State Power in BP Debating

[@dylanmccarthy185]

A couple of notes I noticed when I was rewatching: 1. The ‘alternatives’ section are not all justifications of democracy specifically, but are ‘state power principles’ insofar as they are principles about state power, and each are useful, in my opinion, for different contexts and motions. 2. I briefly mention this when I talk about anarchism, but a lot of justifications of state power are premised on the idea of the State of Nature being a chaotic, disharmonious, hostile and unprosperous environment, because this justifies the rule-of-law as a ‘necessary evil’, but many anarchists would disagree with this, and would highlight mechanisms of collective decision making or emergent cooperation that do not require the rule-of-law. I would recommend taking a look at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on ‘Anarchism’ for some ideas related to this: plato.stanford.edu/entries/anarchism/ 3. I mention that the idea of ‘freedom being important because people know their own lives best’ is not always very strong because it can be outcome-oriented, but it’s worth mentioning that a very strong justification for democracy is that the knowledge of what’s best for someone may be intrinsically personal knowledge that cannot be communicated or arbitrated on someone’s behalf, and if you can highlight this particular nature of knowledge then democracy becomes really crucial because of, well, epistemic access. I would recommend the SEP’s entry on Feminist Social Epistemology for more ideas related to this: plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminist-social-epistemology/