Bernard Reber

Powerful technologies labeled “AI”—without sufficient epistemic caution—are already reshaping political and private life, bringing both new dangers and new opportunities for citizen participation. These range from electoral and legislative engagement to the most ambitious form: political co-creation through citizens’ assemblies. Large Language Models (LLMs) could support such processes through moderation, translation, facilitation, summarization, and writing assistance. But this potential remains largely unrealized. The Democratic Commons project takes a fundamentally interdisciplinary approach—from philosophy to computer science—to evaluate LLMs against five proposed democratic principles. At its core, the project is driven by the question of political bias: under what conditions can LLMs be used democratically within forms of citizen participation that are themselves still largely experimental? Addressing these socio-technical questions requires grounding in political theory and, more broadly, in philosophy—disciplines that provide the normative frameworks without which the democratic evaluation of AI systems cannot be meaningfully conducted.

Democracy of consideration is a conceptual candidate, next to deliberative democracy. Consideration offers an interesting constellation. If we take the two directions in which consideration leads us, respect and careful examination, these two requirements, to be held together, promise and lead both to a quality of relations between participants of a discussion who feel considered, and to an epistemic quality, from several points of view (constellation), even disciplines and aspects of the issue. It gives rise to a sense of perspective, pluralism, the process of examination, its cessation, and its stabilization “all things considered.” Consideration can be linked to all levels of a deliberative system, to tackle complex problems such as the fight against global warming. Indeed, it goes from individual decisions to international agreements and back again. Solving such a problem requires transitions understood as adjustments (responsiveness) between knowledge, institutions, and individuals, in the course of conversations, all things considered.

Toute innovation, surtout si elle est qualifiée de démocratique, ne comporte pas sa justification par sa seule énonciation. L’ expérimentalisme démocratique ne se précipite pas vers une institutionnalisation de la participation citoyenne sans avoir analysé avec précaution ces deux moments que furent le Grand débat national et la Convention citoyenne pour le climat. Une innovation retient plus particulièrement l’attention ici : la présence d’un comité légistique pour transcrire les propositions des 150 membres de la Convention. N’a-t-on pas commis un contresens comme beaucoup d’entrepreneurs de la participation qui en appellent à Habermas, alors qu’il défend l’État de droit plutôt que la politique délibérative? A-t-on pris un risque en soumettant le droit à une discussion faiblement instituée? Ces deux expériences sont des révélateurs du chemin qui reste à faire pour arriver à joindre le projet liant droit et démocratie avec des publics hétérogènes et pas comme « la fiction » qu’Habermas revendique. C’est donc un exercice de modestie dans lequel les citoyens apprennent qu’ils ne sont pas les explorateurs d’une terra incognita, ni en matière climatique et ni en matière institutionnelle.

Issues concerning technological risk have increasingly become the subject of deliberative exercises involving participation of ordinary citizens. The most popular topic for deliberation has been genetically modified foods. Despite the varied circumstances of their establishment, deliberative “minipublics” almost always produce recommendations that reflect a worldview more “precautionary” than the “Promethean” outlook more common among governing elites. There are good structural reasons for this difference. Its existence raises the question of why elites sponsor mini-publics and if policy is little affected by the results of deliberations, questions the possibility of deliberative legitimation of public policy. We make this argument by looking at mini-publics on GM foods in France, the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and Switzerland. Deliberative legitimation becomes plausible if elites can attenuate their Promethean outlook. This is possible if ecological modernization discourse pervades their politics; Denmark provides an illustration.

This volume tackles the burden of judgment and the challenges of ethical disagreements, organizes the cohabitation of scientific and ethical argumentations in such a way they find their appropriate place in the political decision. It imagines several forms of agreements and open ways of conflicts resolution very different compared with ones of the majority of political philosophers and political scientists that are macro-social and general. It offers an original contribution to a scrutinized interpretation of the precautionary principle, as structuring the decision in interdisciplinary contexts, to make sure to arrive this time to the "Best of the Worlds".

