Epistemic democracy

Epistemic democracy has its roots on the concept of collective wisdom, which is born out of Ancient Athens. Aristotle argued that the wisdom of the multitude was an essential ingredient for democracy. In Politics, Aristotle writes "the many, who are not as individuals excellent men, nevertheless can, when they have come together, be better than the few best people, not individually but collectively, just as feasts to which many contribute are better than feasts provided at one person's expense." Jeremy Waldron has provided a modern-day understanding of this as the "doctrine of the wisdom of the multitude." The diversity of lived experiences was seen to be essential for proper law making and governing. Drawing on William Riker's populist account, Josh Cohen coined the term "epistemic democracy" to refer to the capacity to reflect truth in society through the aggregation of knowledge and contribution of popular opinions.

Definition and Etymology

A democratic society “may be said to be ‘epistemic’ to the degree to which it employs collective wisdom to make good policy.” "Epistemic" refers to the branch of epistemology, the theory of knowledge or what it means to know something. Democracy refers to rule by the people, usually through fair and competitive elections. An epistemic democracy is said to be one that "tracks the truth" in the sense of accurately reflected values of the people and/or scientifically integral policies.

Historical Works

Mill

John Stuart Mill's On Liberty defended the liberal values of securing the truth, and this is often seen as advocating a capacity of the public to ascertain true outcomes. In contrast to the idea of collective wisdom, Mill instead relied on the idea of robust debate, premised upon the assumption of fallibility, as necessary for truth preservation. However, for Mill, the problem of epistemic inequality (the uneducated members of society) posed a problem, and thus he offered an inegalitarian solution to the increased representation of those who were more knowledgeable.

Contemporary Conceptual Discussions

Overview

Josh Cohen is accredited to coining the term “epistemic democracy” to refer to the “the importance to the populist of ensuring that the basic institutions that provide the framework for political deliberation are such that outcomes tend to advance the common good.” His three main elements of an epistemic interpretation of voting are:

1. an independent standard of correct decisions (the general or popular will that is an account of the common good)
2. a cognitive account of voting (voting expresses a belief about what the correct outcome is rather than just personal preference)
3. an account of decision making as an adjustment of beliefs should evidence that requires adjustment arise

This populist account of epistemic processes and outcomes maintains that majorities and institutional arrangements do in fact provide sound evidence of the general will. Further, this also lends “legitimacy to the outcomes. The populist does not simply want procedures that in fact produce outcomes that are more likely to be correct than alternative procedures-that is, procedures that are in fact reliable apart from their legitimacy effects. It should also be manifest that they have the property of producing good outcomes. That is, the populist wants procedures that are reliable, and that citizens have reason to expect to be reliable as well.”

The concept of epistemic democracy also draws from the Condorcet Jury Theorem to formally justify the "wisdom of crowds," although there has been some dispute and refutation of the formal theory itself in its modern application. More recent empirical evidence from social science literature offers proof of the "wisdom of the masses" notion that underlies epistemic democracies. The account of “democratic reason” wherein the “phenomenon of collective intelligence” is key to good decision making dictates that public reason offers cognitive diversity, or “the variety of mental tools that human beings used to solve problems or make predictions in the world.” Helene Landemore, for example, argues that democracies are the best of the alternative systems at producing true outcomes, which is itself a justification for democratic legitimacy.

Michael Feurstein endorses a similar system of what he calls “democratic epistemology” wherein the “social character of political knowledge” is integral. The “social-epistemic perspective” reveals that democracy is the best way to produce well-informed policy. He posits that the knowledge of politics is distinct from individualist knowledge. Political knowledge is more complex, requiring knowledge of the effects of social organization as well as individual experiences in isolation. He argues thus that “a social-epistemic perspective allows us to see that the type and degree of epistemic competence required of any individual, with respect to some body of knowledge is distributed across the community of inquirers in which the individual is embedded as well as where within that distribution the individual fails.” For example, “a community of mediocre scientists, well distributed throughout the natural sciences, is likely to be more epistemically successful than one full of brilliant scientists who are all doing physics.”

Diversity

The cultivation of a diverse array of different viewpoints, experiences, and expressions is essential for epistemic arguments for democracy. Because epistemic democracies rely on aggregated intelligence, they also maintain that diversity is fundamental to democratic legitimacy. Elizabeth Anderson endorses the “John Dewey experimentalist account of democracy,” arguing that “interaction of voting with discussion” and “periodic elections and protests” are key to preventing those deemed “uneducated” or inferior from being excluded from the decision-making process. She worries about special interest groups dominating the “knowledge market” and argues that some combination of “votes and talk rather than prices are the appropriate form of information to which states should be responsive.” The strength of Dewey’s model lies in that “democratic decision-making [is] the joint exercise of practical intelligence by citizens at large, in interaction with their representatives and other state officials. It is cooperative social experimentation.” This best reflects the powers of “diversity, discussion, and dynamism.” Society as a diverse collection of individuals can only best arrive at a decision when all those of different walks of life and who have experienced different problems and policies of public interest can situate their knowledge towards solving the complex problems of modern democracies. Anderson is skeptical towards the idea of consensus offering proof of knowledge. What is at stake is the loss of a challenging disagreement that, when done correctly, can only perfect the account being given.

