The Epistemology of Democracy

Episteme: A Journal of Social Epistemology 3 (1):8-22 (2006)
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Abstract

This paper investigates the epistemic powers of democratic institutions through an assessment of three epistemic models of democracy: the Condorcet Jury Theorem, the Diversity Trumps Ability Theorem, and Dewey's experimentalist model. Dewey's model is superior to the others in its ability to model the epistemic functions of three constitutive features of democracy: the epistemic diversity of participants, the interaction of voting with discussion, and feedback mechanisms such as periodic elections and protests. It views democracy as an institution for pooling widely distributed information about problems and policies of public interest by engaging the participation of epistemically diverse knowers. Democratic norms of free discourse, dissent, feedback, and accountability function to ensure collective, experimentally-based learning from the diverse experiences of different knowers. I illustrate these points with a case study of community forestry groups in South Asia, whose epistemic powers have been hobbled by their suppression of women's participation.

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Elizabeth Anderson
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

References found in this work

Epistemic democracy: Generalizing the Condorcet jury theorem.Christian List & Robert E. Goodin - 2001 - Journal of Political Philosophy 9 (3):277–306.
On Social Facts.Michael Root - 1992 - Philosophical Review 101 (3):675.
On Legitimacy and Political Deliberation.Bernard Manin - 1987 - Political Theory 15 (3):338-368.

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