ABSTRACT
The current state of public discourse portends a dark future for the American people unless we can discover and develop ways to increase civility within our personal conversations, media, institutions, and political debates. Research on civility and public discourse can be either descriptive or normative; this chapter builds on John Stuart Mill’s account of liberty to offer a normative account. Interpretations of Mill that assume idealized reasoners in a marketplace of ideas are problematic, for Mill offers a realistic picture of human reasoners prone to bias, unlikely to evaluate beliefs impartially, and often with poor reasoning capacities. Current work in psychology also demonstrates that we tend to assume we are more moral than others and engage in motivated reasoning when considering evidence. Given these psychological foibles of real reasoners—not idealized and fictional purely rational actors—we need an account of civility that is realistic and possible to implement yet that offers an aspirational vision. This chapter argues that the account of civility as an orienting attitude offers concrete proposals for researchers, educators, and individuals. In the end, civility in the aggregate depends on each individual choosing to adopt civility as an orienting attitude.
