Dennis Thompson's blog

Dennis Thompson - founding Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Professor of Public Policy and Alfred North Whitehead Professor of Political Philosophy in the Government Department at Harvard University - and Amy Guttmann - President of and Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania - conclude their introductory series. (See part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4)

The fourth [and final] purpose of deliberation is to help correct the mistakes that citizens, professionals and officials inevitably make when they take collective actions. This is a response to the last source of disagreement, the incomplete understanding that characterizes almost all of moral conflicts.

Dennis Thompson - founding Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Professor of Public Policy and Alfred North Whitehead Professor of Political Philosophy in the Government Department at Harvard University - and Amy Guttmann - President of and Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania - continue their introductory series. (See part 1, part 2, part 3)

The third purpose of deliberation, to promote mutually respectful decision making, responds to an often neglected source of moral disagreement - incompatible moral values. Even utterly altruistic individuals trying to decide on the morally best standards for governing a society of abundance would not be able to reconcile some moral conflicts beyond a reasonable doubt. They would still confront, for example, the problem of abortion, which pits life against liberty. No less tractable would be other moral issues such as the question of how to balance privacy against security.

Dennis Thompson - founding Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Professor of Public Policy and Alfred North Whitehead Professor of Political Philosophy in the Government Department at Harvard University - and Amy Guttmann - President of and Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania - continue their introductory series. (See part 1, part 2)

The second purpose of deliberation is to encourage public-spirited perspectives on public issues. This aim responds to another source of moral disagreement-limited generosity. Few people are inclined to be wholly altruistic when they are arguing about contentious issues of public policy, such as health care reform or foreign intervention.

Dennis Thompson - founding Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Professor of Public Policy and Alfred North Whitehead Professor of Political Philosophy in the Government Department at Harvard University - and Amy Guttmann - President of and Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania - continue their introductory series. (See part 1)

The first purpose of deliberative democracy is to promote the legitimacy of collective decisions.

This is a response to the first source of moral disagreement - scarcity of resources. Citizens would not have to argue about how best to distribute health care or how to balance environmental protection and economic growth if these goods and services were unlimited or not in conflict.

Deliberation often cannot resolve moral disagreements because there are reasonable differences about how health care or scarce organs should be distributed. But in the face of scarcity, deliberation can help those who do not get what they want or even what they need come to accept the legitimacy of a collective decision.

As the academic debate over the merits of deliberative democracy and deliberative polling heats up following Professor Lupia's criticisms (with more to come shortly) and the response of deliberative polling masterminds Professors Fishkin and Luskin (and part 2), it's time to get to grips with the details.

Here, Dennis Thompson - founding Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Professor of Public Policy and Alfred North Whitehead Professor of Political Philosophy in the Government Department at Harvard University - and Amy Guttmann - President of and Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania - begin an introduction to the theories underlying the concept of deliberative democracy: