Human minds strive to fill empty space. And there is no larger void than the future. I look at this blank page before me and try to envision how I’m going to fill it, dumping my thoughts out, tiny black letters one by one creating a map of pixels that my brain, and the brain of any literate English speaker, can somehow make sense of.

In “White Ignorance”[1], Charles Mills argues that the history of white supremacy in America has created a tendency towards certain epistemological flaws in (predominantly, though not necessarily) white Americans. This is easy to see in the case of actual racists, where prejudice prevents them from forming true beliefs about different races. But Mills shows that this is also possible when people are not actually racist. For example, if our history books (written by whites) de-emphasize wars with American Indians and whitewash their depictions of slavery, even Americans who are not racist may not realize the extent to which this country was built through genocide and oppression. Thus they fail to recognize the extent to which these events have disadvantaged other races to the present day. In fact, “color-blindness” only blinds a person to these truths.

In Democratic Authority[1], David Estlund argues that democracy’s value is captured by his theory of epistemic proceduralism - that democracy derives its authority and legitimacy from fair procedures that have a tendency to produce the correct answer to questions in a way that may be considered objective. I believe Estlund’s argument to show that epistemic proceduralism has epistemic value is flawed – his reliance on primary bads is insufficient to show this value. A government’s performance in dealing with primary bads is not a reliable indicator of how it will deal with lesser issues. I propose a theory of government legitimacy based on values – a law is only legitimate if it embodies the shared values of the public.

There are few activities more counterproductive than trying to convince people to change their minds about their most deeply held beliefs. It’s hard enough trying to convince a Beatles fan that the Rolling Stones are the better band, never mind getting a liberal to support the death penalty or a conservative to expand welfare. This makes sense when the subject in question is a matter of opinion. But it also happens in science even when the evidence is clear, such as in the case of climate change.

On September 11, 2001, I had just started my senior year at MIT. I was up early that morning, and if it hadn’t have been one of the first weeks of class I probably wouldn’t have been. After the first couple weeks of a semester, I hardly ever went to any of my classes unless there was a test, I had to turn in my homework, or it was my fiction workshop (the only class I actually wanted to go to). I was wandering through the halls of my dorm when one of my friends came out of his room and told me that a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center.