This book evaluates a range of contemporary social and political questions in light of Catholic social teaching, philosophy, great political thinkers, and America's founding tradition. It is a strong and focused defense of traditional Catholic approaches to the questions of our time, and the vast array of material covered makes this book an invaluable reference for anyone interested in contemporary politics.

This paper critically addresses the logics of exceptionality inherent to emerging regulations of the gender field, with a focus on Spain’s recent self-determination-based regulation of gender. To achieve this, it offers a biopolitical analysis of the concept of “public order” and its influence on gender governance, drawing parallels to Agamben’s concept of the state of exception and exploring the connections between contemporary regulations and the gendered public order of nineteenth-century France. Finally, it analyzes the exclusions and (...) restrictions that the Spanish trans law reserves for migrants, non-binary people, and minors, contributing to the ongoing discourse on the limitations to gender autonomy in contemporary Western societies. (shrink)

How heavily should ethical considerations weigh in allowing or disallowing genetic patents? The concept of 'ordre public' can be useful in offsetting a simple utilitarian view.

Abstract This introductory article argues that world public order continues to be challenged by the emergence of the doctrines of anticipatory self-defense and humanitarian intervention. These challenges may be better understood, and reconciled, by application of the just war tradition.

This article focuses on the conclusion in which the analyses of the previous papers converge, namely, the emergence of a new and radically different public order that is emerging in contemporary America. While Catholics could never feel completely comfortable in the older order that preceded it, the culture that informed this order had many features that were consistent with the Catholic vision of man, society, and the human good; and it secured for the Church a broad (...) freedom to exercise her ministry and for Catholics the freedom they needed to practice the faith. In sharp contrast, the new order installs at the heart of public life an ethic of human autonomy incompatible with the Catholic understanding, and jeopardizes the freedom of the Church and of Catholics to practice the faith. The emergence of this new order will require Catholics to rethink their relationship to American culture and the American state. (shrink)

For Aristotle, virtues are neither transcendent nor universal, but socially interdependent; they need to be understood chronologically and with respect to character and context. This paper uses an Aristotelian lens to analyse an especially interesting context in which to study virtue—the state’s response when social order breaks down. During such periods, questions relating to right action by citizens, the state, and state agents are pronounced. To study this, we analyse data from interviews, observation, and documents gathered during a 3-year (...) study of riot policing in the U.K. In doing so, we contribute by joining a number of other conversations within JBE, suggesting detailed empirical examination of this context is useful in opening up considerations relevant to ‘virtue’ elsewhere. This extreme context helps us raise interesting and empirically informed questions that can encourage future theoretical and empirical contributions to virtue in business ethics. One such question is on the role of habituation in virtue, which is not just the inculcation of a reflex or automaticity, but can also refer to a trained and developed tendency to behave in the right way, for the right reasons, at the right time. Whilst we stop short of a simplistic alignment of habituation and virtue, we show ways in which it can inform understanding of both courage and phronēsis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Martin Heidegger and OntologyEmmanuel Levinas (bio)The prestige of Martin Heidegger 1 and the influence of his thought on German philosophy marks both a new phase and one of the high points of the phenomenological movement. Caught unawares, the traditional establishment is obliged to clarify its position on this new teaching which casts a spell over youth and which, overstepping the bounds of permissibility, is already in vogue. For once, (...) Fame has picked one who deserves it and, for that matter, one who is still living. Anyone who has studied philosophy cannot, when confronted by Heidegger’s work, fail to recognize how the originality and force of his achievements, stemming from genius, are combined with an attentive, painstaking, and close working-out of the argument—with that craftsmanship of the patient artisan in which phenomenologists take such pride. In this study, it is important for us to understand, above all, the true intentions of our author, to illuminate what he thinks really needs to be said, and to surmise what is most critical for him.To get to the heart of Heidegger’s system, it seems fitting to begin with a problem that is generally familiar. We choose the problem of knowledge, a deeper understanding of which takes us to the very threshold of Heidegger’s thought. For this problem, central to modern philosophy, is one of the main obstacles of modern philosophy that Heidegger wishes to surmount. Neo-Kantianism, which takes knowledge as the philosophical problem of the first rank, is the movement against which Heidegger rebels with all his strength. We have, thus, every chance of gaining access to his thought by the main door, so to speak. Once inside the system we will try to trace its outlines, 2 reserving, for a second part of our work, the determination of Heidegger’s place in the history of ideas, especially in the phenomenological movement, as well as of his relations with the philosopher to whom he owes so much—Edmund Husserl. 31In its most general form, the problem of the theory of knowledge has a critical significance. It consists in delineating a domain where knowledge can be certain and in determining the criteria for the legitimate scope of knowledge. But this problem, as normal and as simple as it may appear, has deeper roots. That knowledge should need a criterion at all presupposes that truth is not identical to all that is known and that the course [End Page 11] of things can fail to correspond with the course of thought. “How does knowledge correspond to being?” is a more profound formulation of the problem of knowledge.But we are not going to touch anymore on the primordial phenomenon that generates the problem. The problem of correspondence between thing and thought presupposes a free activity of thought and its isolation in relation to the object. It is precisely this presupposition which renders their harmony and even their contact problematic. “How does the subject take leave of itself to attain the object?” is what the problem of knowledge, in the last analysis, boils down to. Its true source is thus the concept of “subject” as elaborated by modern philosophy. The cogito presided over the subject’s birth. The cogito was the affirmation of the privileged nature of the subject’s immanent sphere, of its unique place in existence; hence, the cogito was the specificity of the subject’s connection to the rest of reality, the sui generis nature which opens up the passage from immanence to transcendence, the passage from ideas contained in the thinking substance to 4 their “formal existence.”The concept of the subject, understood as a substance having a specific position in the entire domain of being, presents us with difficulties of two kinds. First, how do we understand this leave-taking from the self which the thinking substance brings about and which displays an entirely original aspect? Indeed, we could say that thought, in reaching out toward objects, does not actually take leave of itself, since its objects—considered as ideas and contents of thought—are, in a certain sense, already within it. In order to make sense of this paradox, Descartes... (shrink)

In this innovative and important work, Gerald Gaus advances a revised and more realistic account of public reason liberalism, showing how, in the midst of fundamental disagreement about values and moral beliefs, we can achieve a moral and political order that treats all as free and equal moral persons. The first part of this work analyzes social morality as a system of authoritative moral rules. Drawing on an earlier generation of moral philosophers such as Kurt Baier and Peter (...) Strawson as well as current work in the social sciences, Gaus argues that our social morality is an evolved social fact, which is the necessary foundation of a mutually beneficial social order. The second part considers how this system of social moral authority can be justified to all moral persons. Drawing on the tools of game theory, social choice theory, experimental psychology and evolutionary theory, Gaus shows how a free society can secure a moral equilibrium that is endorsed by all, and how a just state respects, and develops, such an equilibrium. (shrink)

Criminal law is a system for societal ordering, as much as it is for protection against interpersonal harm and wrongs. Whilst such laws can engage rights to privacy and freedoms of expression and movement, international human rights rarely feature in criminal theory. Using Duff’s public wrongs theory, a normative argument is made for recognition of international human rights within the national civil order, as well as through a proposed supra-national human rights polity. This is tested through identification of (...) human rights criminalization principles from public ordering cases in the European Court of Human Rights. International human rights offers a formal route to recognition of liberal principles, as well as adding possible new boundary conditions within criminal theory. (shrink)

Critical notice of The Order of Public Reason by Gerald Gaus.

Building, restoring and maintaining well-placed trust between scientists and the public is a difficult yet crucial social task requiring the successful cooperation of various social actors and institutions. Kitcher’s takes up this challenge in the context of liberal democratic societies by extending his ideal model of “well-ordered science” that he had originally formulated in his. However, Kitcher nowhere offers an explicit account of what it means for the public to invest epistemic trust in science. Yet in order (...) to understand how his extended model and its implementation in the actual world address the problem of trust as well as to evaluate it critically, an explicit account of epistemic public trust in science needs to be given first. In this article we first present such an account and then scrutinize his project of building public trust in science in light of it. We argue that even though Kitcher’s ideal model and his proposals for its implementation in the real world face a number of problems, they can be addressed with the resources of our account. (shrink)