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 9, Page 1199-1225, November 2022. In political science, the theme of critical citizenship is often interpreted negatively and understood to express distrust. However, criticism can be motivated by positive aspirations towards democracy and how to improve it. In order to test this idea, we asked respondents to the Democracy and citizenship survey to rank how the features of different types of democratic legitimacy appealed to them. The module adopted an innovative methodology by bringing together philosophy and political science. This approach led to a series of results that tempered and questioned the more prevalent pessimistic understandings of critical citizenship. Furthermore, this article looks closely at controversy surrounding the meaning ascribed to criticism and discusses the presuppositions made by many political sociology studies and their differing hypotheses on critical citizenship. It shows that the very definition of criticism remains unclear and proposes a ‘critical understanding of criticism’ adopting a meta-critical stance to better identify four possible types of criticism: reactive criticism, evaluative, propositional and pluralist political criticism.

In political science, the theme of critical citizenship is often interpreted negatively and understood to express distrust. However, criticism can be motivated by positive aspirations towards democracy and how to improve it. In order to test this idea, we asked respondents to the Democracy and citizenship survey to rank how the features of different types of democratic legitimacy appealed to them. The module adopted an innovative methodology by bringing together philosophy (political theory) and political science. This approach led to a series of results that tempered and questioned the more prevalent pessimistic understandings of critical citizenship. Furthermore, this article looks closely at controversy surrounding the meaning ascribed to criticism and discusses the presuppositions made by many political sociology studies and their differing hypotheses on critical citizenship. It shows that the very definition of criticism remains unclear and proposes a ‘critical understanding of criticism’ adopting a meta-critical stance (as is often the case in philosophy) to better identify four possible types of criticism: reactive criticism (primary), evaluative, propositional (first or secondary order) and pluralist political criticism.

Are Information and Communication Technologies and the so-called E-democracy a source of citizen empowerment? To answer this questions we adpot different perspectives. We begin with the new techniques or procedures of citizen participation in the field of Participatory Technological Assesment, and purse with ITC assessed in a USA and a Japanese citizen conference. In a third step ITCs are considered as a new way of participating in consensus conferences. Thanks to them we can compar real time debate and asynchronous on supported by ICT. Finally we scrutinize the hope of democracy in the age of network technology depending on the ambivalence of any techniques.

The problem of interdependence is crucial for understanding the climate, with its interactions between land, water, and atmosphere, as well as with human activities, past and future. The concept of interdependence expresses two types of relationship, that of causality and that of responsibility. For the problems of climate governance as understood as a statistical average in the Conferences of the parties (COP), causal dependence is impossible to reconstruct precisely, notably because of the complexity of these phenomena. However, dependence does not only concern the domain of being, falling within the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the human descriptive predictive. It also concerns the ought-to-be and therefore the normative sciences (ethics, political theory, law, and normative economy). Here interdependence is much more problematic since it is opposed to freedom. This article discusses the various interdependencies and political solutions that are offered to take care of this needs, architectures for discussing climate change politically: systems (N. Luhmann) and deliberation (J. Habermas). It then proposes another solution, that of moral and political consideration.

If some of European Parliamentary Offices of technological and scientific assessment have been inspired by the former Congressional Office of technological assessment of the US, they have made new revolutionary experiments with the introduction of the participation of ordinary citizens. TA has, thus, become Participatory Technological Assessment. In most cases these citizen have a large initiative according to 50 different devices. The wealth of these TA and PTA are uncommon innovations in the field of institutional design. The list of problems selected here tries to explicit some theoretical deadlocks linked with PTA on the way to Participatory Bioethical Assessment. If they are not been thought and envisaged by the organizers these problems embedded in the making of PTA process are key questions and conditions for the quality of the results. Bioethics is understood here in its complete and original sense, as Potter coined the term: “The time has come to recognize that we can no longer examine medical options without considering ecological science and the larger problems of society on a global scale”. This bioethical turn constitutes a major change in PTA as well. In a way it is a return of the good life, but thought largely and not only on an individual basis. The problem goes beyond the questions of pluralism of expertise and interdisciplinarity. We have to combine ‘horizontal’ interdisciplinarity with ‘vertical’ normativity. Some of the technical and scientific problems discussed, may sometimes be stabilized. In such cases we are in a prevention context, where we have only to deal with the moral controversies. We have there to open a new space of research, exposing the methods of bioethics, while considering the assessment of ordinary citizens and their beliefs. Very often we are in a context of precaution, and we find the controversies on both sides, on scientific and ethical grounds. In this respect, we have to consider a co-dependence between ethical and scientific inquiries. We will consider in this paper some theoretical problems on the way towards Participative Bioethical Assessment: the choice of normative political theory to constrain the debate; the definition of an argument in deliberative democracy facing moral pluralism; articulation between ethical and political deliberation; articulation between descriptive sciences and normative ones.

