My primary research is in value theory, with an emphasis on ethical issues that arise for citizens in the pursuit of legitimate democratic governance. More specifically, my work centers on deliberation across difference, civic virtue, public reason, and toleration. I also have a significant interest in philosophy of science; currently I am pursuing questions that arise at the intersection of democratic theory and philosophy of science often talked about in terms of “democratizing science.”
Appointments
Education
Publications
Current Projects and Directions for Future Research
Projects in Conception
Instructor, Loyola University Chicago (Philosophy Dept.)
2012-present
Biological Futures Research Associate, University of Washington (Program on Values in Society)
2011-2012
Postdoctoral Fellow in Democracy and Diversity, Queen’s University (Philosophy Dept.)
2010-2011
(2004-2010)
PhD, Philosophy, June 2010
MA, Philosophy, June 2006
Dissertation: “Listening in Public: Duties of Civility in a Pluralistic Democracy”
Committee: Michael Blake (supervisor), William Talbott, Alison Wylie, and Michael Rosenthal
, Tokyo, Japan (March – August 2000)
Semester Abroad
(1997-2001)
BA, Philosophy w/ honors; Phi Beta Kappa
Value Theory, Social and Political Philosophy
Philosophy of Human Rights, Applied Ethics, Philosophy of Science
King, L., Morgan-Olsen, B., & Wong, J. (2016). Identifying Difference, Engaging Dissent: What is at Stake in Democratizing Knowledge? Foundations of Science 21(1): 6-88. (first published online 9/2014) download (Springer link)
Several prominent voices have called for a democratization of science through deliberative processes that include a diverse range of perspectives and values. In this article, we bring these scholars into conversation with extant research on democratic deliberation in political theory and the social sciences. In doing so, we identify systematic barriers to the effectiveness of inclusive deliberation in both scientific and political settings.
download (PDC subscription req.) | preprint (pdf)
The obligation that citizens must only offer “public” reasons into political discourse is traditionally taken by political liberals to fall on the citizen as speaker--as an individual who forwards political arguments. I argue here that those who accept this obligation for speakers must accept a corresponding civic obligation on listeners—a duty to attempt to identify public reasons within others’ presented arguments.
preprint (pdf)
The act of matching nonpublic claims with equivalent public claims is significant for both Habermas’s work on the role of religion in the public sphere and for Rawls’s "duty of civility". I investigate here what a detailed account of this “translation” of nonpublic claims might look like, especially for purposes of political inclusion.
download (Sage subscription required) | preprint (pdf)
Deliberative democratic theorists typically use accounts of public reason—i.e., constraints on the types of reasons one can invoke in public, political discourse—as a tool to resist political exclusion; at its most basic level, the aim of a theory of public reason is to prevent situations in which powerful majority groups are able to justify policy choices based on reasons that are not even assessable by minority groups. However, I demonstrate here that a type of exclusion I call ‘conceptual exclusion’ complicates this picture. I argue that the possibility of conceptual exclusion creates the potential for public reason constraints to further exclude already marginalized groups—contrary to the standard view—and thus that taking conceptual exclusion seriously requires both a revision of traditional accounts of public reason and a re-conceptualization of our civic obligations.
(in progress)
The act of matching nonpublic claims with equivalent public claims is significant for both Jürgen
Habermas’s recent work on the role of religion in the public sphere and for John Rawls’s "duty of civility". Much hangs on the appropriate description of this process of “translation”, yet neither theorist states explicitly what it entails. In this paper, I investigate what a suitable account of the "translation” of nonpublic claims might look like, particularly focused on how such a process can serve the purpose of political inclusion. The account that I present offers two interpretations of “translation”—one which involves disambiguating public content from nonpublic content and one which involves seeking claims of equivalent political effectiveness.
“Multiculturalism and (Mis)Understanding” (in progress)
My aim here is to call attention to one particular area of conceptual confusion that can be found among critics and advocates of multiculturalism alike: confusion about the idea of cultural toleration and its place—or lack thereof—in multicultural societies. Sorting out this confusion points us profitably towards questions about the requisite attitudes that must be considered civic virtues if multicultural societies are going to succeed. Although multicultural states must substantively refrain from weighing in on cross-cultural engagement, tolerant cross-cultural engagement is virtuous activity for multicultural citizens.
“Civility in Uncivil Times: On Malcom X, Martin Luther King, and Jerry Falwell” (in progress)
Although much has been written about civility and public reason, little has been said about how norms of civility are to apply in non-ideal circumstances. I will ultimately contend that there are many individuals to whom, and political circumstances in which, norms of deliberative civility ought not apply. Yet, drawing from Cheshire Calhoun’s 2005 essay “The Virtue of Civility”, it is important to recognize that dismissing norms of civility comes at a very real moral cost. I suggest that widespread acknowledgment of civility can play a significant role in improving the health of public political deliberation even if duties of civility are unevenly distributed.
“Good Science and Fruitful Dissent: Finding Reasonable Disagreement in Climate Change Debates” (in progress; collaboration with Loren King and James Wong)
In science, as in public life, we typically want fruitful debate that charts a course between the shoals of complacent consensus and partisan distortion. This is especially so in climate science: we want to identify and encourage efforts to advance scientific understanding of anthropogenic climate change, on the one hand, while crafting policy responses in ways that take seriously a diversity of values, perspectives, and interests, on the other. We focus here on the controversial disputes over values and priorities that often result from taking such diversity seriously. With respect to these issues, we suspect a common intuition about authoritative consensus and reasonable dissent ultimately fails to provide clear guidance for policy.
“Virtues of Science and Citizenship” (in progress; collaboration with Loren King and James Wong)
Who counts as a legitimate epistemic authority? We argue that answering this question for either science or politics involves comparable cognitive demands. We make our case by way of two orthodoxies concerning the practice of science and the relationship between science and policy. A powerful criticism of one of these orthodoxies suggests a way of approaching the other, and that interpretive stance leads to, and ultimately sustains, our thesis. The justification for privileging any deliberative outcome, in science or public life, importantly presumes certain epistemic virtues for both science and citizenship.
“Complicating the Right of Free Movement Across Borders” (in conception)
Recent work in the ethics of immigration literature—for example, Joseph Carens’s recent book, The Ethics of Immigration—is premised on an individual’s right to free movement. I explore here tensions that arise when such rights come up against borders justified on the basis of resisting historical oppression, such the territorial borders of the Navajo Nation or the provincial borders of Quebec.
“Human Rights on Three Wheels” (in conception)
This paper offers a reframing of debates central to the philosophy of human rights. I argue that we can gain insight on many fundamental questions in the field by juxtaposing three distinct analytical poles: the methodological individualism of traditional liberalism, a holistic model of social connectedness, and a standpoint theory that privileges marginalized perspectives.
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