Philip Pettit

Taken as a model for how groups should make collective judgments and decisions, the ideal of deliberative democracy is inherently ambiguous. Consider the idealised case where it is agreed on all sides that a certain conclusion should be endorsed if and only if certain premises are admitted. Does deliberative democracy recommend that members of the group debate the premises and then individually vote, in the light of that debate, on whether or not to support the conclusion? Or does it recommend that members individually vote on the premises, and then let their commitment to the conclusion be settled by whether or not the group endorses the required premises? Is deliberative democracy to enforce the discipline of reason at the individual level, as in the first possibility, or at the collective level, as in the second?

A generation of social theorists have argued that if free-rider considerations show that certain collective action predicaments are unresolvable under individual, rational choice – unresolvable under an arrangement where each is free to pursue their own relative advantage – then those considerations will equally show that the predicaments cannot be resolved by recourse to norms (Buchanan, 1975, p. 132; Heath, 1976, p. 30; Sober and Wilson, 1998, 156ff; Taylor, 1987, p. 144). If free-rider considerations explain why people do not spontaneously keep the streets clean, though they would each prefer unlittered streets, then those considerations will also explain why there is no effective norm against littering the streets.

In a recent discussion of Amartya Sen's concept of the capabilities of people for functioning in their society – and the idea of targeting people's functioning capabilities in evaluating the society – G. A. Cohen accuses Sen of espousing an inappropriate, ‘athletic’ image of the person (Cohen, 1993, pp. 24–5). The idea is that if Sen's formulations are to be taken at face value, then life is valuable only so far as people actively choose most facets of their existence: if they fare well in the material stakes, for example, they must fare well as a result of active choice and effort, not because anyone else looks after them. ‘That’, says Cohen, ‘overestimates the place of freedom and activity in well-being’ (p. 25).

Can groups be rational agents over and above their individual members? We argue that group agents are distinguished by their capacity to mimic the way in which individual agents act and that this capacity must “supervene” on the group members' contributions. But what is the nature of this supervenience relation? Focusing on group judgments, we argue that, for a group to be rational, its judgment on a particular proposition cannot generally be a function of the members' individual judgments on that proposition. Rather, it must be a function of their individual sets of judgments across many propositions. So knowing what the group members individually think about some proposition does not generally tell us how the group collectively adjudicates that proposition: the supervenience relation must be “setwise,” not “proposition‐wise.” Our account preserves the individualistic view that group agency is nothing mysterious but also suggests that a group agent may hold judgments that are not directly continuous with its members' corresponding individual judgments.

Assuming that states will remain a permanent feature of our world, what is the ideal that we should hold out for the international order? An attractive proposal is that those peoples that are already organized under non-dominating, representative states should pursue a twin goal: first, arrange things so that they each enjoy the republican ideal of freedom as non-domination in relation to one another and to other multi-national and international agencies; and second, do everything possible and productive to facilitate the representation of less fortunate peoples in non-dominating states and to incorporate them in a non-dominating international order. This republican ideal stands midway between a utopian ideal of cosmopolitan justice and a sceptical ideal of non-intervention. The article explores its attractions and the broad institutional measures that it would support

This essay outlines some of the main issues that arise in the theory of freedom and, in particular, those that divide the liberal conception of freedom as non-interference from the republican conception of freedom as non-domination. It goes on to explore the idea that discourse theory provides reasons for favouring the republican conception. Discourse theory is taken for these purposes to be a theory that subsumes, but goes beyond decision theory. It accepts the decision-theoretic view that human agents are moved by beliefs and desires that, on the whole, are rationally maintained and rationally issued in action. But it adds the further, crucial assumption that human beliefs and desires are shaped under the transformative influence of discursive argument and exchange

Allan Gibbard’s strategy in his new book is to begin by describing a psychology of thinking and planning that certain agents might instantiate, then to argue that this psychology involves an ‘expressivism’ about thought that bears on what to do, and, finally, to try to show that ascribing that same psychology to human beings would explain the way we deploy various concepts in practical and normative deliberation. The idea is to construct an imaginary normative psychology, purportedly conforming to expressivist specifications, and then to campaign for the hypothesis that that psychology is ours and that we ourselves conform to those specifications. The upshot is an original and intriguing argument for the claim that ‘expressivism’, as Gibbard understands it, is sound. There is more in the book than that bare argument. Filling out the strategy pursued, for example, the volume contains useful discussions of a number of current debates (chs 2, 12), an enlightening argument that the strategy survives the introduction of the notion that a concept can have a character distinct from its content (ch. 6), and an extended set of reflections on how far the point of view defended leaves room for the idea of gaining normative knowledge (pt. 4). But I shall ignore those aspects of the book in this commentary; the focus is on its central argument. My approach will be to reconstuct the main stages in the Aufbau of our normative psychology that Gibbard provides, emphasizing some crucial points that are passed over rather quickly, and then to suggest on the basis of this reconstruction that the more natural lesson to derive is not an expressivist one. Although I break with Gibbard in that way, however, I have great admiration for the book. Thinking How to Live is a sharp, fresh and invigorating treatment of the main issues of metaethics

The market is traditionally hailed as the very exemplar of a system under which people enjoy freedom, in particular the negative sort of freedom associated with liberal and libertarian thought: freedom as noninterference. But how does the market appear from the perspective of a rival conception of freedom (freedom as non-domination) that is linked with the Roman and neo-Roman tradition of republicanism? The republican conception of freedom argues for important normative constraints on property, exchange, and regulation, without supporting extremes to the effect that ‘property is theft’ or ‘taxation is theft’ or anything of that kind. It does not cast a cold eye on commerce; it merely provides an alternative view of the attractions

Examines what is necessary for a group to constitute an agent that can display akrasia, and what steps such a group might take to establish self‐control. The topic has some interest in itself, and the discussion suggests some lessons about how we should think of akrasia in the individual as well as in the collective case. Under the image that the lessons support, akrasia is a sort of constitutional disorder: a failure to achieve a unity projected in the avowal of agency. This image fits well with the constitutional model of the soul in Plato's Republic.

This book is in three sections, with two chapters in each. It begins with questions of psychology: questions to do with what it means to be an intentional agent and, in particular, what it means to be an agent with the capacity for thought. Having sketched an overall view of the intentional, thinking agent, it then goes on to explore the difference that social life makes to the mentality of such agents; in effect, it outlines a social ontology. And, having developed a picture of the mind in society – of the common or social mind – it turns, finally, to the lessons of this picture for the pursuit of social and political theory: for the explanation of what happens on the social scene and for the evaluation of the different ways in which that scene may be structured.