The epistemology of democracy: The epistemic virtues of democracy (original) (raw)

The Epistemic Circumstances of Democracy

Does political decision-making require experts or can a democracy be trusted to make correct decisions? Critics of democracy tend to argue that democracy cannot be trusted in this way while advocates tend to argue that it can. Both camps agree that it is the epistemic quality of the outcomes of political decision-making processes that underpins the legitimacy of political institutions. In recent political philosophy, epistemic democrats have embraced this instrumentalist way of thinking about democracy. In this chapter, I argue that the attempt to defend democracy on epistemic instrumentalist grounds is self-undermining. I also develop an alternative – procedural – epistemic defence of democracy. Drawing on the epistemology of disagreement, I show that there is a prima facie epistemic case for democracy when there is no procedure-independent epistemic authority on the issue to be decided.

Epistemic Democracy and Political Legitimacy

Palgrave Macmillan, 2020

This compelling new book explores whether the ability of democratic procedures to produce correct outcomes increases the legitimacy of such political decisions. Mapping and critically engaging with the main theories of epistemic democracy, it additionally evaluates arguments for different democratic decision-making procedures related to aggregative and deliberative democracy. Addressing both positions that are too epistemic, such as Epistrocracy and Scholocracy, as well as those that are not epistemic enough, such as Pure Epistemic Proceduralism and Pragmatist Deliberative Democracy, Cerovac builds an innovative structure that can be used to bring order to numerous accounts of epistemic democracy. Introducing an appropriate account of epistemic democracy, Cerovac proceeds to analyse whether such epistemic value is better achieved through aggregative or deliberative procedures. Drawing particularly on the work of David Estlund, and including a discussion on the implementation of the epistemic ideal to real world politics, this is a fascinating read for all those interested in democratic decision-making.

The Epistemic Aims of Democracy

Philosophy Compass, 2023

Many political philosophers have held that democracy has epistemic benefits. Most commonly, this case is made by arguing that democracies are better able to track the truth than other political arrangements. Truth, however, is not the only epistemic good that is politically valuable. A number of other epistemic goods - goods including evidence, intellectual virtue, epistemic justice, and empathetic understanding - can also have political value, and in ways that go beyond the value of truth. In this paper, I will survey those who have argued that democracy can be valuable because of these other epistemic benefits, considering (1) the ways in which these epistemic goods can be of political value and (2) the challenges that democracies face in producing them.

Epistemic Democracy: Guest Editor's Preface

Epistemic democracy represents a very fertile ground for the interaction between epistemology and political philosophy, as well as a promising interdisciplinary field where philosophy meets economics, sociology, psychology, political science and other social sciences. Since epistemic democracy can be interpreted as a rather wide research field, it is not always easy to pinpoint central themes or research questions, nor to set clear boundaries. However, there are a few important questions that every epistemic democrat has to settle. First of all, epistemic democrats have to explain what the epistemic value of democracy is, and how does the epistemic value of democracy contribute to its legitimacy-generating potential. Is democracy epistemically valuable because it helps us achieve substantively good (correct, true) decisions, or because it embodies some intrinsic (procedural) epistemic values? Second, how should epistemic democracy be institutionalized in modern societies? Papers published in this issue of Ethics & Politics give various insightful answers to these two questions, demonstrating that epistemic democracy can be a very fertile, but also a very diverse field.

Epistemic feature of democracy: The role of expert in democratic decision making

Filozofija i drustvo

In her book Democracy and Truth: The Conflict between Political and Epistemic Virtues, Snjezana Prijic Samarzija advocates that a purely procedural justification which defines the authority and legitimacy of democracy only in relation to the fairness of the procedure itself is not enough for a full justification of democracy. Some epistemic values should also be included. This epistemic quality of democracy depends on the quality of the decisions that the democratic procedures produce. In that sense, the author is advocating a hybrid theory that secures harmony between political and epistemic values, favoring deliberative procedure for this purpose, and thus promotes equal respect for both democratic values. In doing so, she is advocating the specific type of division of epistemic labor that I will attempt to critically re-examine here, as well as to bring into question the privileged role of the experts in democratic decision-making.

Disagreement and epistemic arguments for democracy

Recent accounts of epistemic democracy aim to show that in some qualified sense, democratic institutions have a tendency to produce reasonable outcomes. Epistemic democrats aim to offer such accounts without presupposing any narrow, controversial view of what the outcomes of democratic procedures should be, much as a good justification of a particular scientific research design does not presuppose the hypothesis that the research aims to test. The article considers whether this aim is achievable. It asks, in particular, whether accounts of epistemic democracy can be reconciled with the commonly held view that disagreement about which laws and policies should be enacted is a fundamental, permanent feature of democratic politics and imposes constraints on how we justify democratic procedures.

The division of epistemic labor in democracy

Anali Hrvatskog politiloškog društva, 2016

Thomas Christiano claims that one of the fundamental challenges democracy is faced with is the appropriate division of epistemic labor between citizens and experts. In this article I try to present and analyze Christiano's solution from the perspective of social epistemology while utilizing the concepts and tools provided by this discipline. Despite fundamentally agreeing with his position, I attempt to propose a certain addition which might enrich this solution with additional epistemic and political responsibility. In the first part, I briefly elaborate on the relevance of social epistemology in discussions regarding the epistemic justification of deliberative democracy. In the second part, I contextualize Christiano's view within discourses regarding social epistemology and identify his approach as reliability democracy due to his belief that truth-sensitive decision-making processes are ensured through the usage of reliable mechanisms (which allow for expertise to generate the epistemically best decisions possible). In the third part I attempt to provide arguments that support further elaboration of Christiano's proposals in the direction of ensuring additional epistemic and democratic quality of decisions.

KNOWLEDGE AND DEMOCRACY: ARE EPISTEMIC VALUES ADVERSARIES OR ALLIES OF DEMOCRACY

Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, 2023

In this article I argue that including relaxed epistemic values in the justification of democracy through a pragmatist and non-monist approach is compatible with the democratic values of selfrule and pluralism (which are often seen as incompatible with "political truth"). First, I contend that pragmatist epistemology offers a more suitable approach to politics instead of the correspondence theory of finding "the one truth". Secondly, I argue that instead of choosing between monist (purely epistemic or procedural) accounts of justification of democracy we should see epistemic values as part of a hybrid interpretation. Thirdly, I argue that epistemic values in democracy should be interpreted in a non-demanding way. Fourth and corresponding to previous points, I claim weak political cognitivism is phenomenologically most plausible for the democratic participant. I then continue to show that both the values of autonomy and pluralism, which are often considered antithetical to truth-claims, can be accommodated and even enhanced by epistemic values in the justification of democracy.