Public reason liberalism holds that laws and policies must be justifiable to all reasonable citizens. Recently, David Enoch has offered an impressive and influential argument against the epistemological commitments of public reason liberalism on the grounds that they are ‘highly controversial’. After setting out this argument (Sections I and II), I show how its central claim is ambiguous between two senses of ‘controversial’. This gives rise to a dilemma: either Enoch's claim is that the relevant epistemological commitments are controversial in the sense of being subject to controversy amongst actual people, in which case this is true but not troubling for public reason theorists; or the claim is that the relevant commitments are controversial in the sense of being subject to controversy amongst reasonable people, in which case this simply begs the question against public reason theorists (Section III). I then defend each horn of the dilemma against objections (Sections IV and V). I conclude by generalizing this dilemma, showing how it defuses not just Enoch's argument but also a number of other arguments frequently made in the literature on public reason liberalism (Section VI).

中文翻译：

---

公共理性自由主义的认识论承诺站不住脚吗？

公共理性自由主义认为法律和政策必须对所有理性的公民都是正当的。最近，大卫·伊诺克提出了一个令人印象深刻且有影响力的论点，反对公共理性自由主义的认识论承诺，理由是它们“极具争议性”。在阐述了这个论点（第一节和第二节）之后，我展示了它的核心主张在两种“有争议的”意义之间是如何模棱两可的。这导致了一个两难的境地：要么以诺的主张是相关的认识论承诺是有争议的，因为在实际的人中受到争议，在这种情况下这是正确的，但对公共理性理论家来说并不麻烦；或声称相关承诺是有争议的，因为在合理的人之间存在争议，在这种情况下，这只是向公共理性理论家提出了一个问题（第三节）。然后，我针对反对意见（第 IV 和 V 部分）捍卫困境的每一个角。最后，我概括了这个困境，展示了它如何不仅化解了以诺的论点，而且化解了公共理性自由主义文献中经常提出的许多其他论点（第六节）。