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."

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.”

Contemporary Conceptual Discussions

Diversity

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, as well as Ian Shapiro, hold great skepticism 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.

Michael Feurstein poses more skepticism than Anderson about the ability of the people to determine epistemic outcomes for society, relying instead more on aristocratic guidance. He endorses a 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.”

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.

Christian List and Robert Goodin, for example, maintain that “for epistemic democrats, the aim of democracy is to ‘track the truth.’” For them, democracy is more desirable than alternative forms of decision-making because, and insofar as, it does that. One democratic decision rule is more desirable than another according to that same standard.” In contrast, “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.”

In contrast, 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.

See also

• Deliberative democracy
• Collective intelligence