The public perception of decision‐making procedures as fair processes is a central means for establishing their legitimacy to make difficult resource allocation decisions. According to the ethical framework of accountability for reasonableness (A4R, hereafter), which specifies conditions for fair healthcare resource allocation, disagreements about what constitutes relevant considerations are a central threat to its perceived fairness. This article considers how an ethical principle grounded in the public memory of past traumatic events may become the topic of such disagreements. (...) I demonstrate this through an anthropological case study of a recent public de bate concerning an Israeli healthcare allocation committee (HAC, thereafter), which determines state subsidies for new medical technologies as part of Israel’s public healthcare system. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork about the HAC, I show how the public memory of Adolf Eichmann’s trial constitutes a bioethical problem for the committee’s legitimacy. Based on Arendt’s and Bauman’s writings that Nazi bureaucrats’ manner of “following orders” was an ethical transgression, some patients contended that the committee has a historical responsibility to question its strict adherence to bureaucratic procedures. Since the committee did not have a direct link to the events of the Holocaust, other considerations seemed to them more relevant. I then present an offer that can settle this disagreement and maintain the HAC’s legitimacy according to A4R. I conclude by discussing the contribution of empirical data to models of bioethical legitimacy. (shrink)

A well-ordered society faces a crisis whenever a sufficient number of noncompliers enter into the political system. This has the potential to destabilize liberal democratic political order. This article provides a formal analysis of two competing solutions to the problem of political stability offered in the public reason liberalism literature—namely, using public reason or using convergence discourse to restore liberal democratic political order in the well-ordered society. The formal analyses offered in this article show that using (...) public reason fails completely, and using convergent discourse, although doing better, has its own critical limitations that have not been previously recognized properly. (shrink)

The idea that crimes can usefully be understood as ‘public wrongs’, and that this can generate a plausible principle of criminalisation, has found some support in recent years; it has also been subjected to some sharp criticism. This paper aims to sketch the most plausible version of that idea, and to show how, once properly explained, it is not vulnerable to those criticisms. After a brief defence of the negative principle, that we may not criminalise conduct that does not (...) constitute a public wrong, it explains the positive principle, that we have reason to criminalise conduct if it constitutes a public wrong, by drawing an analogy between criminal law and codes of professional ethics, and by appealing to the idea of civil order, as the normative structure of a polity—a structure that criminal law helps both to constitute and to sustain. Four objections are then met: that this account implies an unacceptable relativism; that it distorts the reasons that bear on criminalisation; that it cannot make room for those who do not identify themselves with the polity in which they live; and that it implies an unrealistically demanding conception of what is required for a polity to exist. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 98 Heft: 2 Seiten: 758-762.

My paper will explore boundaries and rights, the public and the private, as to the enforcement of religious legal rules in societies self-consciously founded on Islamic law. I employ as my case-study legal and social controversies aroused by the Saudi Hay’at al-amr bi-al-ma`ruf wa-al-nahy `an al-munkar, the government agency charged with “ordering the good and forbidding the evil.” The paper will first lay out some of the laws fixing the powers of the Hay’at, including various statutes issued by the (...) king but, of equal or greater importance, the received medieval fiqh rules governing the muhtasib . Focus shall be on an issue much debated in the classical law and also a long-time bone of contention in Saudi society, namely the legal limits on the powers of the Hay’at to investigate and punish immoral acts occurring in private. Limits on such powers stem from two sources, both in the law and in social understandings of that law. One source, the more prominent in public debate, concerns revelatory and fiqh and related social norms against spying or prying into people’s behavior and against undue attempts to expose people’s sins. Notably, however, this restriction affects only enforcement. The pervasiveness of laws considered to arise from the relationship of the individual to God still stands. A solitary immoral act performed in privacy can still be a sin and a crime, and punishable if it is somehow legitimately known and proved . The second source of restrictions is more far-reaching, going beyond issues of investigation and proof. As held by the majority of scholars, the Hay’at may not compel or forbid any actions for which the religious-legal ruling is under classical law a matter of legitimate difference of scholarly opinion; or inversely, the Hay’at may compel or forbid only those actions as to which there is a divine command known to a certainty either from a revealed text or from the consensus of scholars. A commonly noted abuse by the Hay’at in Saudi Arabia has been to attempt to enforce rules lacking requisite certainty, such as requiring veiling of the face. Rules known to a certainty have a pervasive role in Islamic constitutional theory. In principle, such rules must be enforced, regardless of whether they concern matters other societies may consider individual or private, such as changing one’s religion. Rules lacking that high degree of certainty cannot – without separate justification on grounds other than religious text – define sins or crimes or be enforced as general rules by the state. Though seemingly scholastic and philosophical, this restriction is potentially crucial in defining a realm of individual autonomy in religious matters and shaping the boundary between public and private in societies self-consciously founded in Islamic law. It is important to examine to what extent the restriction is reflected in legal and social practice in such societies. (shrink)

