Political philosophers rarely analyse the categories of “left” and “right” in their own right, yet these labels structure much of public political debate. This talk, framed as a response to Joshi’s 2020 paper, What Are the Chances You’re Right About Everything? An Epistemic Challenge for Modern Partisanship, considers three questions:

• First, is there a shared justificatory and motivational core that unifies otherwise disparate left-wing (and right-wing) positions?
• Second, if such a core exists, can one be justified in endorsing a political orientation as such, rather than only particular policies?
• Third, are there arguments that favour the left, considered as a family of positions, beyond case-by-case evaluations? 

Timothy Scriven argues (1) that there is a common justificatory and motivational basis across standard left positions; (2) that this basis supplies moral reasons to align with the left and makes it more likely than not that left positions will be correct on a randomly selected political question; and (3) that engaging these orientation-level questions can reconnect political philosophy with the concerns of practical politics.

Timothy Scriven recently finished a PhD on the philosophy of economics at the University of Sydney. He writes on philosophy, economics, politics and AI at his Substack Philosophy Bear.