Independent standard v. proceduralism

A procedural epistemic democrat holds that a system of democracy is epistemically valid because it adheres to an epistemic procedure. An anti-proceduralist system is considered epistemically integral because it attains an outcome that can be checked via an independent standard. This section explores the merits and drawbacks of these approaches.

First, "procedural democrats” hold that the “aim of democracy is to embody certain procedural virtues…. Democracy is not about tracking any ‘independent truth of the matter’; instead, the goodness or rightness of an outcome is wholly constituted by the fact of its having emerged in some procedurally correct manner” such as through voting or deliberation. Fabienne Peter, for example, offers a conception of epistemic proceduralism that does not depend on a procedure-independent standard for a good outcome. Instead, a decision is legitimate “if it is the outcome of a process that satisfies certain conditions of political and epistemic fairness.” One of the drawbacks of the proceduralist account is that it neglects to show how one can check the "truthfulness" of the democratic result. Hence, an independent standard of verification corrects these drawbacks of reliability on mechanisms.

David Estlund argues that we do not even need a strong justification of “epistemic proceduralism.” Rather, all that is needed is to show why it is better than the alternatives. Estlund argues that pure epistocracies are problematic because there is most likely a “biasing features of the educated group… which do more harm than education does good.” In the US this can be seen in the income and racial inequality that leads to imperfect meritocratic systems that produces those with greater money with the highest education. Estlund uses the case of jury systems to show that original authority can be drawn from an epistemic proceduralist account grounded in normative consent. For him, democracy has no normative authority unless it has a minimal epistemic threshold, which he sets at “better than random” (as in majority rule, better than just 51% of the vote). Cohen and Estlund’s accounts hold that the common will and values can be knowable in society through democracy. Hence, we can both (a) know people's preferences and (b) those preferences can be realizable through democratic means and policy decisions.

Second, Landemore, as well as others, maintain that an independent standard of checking democratic systems exists rather than a proceduralist account of truthfulness.

Criticisms

Rule by the People v. Experts

Epistemic Democracy is perhaps best contrasted with a that of technocracy, or epistocracy, rule by experts. The idea is that experts know better than the people who to sculpt social policy and thus society should e ruled by experts. However, there has been much push back, such as by Jim Scott regarding the corrupting nature of merritocratic systems, as well as their anti-democratic features, that make technocracies problematic.

Market Alternative

One general set of arguments stems from Friedrich Hayek's advocacy of the market as the main source of knowledge for society, rather than governmental institutions or societal mechanisms.

Empirical Debate

Some have argued that epistemic democracy does not adequately addressed the empirical nature of the epistemic claims, and need to subject to more widespread testing.

Tyranny of the Truth

Hannah Arendt, although writing long before epistemic democracy as coined as a contemporary notion, was suspicious of political claims of truth, and claimed that unanimous accounts of truthfulness were tyrannical.

Independent Standard

One key criticism of epistemic democratic theories is that the independent standard, if it is verifiable without a procedure, itself can provide the justification for a policy or law and thus do away with the legitimizing role of the citizenry. "Epistemic justifications violate the constraint on evidence because, in order for these arguments to be convincing, democracy and scientific inquiry must admit analogous forms of justification, but they do not. Just as the justification of a method of scientific inquiry does not presuppose the hypotheses that the method aims to test, so, likewise, must the justification of democracy’s epistemic properties refrain from controversial assumptions about what the outcomes of the democratic process should be, if it is to satisfy the constraint on evidence. But... redeeming democracy’s tendency to yield the right decisions would require controversial assumptions about which decisions are right."

Doctrinal Paradox

List and Pettit offered the doctrinal paradox to refute claims that majority rule procedures can track the truth: "A jury that decides by majority on the truth of a set of propositions, may come to a conclusion that is at odds with a legal doctrine to which they all subscribe." Martin van Hees follows up this argument by maintaining that: "allowing the individual or the collective judgements to be formulated in terms of degrees of beliefs [rather than preferences] does not ensure the possibility of collective epistemic decision making."

See also

• Democracy
• Deliberative democracy
• Collective intelligence