This article endeavors to describe and explain the constitution of modernity, its different trajectories, and its ongoing crisis using the Weberian concept of ‘legitimate order’, and by considering the changing relations between orders. One possible basis for the interpretation of the changing constitution of modernity – which involves, most significantly, a move beyond the great public/private dichotomy – is drawn from economic theory, or rather theories, of goods. The ability of certain orders to produce certain types of goods (...) and to allocate them defines different types of society; in different societies, the same good will differ in nature and occupy a place within different property regimes. Changing relations can also be analyzed on the basis of the capacity of an order to impose upon others its negative externalities, and to manage effectively the production and allocation of its characteristic goods at different territorial scales. (shrink)

In the first part of the text the distinction between first- and second-order impartiality, along with Brian Barry?s thorough elaboration of their characteristics and the differences between them, is examined. While the former impartiality is related to non-favoring fellow-persons in everyday occasions, the latter is manifested in the institutional structure of society and its political and public morality. In the second part of the article, the concept of public impartiality is introduced through analysis of two examples. In (...) the first example, a Caledonian Club with its exclusive membership is considered as a form of association which is partial, but nevertheless morally acceptable. In the second example, the so-called Heinz dilemma has been reconsidered and the author points to some flaws in Barry?s interpretation, arguing that Heinz?s right of giving advantage to his wife?s life over property rights can be recognized through mitigating circum-stances, and this partiality can be appreciated in the public sphere. Thus, public impartiality imposes limits to the restrictiveness and rigidity of political impartiality implied in second-order morality. (shrink)

In this issue of Philosophical Studies, Richard Arneson, Jonathan Quong and Robert Talisse contribute papers discussing The Order of Public Reason (OPR). All press what I call “agent-type challenges” to the project of OPR. In different ways they all focus on a type (or types) of moral (or sometimes not-so-moral) agent. Arneson presents a good person who is so concerned with doing the best thing she does not truly endorse social morality; Quong a bad person who rejects it (...) and violates the basic rights of others, and Talisse a morally ugly person, a hypocrite, who criticizes others for failing to do what he does not do. All suggest that OPR does not give a satisfying account of what we are to say to, or how we should act towards, such agents. In my response I highlight some core concerns of OPR, while also seeking to show that OPR does not say quite what they think it says, and it often leaves them room for saying what they would like to say about such agents. (shrink)

Bioethics is best viewed as both a second-order discipline and also part of public discourse. Since their goals differ, some bioethical activities are more usefully viewed as advancing public discourse than academic disciplines. For example, the “Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights” sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization seeks to promote ethical guidance on bioethical issues. From the vantage of philosophical ethics, it fails to rank or specify its stated principles, justify controversial (...) principles, clarify key terms, or say what is meant by calling potentially conflicting norms “foundational.” From the vantage of improving the public discourse about bioethical problems and seeking ethical solutions in the public arena, however, this document may have an important role. The goals and relations between bioethics as a second-order discipline and public discourse are explored. (shrink)

The Norwegian high-school drama series Skam is produced and published by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, a publicly funded institution distinguished by an explicit obligation to the public interest, not only serving their audience as consumers but even as citizens. Generally, the normativity expressed in Skam may be summarized by treating all with respect, involving not only moral considerations of what is right, but also ethical conceptions of what is good, offered, opened up and obstructed by the living social (...) class='Hi'>order established there. In season three, given attention here, the plot revolves around issues concerning same-sex relationships, mental disorder and religion. Here Skam becomes interesting for the field of moral education, elaborating on how to encounter the challenges of pluralistic societies that undergo continuous changes and in which common values have become open questions. In this paper attention is drawn toward Skam’s ethical dimension, considering Skam as an instance of public moral education. Faced with tensions, hindrances and conflicts, the norm of treating all with respect, irrespective of how trivial it may appear outside of context, becomes loaded with meaning, while the actualization of the good life is at risk. Appalling is the way hegemonic religion is transformed in the living social order. Decisive is the active role taken by the youths in the series, recontextualizing the norm. The social order here is not a static, given condition, but a continuous, moving, cultivating project. In that respect, a certain democratic aspect of the public moral education of Skam also becomes visible. Together, the youths portrayed in the series seem to accommodate a variety of expressions of life emerging within their community. (shrink)

