00:00:01
PROFESSOR: So our topic today
is the general question of
00:00:06
what sort of non-rational
persuasion is legitimate for a
00:00:12
government to engage in if we're
willing to accept the
00:00:17
kind of social contract
argument that we were
00:00:20
considering in the last few
weeks of the course.
00:00:23
So you'll recall that starting
with the account of justice
00:00:28
that's offered in Plato's
Republic, and continuing with
00:00:32
the account of the state of
nature that we get in Hobbes,
00:00:36
each of our authors has
suggested that it is in our
00:00:41
self interest, in a way that we
would reflectively endorse
00:00:45
governmental structures, to give
up some of our freedoms
00:00:51
in order to guarantee a certain
sort of stability.
00:00:55
But the sorts of constraints
that we considered in the
00:01:00
earlier discussions of this
concerned explicit laws.
00:01:06
They concerned ways in which we
contract into regulations
00:01:12
that we recognize as holding
upon us, and that we endorse
00:01:17
because we see the rational
reason for
00:01:20
contracting into them.
00:01:23
The argument that Hobbes makes
appeals to the notion of The
00:01:28
Prisoner's Dilemma, which is
a paradox of rationality.
00:01:32
It's a problem that arises when
self interests conflict
00:01:38
in particular ways and interact
with incentives in
00:01:42
particular ways.
00:01:44
What we looked at, at the end
of last lecture, and what
00:01:47
we'll look at in today's lecture
are the ways in which
00:01:52
human beings are complex.
00:01:55
They have, as we know from our
early lectures, not only
00:01:58
reason but also parts of their
soul which are affected by
00:02:01
things other than reason.
00:02:03
And that, too, turns out to
have implications for what
00:02:08
political structures
end up being
00:02:11
rational for us to endorse.
00:02:15
In particular, what we'll look
at in today's lecture, is on
00:02:20
the one hand Plato's argument
that in the ideal state there
00:02:25
would be rather radical
censorship of what sort of
00:02:30
fictional representations were
permitted, and Cass Sunstein's
00:02:35
argument that one of the duties
of the government is to
00:02:40
establish norms that affect
people implicitly in how it is
00:02:47
that they structure
their behavior.
00:02:50
So in the context of a lecture
on this topic it seems
00:02:53
appropriate to begin with
a couple of stories.
00:02:57
True stories about false stories
and their effects.
00:03:02
So in 1992, right around the
time when many of you were
00:03:07
being born, there was also born
on television a young boy
00:03:13
who was born to a television
character named Murphy Brown.
00:03:19
Now that's not in itself
newsworthy.
00:03:23
What is newsworthy is
that Murphy Brown at
00:03:26
the time was unmarried.
00:03:29
Indeed she didn't have
a long-term partner.
00:03:33
And the then-Vice President of
the United States, Dan Quayle,
показать еще
русский▼
English
