Rational consensual procedure: Argumentation or weighted averaging?

✍ Scribed by Jane Braaten

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1987
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 470 KB
• Volume: 71
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0039-7857
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00485633

✦ Synopsis

The following is a defense of Jurgen Habermas' argumentational consensual procedure against Keith Lehrer and Carl Wagner's weighted averaging consensual procedure (and, I tentatively claim, against any weighted averaging consensual procedure). The argument is twofold: if Lehrer and Wagner intend, implicity, to replace what is for Habermas the metatheoretical stage of a discussion with the aggregation of judgments of respect, then their procedure fails to make use of all available information and the participants are not committed to the weighted average position on these grounds; if, on the other hand, they do not intend to replace metatheoretical discussion by aggregation, then the conditions under which the discussion could conceivably have come to a halt are such as to provide no support for the claim that it is rational to aggregate, rather than to consider the discussion unresolved until more information is available.

T h e value of hearing f r o m a wide r a n g e of c o n s i d e r e d points of view is o b v i o u s in any field of inquiry. It is of equal i m p o r t a n c e to be c a p a b l e of resolving conflicts b e t w e e n points of view, that is, to possess a p r o c e d u r e for arriving at a rational consensus as to how the e v i d e n c e is best to be assimilated by theory. Surprisingly little w o r k has b e e n d o n e to lay the g r o u n d r u l e s of rational consensual p r o c e d u r e as a reliable m e a n s to the a p p r o a c h of w h a t is true or right. Consensus, or a g r e e m e n t of opinion on the p a r t of all c o n c e r n e d , is c a t e g o r i a l l y distinct from c o m p r o m i s e , or a g r e e m e n t by m u t u a l concession, and it p r o c e e d s f r o m different assumptions than do m o s t social c h o i c e theories, which assume m a n i p u l a t i o n interests. W h e r e a g r e a t deal has b e e n a c c o m p l i s h e d in the latter area, less has b e e n d o n e to p r o v i d e p h i l o s o p h i c a l s u p p o r t for a f o r m a l i z a t i o n or rationalization of c o n s e nsual p r o c e d u r e , which takes the sincerity of all p a r t i c i p a n t s as a basic assumption. T w o authors h a v e g i v e n extensive p h i l o s o p h i c a l t r e a tm e n t to the notion of rational consensus: K e i t h L e h r e r and J u r g e n H a b e r m a s . 1 L e h r e r , w o r k i n g t o g e t h e r with a m a t h e m a t i c i a n , C a r l W a g n e r , has p r o p o s e d a f o r m a l i z e d p r o c e d u r e for r e a c h i n g a consensus b a s e d u p o n all r e l e v a n t e v i d e n c e available to a given g r o u p by a w e i g h t e d a v e r a g i n g of the p r o b a b i l i t y assignments of all p a r t i c i p a n t s in the