The problem of interdependence is crucial for understanding the climate, with its interactions between land, water and atmosphere, as well as with human activities, past and future. The concept of interdependence expresses two types of relationship, that of causality and that of responsibility. For the problems of climate governance as understood as a statistical average in the Conferences of the parties (COP), causal dependence is impossible to reconstruct precisely, notably because of the complexity of these phenomenons. However, dependence does not only concern the domain of being, falling within the natural sciences and social sciences and human descriptivo-predictive. It also concerns the ought-to-be and therefore the normative sciences (ethics, political thery, law and normative economy). Here interdependence is much more problematic since it is opposed to freedom. The article discusses the various interdependencies and political solutions that are offered to take care of this needs, architectures for discussing climate change politically: systems (N. Luhmann) and deliberation (J. Habermas). He proposes then another solution, that of the moral and political consediration.

Dworkin invented a fictional character: Hercules. Super-judge he has the capacity to reveal the hidden structure of judgments. In his famous judgment Solomon’s wisdom is recognized as divine. It is no longer sufficient for a secularized philosophical reflection. However, Dworkin’s Hercules is endowed with a capacity of unconventional coherence, which allows him to overcome the judge’s instinct. It is somehow in the position of a god. Salomon, who is called wise, has undoubtedly invented an unexpected resolution in his judgment, which is tested here in the light of the richness of the meaning of responsibility. For Salomon, as for Dworkin, responsibility is a rock. - This chapter examines in-depth his latest book, Justice for Hedgehogs, from a moral realism perspective, in order to critically analyse his narrow conception of moral realism and the various opponents of this meta-ethical theory as powerful as it is diverse.

Environmental ethic depends on technological ethics. We must therefore think of the technique with all its virtualities and not merely as an instrument. Heidegger’s approach to technique avoids this reduction. Brought closer to the language it questions its essence. With modem technology that essence does not advance production but provocation, by which nature is ordered to deliver an energy that can be extracted for maximum utilization and lower costs. The way of producing poetry remains open yet. This article reads again this difficult text, indicates some limitations, and tries to take the better of its wealth for contemporary debate crossing environmental and technological ethics.

L’originalité de cet article porte tant sur l’approche que sur l’actualité du problème choisi. Il croise sciences politiques (quantitatives et comparatives) et théorie politique, pour traiter de la montée d’une citoyenneté critique. Il analyse ses formes et passe ensuite à une critique plus étayée et philosophique. Ces deux types de résultats ne se recouvrent que très partiellement. Principalement focalisée sur des questions d’identité, la majeure partie des travaux en philosophie politique passent à côté de ce qui constitue le coeur de l’exercice politique. L’article propose alors de considérer des formes de responsabilités, notamment dans l’Union européenne, permettant d’affronter cette critique réactive.

Les forums citoyens régionaux, sorte de conférences de consensus, constituaient le moment fort des États Généraux de la Bioéthique. Leur premier objectif était la production par des panels pluralistes de citoyens français d’un contenu avisé et réfléchi devant permettre à l’ensemble des décisionnaires en la matière d’approfondir leurs réflexions sur les évolutions législatives nécessaires en matière bioéthique. C’est la première fois qu’une telle révision est confiée à un cercle élargi, d’experts et de citoyens ordinaires, formés pour la circonstance à ces problèmes techniques et éthiques. Comment alors évaluer cette expérience hors du commun, qui soumet la discussion bio-éthique à des règles de débats publics? Cet article entend aller au-delà des problèmes contextuels rencontrés dans la mise en place de cette expérience et d’une évaluation procédurale qui ne serait soucieuse que de règles politiques favorisant la coopération entre acteurs. Comment les EGB, dans le détail de leurs procédures et dans leur déroulement ont-ils traité les dimensions « factuelles » et normatives à l’œuvre dans la notion, certes controversée, de lois de bioéthique? Alors que certaines théories politiques normatives invitent à argumenter, je soulève ici la sous-détermination que cette capacité communicationnelle dans ces théories et la difficulté supplémentaire d’une argumentation en contexte interdisciplinaire. Les résultats présentés indiquent des problèmes dans la convocation des expertises, et le fait qu’implicitement, l’éthique ne soit pas reconnue comme expertise. Bien avant l’exigence d’argumenter, celle de donner des réponses à la hauteur des questions posées par les citoyens pose déjà problème. Au-delà des EGB l’enjeu est ici d’offrir une évaluation secondaire de la qualité dans l’Évaluation Technologique Participative, qui ne se contente pas d’une démocratie plus participative, mais qui s’intéresse aussi à la spécificité bioéthique des débats

