the moral uncertainty approach cannot vindicate an exceptionless public justification principle, it gives us reason to adopt public justification as a pro tanto institutional commitment.”
I do not understand this and so I do not see how this is a valuable addition to the critical topic of moral uncertainty.
I know this doesn’t solve the actual problem you’re getting at, but here’s a translation of that sentence from philosophese to English. “Pro tanto” essentially means “all else equal”: a “pro tanto” consideration is a consideration, but not necessarily an overriding one. “Public justification” just means justifying policy choices with reasons that would/could be persuasive to the public/to the people they will affect. So the sentence as a whole means something like “While moral uncertainty doesn’t mean that governments (and other institutions) should always justify their decisions to the people, it does mean they should do so when they can.”
Oops, one correction: “public justification” doesn’t mean “justification to the people a policy will affect”, it means “justification to all reasonable people”; “reasonable people” is roughly everyone except Nazis and others with similarly extreme views.