Political Therapy

Project title: 

Political Therapy

Project duration, hours of engagement & delivery mode

6 weeks – 36 hours/week

Description:

This project seeks to make the work of social philosophers in the ‘public reason’ tradition more directly helpful in addressing problems of social division and political dysfunction. Because public reason philosophers create models of agreement, there is a necessary distance from real social practice, insofar as these models are simplifications and idealisations of reality with narrow and specific aims. The project seeks to reconcile these rather optimistic models with the reality of antisocial phenomena such as parochialism and outgroup-hostility, and epistemic failures such as echo chambers, motivated reasoning, and dogmatism. It seeks to do this by borrowing tools of conflict resolution from the practices of mediation and psychotherapy (hereafter ‘therapists’). It is expected that by drawing on the two fruitful but very distinct research programs, the philosophical and the practical-interpersonal, real progress can be made on urgent issues of conflicting values. And by giving public reason philosophers a better sense of when and how their models can be of use, it is hoped that this project can also inform the future of public reason philosophy. 

Expected outcomes and deliverables:

In the groundwork phase of this project, there are several different questions to be addressed, one of which can be the basis for a Summer Research Program project, depending on the background and interests of the student accepted. The following are a list of initial topics which could be developed into a supervised or co-written paper for the Summer Research Program: 

• A comparison between the sorts of models of human actors created by public reason theorists and those used by therapists. (This could extend to adjacent disciplines like economics and psychology/cognitive science.) 

• A comparison of the ways in which disagreement and conflict are taxonomized by each discipline. (conceptual analysis; literature review) 

• A detailed analysis of two thinkers from the different disciplines who are not typically associated with each other and do not seem to have directly inspired each other’s work. The aim of this being to identifying points of agreement and disagreement, and how any disagreements could be adjudicated. (close reading of texts; philosophical analysis; potentially experimental design) 

•  A history of public reason/ social contract theorists acting as public intellectuals and trying to engage directly with contemporary social problems. (intellectual history; literature review) 

• A comparison of the standards which govern rigour and intellectual respectability in the disciplines of social philosophy and therapy, with a view to demonstrating when they can meet each other’s standards of reliability. (social epistemology in academia; philosophy of science) 

Suitable for:

This project is open to advanced undergraduate students of Philosophy, PPE, or Advanced Humanities. Students with skills in political philosophy or psychology are especially encouraged to apply.

Primary Supervisor:

Dr Michael Vincent

Further info:

m.vincent2@uq.edu.au