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The limits of epistemic democracy

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Abstract

The so-called doctrinal paradox reveals that 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. The doctrinal paradox, and its subsequent generalization by List and Pettit (Econ Philos 18:89–110, 2002), reveal the logical difficulties of epistemic democracy. This paper presents several generalizations of the paradox that are formulated with the use of many-valued logic. The results show that allowing the individual or the collective judgements to be formulated in terms of degrees of beliefs does not ensure the possibility of collective epistemic decision making.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Groningen, Oude Boteringestraat 52, 9712, GL, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Martin van Hees

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  1. Martin van Hees
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Correspondence to Martin van Hees.

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van Hees, M. The limits of epistemic democracy. Soc Choice Welfare 28, 649–666 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-006-0185-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-006-0185-0

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