Gerald Gaus’s latest book achieves a remarkable, definitive development of the public reason project whose roots can be traced back to Locke and Kant and which had already attained its full expression in the later writing of John Rawls—or so we had thought! In fact Gaus takes a long step beyond Rawls.Gaus (2011). Page numbers enclosed in parentheses of the text refer to this book. For John Rawls on public reason, see especially his A Theory of Justice (1999); (...) also Rawls (1996). In my view we should have a raised eyebrows response to the public reason project, but this does not gainsay Gaus’s achievement in rigorously working out its implications. The book develops an account of the justified imposition of moral constraints and, following that, of justified political arrangements. These comments focus on the former.SummaryLike any genuinely original work, this one admits of quick summary. In everyday life, people make moral demands on each other, and claim a special authority in making. (shrink)

En "Science, Truth and Democracy" (2001) y Science in a Democratic Society" (2011a), Philip Kitcher propuso un modelo de "ciencia bien ordenada". A través del desarrollo de un ideal filosófico, la ciencia bien ordenada de Kitcher tiene como objetivo consolidar los requisitos de la democracia, así como de la práctica científica. El presente artículo trata de seguir este modelo ideal desde una perspectiva más empirica: ¿Hasta qué punto podemos aplicar dicha teoria en el plano de la política científica y de (...) los marcos institucionales? El enfoque se centra en un estudio de caso de un debate público sobre nanotecnología que tuvo lugar en Francia. (shrink)

This article draws upon discursive psychology to explore the organization of public accountability in accounting for an alleged conflict of interest in journalism. The analysis focuses on the published record of an interview given by the editorial director of one of the major Romanian daily newspapers on the issue of an assumed conflict of interest involving a senior editor of the same newspaper. The analysis shows how a moral order is constituted by the use of various discursive resources: (...) role and professional incumbency discourse, disposition avowals and doing being fair/ democratic. This is a moral order where adherence to personal ethical principles, professional incumbencies and responsibilities are practically managed in dialogue and publicly displayed. Acting in-role, reporting a general disposition to engage in moral courses of action and making reference to the values of citizenship and democracy are all publicly available discursive resources used in this context to express a cautious moral judgement bounded and constrained by both personal and professional accountability perspectives. (shrink)

Secrecy and “social cocooning” are critical mechanisms allowing the normalization of corruption within organizations. Less studied are processes of normalization that occur when corruption is an “open secret.” Drawing on an empirical study of Greek public-sector organizations, we suggest that a second-order normalization process ensues among non-corrupt onlookers both inside and beyond the organization. What is normalized at this level is not corruption, but its tolerance, which we disaggregate into agent-focused tolerance and structure-focused tolerance. Emphasizing the importance of (...) non-corrupt bystanders, we claim that second-order normalization helps corruption persist in situations where its presence is openly acknowledged. This adds an important new dimension to normalization theory and we unpack its implications for both future research and practice in this area. (shrink)

On a prominent family of views about the justification of legitimate policy-making (_public justification views_), considerations about the rights and well-being of nonhuman animals can only play a derivative role at best. On these views, these considerations matter only if they can figure in the content of the public reasons that citizens can offer each other. This thesis I call the Indirect View. Some authors have argued that this constitutes a reason to reject the ideal of public justification, (...) or at least to qualify it. It is unclear, however, whether public justification theorists will be persuaded by this. In this paper, I argue that they should. In order to do so, I focus on three justifications of the ideal of public justification that have been offered in the literature (justice, our reactive attitudes, and civic friendship), and contend that none of them supports the Indirect View. In some cases, this is because the value in question (e.g. justice) might indeed be extended to animals. In other cases, this is because there is often a trade-off between the values in play and considerations about the rights and well-being of animals in which the former do not always outweigh the latter. (shrink)

