CONCEPT
Discourse Ethics
Habermas's framework deriving normative principles from the formal presuppositions of argumentation itself — most centrally, the principle that only those norms can claim validity which could meet with the agreement of all affected parties in rational discourse.
Discourse ethics is the ethical framework Habermas derived from the formal structure of argumentation. Anyone who enters an argument sincerely — anyone who offers a claim and is prepared to defend it with reasons — has already implicitly committed to norms: treating her interlocutor as an equal participant, allowing the better argument to prevail regardless of who offers it, and accepting that norms are valid only if affected parties could accept them in rational discourse. This is not a moral choice added to the practice of arguing; it is constitutive of the practice. The central principle — the discourse principle (D) — is deceptively simple:
Only those norms can claim validity that could meet with the agreement of all affected parties in a process of practical discourse. Not majority agreement. Not expert agreement. Not the agreement of the powerful. The agreement of
all affected parties. Applied to
AI governance, the principle renders every existing framework democratically deficient: