Recent arguments for an epistemic conception of democracy have moved away from arguing that democracy possesses epistemic power by virtue of effectively aggregating the preferences or opinions of participants and toward the claim that these powers flow from deliberation, viewed as a constitutive element of democracy. This chapter reviews a version of this perspective, drawing on sources in pragmatist political philosophy, and tries to develop it, focusing on frequently overlooked issues of trustworthiness and the place of testimony in democratic theory. In Sect. 6.2, I briefly review the claim that the epistemic power of democracy derives from processes of deliberation and experiment, not merely from judgement aggregation, and go on to outline a pragmatist account of this, drawing on recent work in this area. In Sect. 6.3, I develop this account by introducing the notion of democratic testimony: a key epistemological problem in the process of democratic deliberation is that of credibility or trustworthiness; this is not a problem to be eliminated, but only one whose possible pernicious consequences must to be checked. In Sect. 6.4, I argue that the pragmatist conception of democratic epistemology outlined in Sect. 6.2 successfully captures what is distinctive about this problem. In Sect. 6.5, however, I go on to outline a residual problem for this approach to the epistemic character of democracy, and to offer some tentative solutions.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Anderson, E. (2006). The Epistemology of Democracy. Episteme, 3(1), 8–22
Barry, B. (1967). The Public Interest. In A. Quinton (Ed.), Political Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Bohman, J. (1999). Democracy as Inquiry, Inquiry as Democracy: Pragmatism, Social Science and the Cognitive Division of Labour. American Journal of Political Science, 43(2), 590–607
Bohman and W. Rehg (Eds.), Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Coady, A. (1992). Testimony. Oxford: Clarendon Press
Cohen, J. (1986). An Epistemic Conception of Democracy. Ethics, 97, 26–38
Cooke, M. (2002). Five Arguments for Deliberative Democracy. In M. Passerin D'Entrèves (Ed.), Public Deliberation. Manchester: Manchester University Press
Dewey, J. (1987 [1935]). Liberalism and Social Action. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The Later Works of John Dewey, 1889–1924. Volume 11. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press
Dryzek, J. (2000). Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals, Critics, Contestations. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Festenstein, M. (1997). Pragmatism and Political Theory. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press
Festenstein, M. (2002). Deliberative Democracy, Citizenship and Identity. In M. Passerin D'Entrèves (Ed.), Public Deliberation. Manchester: Manchester University Press
Festenstein, M. (2004). Pragmatism and Two Models of Deliberative Democracy. European Journal of Social Theory, 7(3), 291–306
Festenstein, M. (2005). Negotiating Diversity: Culture, Deliberation, Trust. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press
Festenstein, M. (2007). Inquiry and Democracy in Contemporary Pragmatism. In P. Baert and B. S. Turner (Eds.), Pragmatism and European Social Theory. Cambridge: Bardwell Press
Festenstein, M. (2008). John Dewey: Inquiry, Ethics and Democracy. In C. Misak (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of American Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Fricker, M. (2003). Epistemic Injustice and a Role for Virtue in the Politics of Knowing. Metaphilosophy, 34(1/2), 154–173
Grofman, B. and Feld, S. (1988). Rousseau's General Will: A Condorcetian Perspective. American Political Science Review, 82(2), 567–576
Hendriks, C. M., Dryzek, J. S., and Hunold, C. (2007). Turning Up the Heat? Partisanship in Deliberative Innovation. Political Studies, 55(2), 362–383
Herzog, D. (2006). Cunning. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Hopkins, R. (2007). What Is Wrong with Moral Testimony? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 74(3), 611–634
Jones, K. (1999). Second-hand Moral Knowledge. Journal of Philosophy, 96(2), 55–78
Larmore, C. (1996). The Morals of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Lipton, P. (1998). The Epistemology of Testimony. Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 29(1), 1–31
List, C. and Goodin, R. (2001). Epistemic Democracy: Generalising the Condorcet Jury Theorem. Journal of Political Philosophy, 9(3), 277–306
Manin, B. (1987). On Legitimacy and Political Deliberation. Political Theory, 15(3), 338–368
Misak, C. (2000). Truth, Morality, Politics. London: Routledge
Misak, C. (2004). Making Disagreement Matter: Pragmatism and Deliberative Democracy. Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 18(1), 9–22
O'Neill, J. (1998). The Market: Ethics, Knowledge, and Politics. London: Routledge
O'Neill, J. (2002). The Rhetoric of Deliberation: Some Problems in Kantian Theories of Deliberative Democracy. Res Publica, 8, 249–268
O'Neill, O. (2002a). Autonomy and Trust in Bioethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
O'Neill, O. (2002b). A Question of Trust. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Peirce, C. S. (1934). In C. Hartshorne and P. Weiss (Eds.), Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Volume 5. Pragmatism and Pragmaticism. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press
Pettit, P. (2004). Depoliticizing Democracy. Ratio Juris, 17, 52–65
Putnam, H. (1994). Words and Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Richardson, H. (1997). Democratic Intentions. In J. Bohman and W. Rehg (Eds.), Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Richardson, H. (2002). Democratic Autonomy: Public Reasoning About the Ends of Policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Sanders, L. (1997). Against Deliberation. Political Theory, 25(3), 347–376
Shapin, S. (1994). A Social History of Truth. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press
Shapiro, I. (2002). The State of Democratic Theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Talisse, R. B. (2005). Democracy and Liberalism. London: Routledge
Tetlock, P. E. (2006). Expert Political Judgement: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Waldron, J. (1993). Rights and Majorities: Rousseau Revisited. In J. Waldron (Ed.), Liberal Rights. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Warren, M. (1999). Democratic Theory and Trust. In M. Warren (Ed.), Trust and Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Young, I. M. (2000). Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer Science + Business Media B.V
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Festenstein, M. (2009). Truth and Trust in Democratic Epistemology. In: Geenens, R., Tinnevelt, R. (eds) Does Truth Matter?. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8849-0_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8849-0_6
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-8848-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-8849-0
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)