RESUMO:Longe de ser uma simples inversão de valores ou transbordamento pulsional, a festa, por sua natureza coletiva e sua relação com a política, é, antes de tudo, uma cerimônia. Porque as pessoas se entregam ao espetáculo, a festa é, para Rousseau, a oportunidade de expressar a legitimidade política profunda que se enraiza, ao lado da liberdade envolvida no contrato, na unidade da natureza humana e de toda a natureza como ordem do mundo. Assim, a ordem está presente na festa, mesmo (...) como ordem política e social. Mas não está lá para ser respeitada em si mesma, ela não é mais do que um símbolo ou um veículo da ordem do mundo, à qual todos podem, na festa, se conectar. Portanto, existe o contentamento, e contentamento comum, em transportar-se, cada um, para o autor do seu ser, por meio de e na evidência coletiva do amor de si plenamente satisfeito. ABSTRACT:Far from being simply an inversion of values or pure instinctual overflow, the public celebration, by its collective nature and its relation to politics, is first and foremost a ceremony. For Rousseau, the reason that people give themselves over to the spectacle, the celebration, is that it is the opportunity for manifesting the profound political legitimacy which, aside from being rooted in the freedom involved in the contract, in rooted the unity of human nature and the whole of nature as the order of the world. This order is thus present in the celebration, even as social and political order. But the order is not there to be respected in itself; it is just a symbol or vehicle of world’s order, to which everyone may relate through the celebration. There is therefore enjoyment, and collective enjoyment, in each one transporting himself to the author of his being in and by the collective evidence of his fully satisfied love of self. (shrink)

Some children living with life-shortening medical conditions may wish to attend school without the threat of having resuscitation attempted in the event of cardiopulmonary arrest on the school premises. Despite recent attention to in-school do-not-attempt-resuscitation (DNAR) orders, no assessment of state laws or school policies has yet been made. We therefore sought to survey a national sample of prominent school districts and situate their policies in the context of relevant state laws. Most (80%) school districts sampled did not have policies, (...) regulations, or protocols for dealing with student DNARs. A similar majority (76%) either would not honor student DNARs or were uncertain about whether they could. Frequent contradictions between school policies and state laws also exist. Consequently, children living with life-shortening conditions who have DNARs may not have these orders honored if cardiopulmonary arrest were to occur on school premises. Coordinated efforts are needed to harmonize school district, state, and federal approaches in order to support children and families' right to have important medical decisions honored. (shrink)

The Public Justification Principle requires that coercive institutions be justified to all who live under them. I argue that this principle often cannot be satisfied without persons depending on the pure informative testimony of others, even under realistically idealized situations. Two main results follow. First, the sense of justification relevant to this principle has a strongly externalist component. Second, normative expectations of trust are essential to public justification. On the view I propose, whether the Public Justification Principle (...) is satisfied depends on the features of the network of testifiers in which persons are embedded. I consider several such networks to show which features are plausibly relevant. The importance of testimony for public justification ultimately suggests that we should moderate our expectations about the kind of conciliation we can achieve with the social order in which we live. (shrink)

Although the Internet is frequently referred to as a global public resource, its functioning remains predominantly controlled by private actors. The Internet brought about significant shifts in the way we conceptualize governance. In particular, the handling of “big data” by private intermediaries has a direct impact on routine practices and personal lives. The implementation of the “right to be forgotten” following the May 2014 decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union against Google blurs the boundaries between (...) the public and the private, and extends the responsibilities of the latter to court-style decision making. This article analyzes the regulatory developments in this area and the implications of outsourcing of important governance practices to private intermediaries. It looks at the decision-making process for the “right to be forgotten” to illustrate the extent to which the hybridization of such procedures results in new arrangements between public and private ordering in Internet governance. (shrink)

Responsible public policy making in a technological society must rely on complex scientific reasoning. Given that ordinary citizens cannot directly assess such reasoning, does this call the democratic legitimacy of technical public policies in question? It does not, provided citizens can make reliable second-order assessments of the consensus of trustworthy scientific experts. I develop criteria for lay assessment of scientific testimony and demonstrate, in the case of claims about anthropogenic global warming, that applying such criteria is easy (...) for anyone of ordinary education with access to the Web. However, surveys show a gap between the scientific consensus and public opinion on global warming in the U.S. I explore some causes of this gap and argue that democratic reforms of our culture of political discourse may be able to address it. (shrink)