Title: Epistemology of Liberalism and the Liberalization of Nonliberal Societies

My dissertation develops an account of the epistemology of liberalism and uses it to propose a model of “philosophical liberalization” for nonliberal—particularly Muslim-majority—societies. I focus on public reason liberalism—according to which, roughly, political decisions must be “publicly justifiable” to citizens—since it represents the dominant strand in contemporary liberal theory. The dissertation consists of three chapters: the first articulates the conceptual epistemic content of liberalism, the second its character-epistemic content, and the third advances a model of philosophical liberalization.

Chapter 1 focuses on a prominent debate over the allegedly controversial epistemic commitments of political liberalism, which is the dominant strand of public reason liberalism. I investigate whether the notion of epistemological reasonableness in political liberalism can be reconciled with the ideal of state neutrality, given concerns that it embeds sectarian commitments. While prior scholarship has treated this problem through the lens of analytic epistemology, I draw instead on the philosophy of science. I argue that political liberalism’s epistemic commitment is best understood in terms of “the underdetermination thesis”—the claim that available evidence may be insufficient to uniquely determine what beliefs to hold. This thesis, long familiar in scientific practice, offers an uncontroversial framework that preserves state neutrality in the face of reasonable disagreement. The chapter thus advances a nonsectarian epistemological grounding for political liberalism.

Chapter 2 turns to the character-theoretic epistemic content of liberalism, namely, its concern with epistemic virtue. Scholarship on public reason liberalism’s epistemic commitments has so far focused on doxastic commitments such as fallibilism or skepticism. However, a theory might also have dispositional but nonetheless epistemic commitments. I argue that the epistemic virtue of open-mindedness constitutes one such commitment of public reason liberalism because the proper functioning of public justification requires an open-minded citizenry. I show why this virtue is integral to both consensus and convergence models of public justification. One might think that open-mindedness is a trivial precondition of a publicly justified polity and that this is why it has been overlooked in liberal theory. To counter this, I draw on recent psychological research indicating that open-mindedness is in fact a challenging virtue to cultivate. I conclude by addressing objections from liberal institutionalists.

Chapter 3 explores a key practical implication of liberal epistemology articulated in the preceding chapters by applying it to the liberalization of nonliberal societies. This chapter introduces “philosophical liberalization,” a novel form of liberalization distinct from the political and economic forms studied in the social sciences. I define philosophical liberalization as the transformation of unreasonable comprehensive doctrines (or belief systems) into reasonable ones. While political and economic forms of liberalization focus exclusively on institutional design, I argue that comprehensive doctrine transformation is equally crucial for transitioning to a liberal order. Drawing on public reason liberalism, I identify two components of comprehensive doctrine reasonableness: endorsing fair cooperation and accepting reasonable disagreement. I then construct a working model of philosophical liberalization by combining Quine’s theory of belief revision and Cristina Bicchieri’s account of social norm change. The model reveals liberalism to be, at its core, a political theory of reasonableness. Accordingly, a nonliberal society need not embrace a classical or comprehensive form of liberalism—an unrealistic expectation—to build a liberal polity. Instead, it can transition to a liberal order if its dominant doctrines are transformed into reasonable versions of themselves. For instance, a society where citizens predominantly adhere to, say, nationalism, Islam, or Confucianism can build a liberal order provided these doctrines are reasonable versions of themselves. I illustrate this model with case studies on Islam and Turkey. 

Committee members: Robert Talisse (chair), Scott Aikin, Jacob Barrett, David Thorstad, Quassim Cassam (Univ of Warwick)