Digital Cognitive Technologies is an interdisciplinary book which assesses the socio-technical stakes of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), which are at the core of the Knowledge Society. This book addresses eight major issues, analyzed by authors writing from a Human and Social Science and a Science and Technology perspective. The contributions seek to explore whether and how ICTs are changing our perception of time, space, social structures and networks, document writing and dissemination, sense-making and interpretation, cooperation, politics, and the dynamics of collective activity (socio-informatics)

Après une présentation de la diversité des acceptions de la notion de pluralisme, cet article aborde la question spécifique du pluralisme moral et de ses différentes versions. La première, la plus courante, porte sur le pluralisme moral des valeurs, notamment tel qu’il est présenté chez J. Kekes ou G. Crowder. Elle distingue les valeurs sous divers aspects : incommensurabilité, incompatibilité, conditionnalité ou au contraire prépondérance, pre-mières ou secondaires, substantielles ou procédurales, selon le type d’engagement à leur égard. La deuxième se penche sur les conflits de croyances en face desquels un pluralisme épistémique est possible, distinguable d’autres positions comme le monisme, le syncrétisme, le scepticisme et bien sûr le relativisme. Elle offre une critique pertinente, par exemple chez le rationa-liste contextualiste N. Rescher, de certaines faiblesses de l’exigence absolue de consen-sus. La troisième se situe au niveau des théories morales dès lors qu’il faut s’approcher du détail des évaluations pratiques formelles et substantielles, et puisqu’il y a toujours plu-sieurs manières de développer une théorie morale et de conduire un raisonnement pratique. Cette variété de pluralismes moraux peut alors éclairer sous un jour nouveau certaines ques-tions actuelles liées à la gestion de la pluralité dans le domaine politique

Si elle est souvent requise par les théoriciens de la démocratie délibérative, la norme argumentative y est sous-déterminée au regard des théories de l’argumentation. Cet article déploie diverses composantes d’un argument et renvoie dos-à-dos ceux qui jouent contre elle la narration et ceux qui l’exigent sans la définir autrement que de façon minimaliste. Explorant plusieurs causes de la délibération (conflits, incertitudes, modalités), il desserre l’étau de la philosophie politique (Habermas, Rawls) sur la philosophie morale et le pluralisme des théories éthiques. Il propose une division du travail argumentatif favorisé institutionnellement pour ne pas risquer de vider de son sens la théorie de la démocratie délibérative.

Ethics is being asked to respond to the globalization of the economy, and among the various responses one can see the emergence of inter-religious approaches including lay groups. This article examines certain of these concrete attempts to integrate ethics, spirituality and economics, and problematizes some of the theoretical underpinnings of these activities, specifically the question of beliefs.In January, 1998, two inter-religious and interdisciplinary organizations — Avicenne and the World Conference on Religion and Peace — participated for the first time in the European Commission's conference on the future of Europe's economic and social order. It was recognized at this meeting that inter-religious dialogue constituted a paradigmatic example for the construction of a European society that must integrate different cultures. But paradigmatic does not mean it actually exists, for the inter-religious dynamic is still hesitating between globalization and integrationism. Nevertheless, religious plurality is apparent in the economy. The IMF recently hosted representatives of different religions, surpassing the framework of Christianity. In France, the University of Paris IX has planned a series of lectures on “Morality, Spirituality and Business Life”. Before looking at the theoretical questions connected with the emergence of a planetary, inter-religious ethics, let us come back to the question of the Christian religions and the social and economic order. I will restrict myself to mentioning some problematic points in order to defend the necessity of an inter-religious, interdisciplinary approach.Among the positions adopted by the churches at the January, 1998 conference, three points bear some examination: the dignity of labour and the community as specifically Christian values, and Europe constructed on the base of Christian values