Abstract
Epistemic democrats argue that democratic governance is justified in part by superior epistemic performance. Although recent work on the subject has engaged formal models and some empirical evidence, epistemic democrats have yet to engage the intellectual virtue literature. In this chapter, I explore this possibility, and pursue two theses. The first thesis, what I call the Obvious Conclusion, contends that intellectual virtues improve the epistemic functioning of a democracy. Although there are good reasons to think this, the Obvious Conclusion admits of complexity and involves some important caveats. Second, certain kinds of partisan populist movements, what I call “Manichean populisms,” can be corrosive of those institutions necessary for the cultivation and sustenance of intellectual virtues. Because of this, Manichean populisms are often detrimental to the health of democratic institutions.
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Notes
- 1.
If greater specificity is desired, the scope of “relevant to policymaking” could be restricted to policies impacting human rights and/or human well-being. Such specificity has advantages but also raises issues—environmental well-being, for instance, is left out of such a definition.
- 2.
It might be thought that SEP-N is simply a normative criterion and not an epistemic one, but the premise here is that the identification of correct norms for a polity is, at least in part, epistemic in character, especially in the case of identification of proximate goals. One need not be a moral realist to suppose this, as long as there can be identified polity level norms, some of which are better than others.
- 3.
I leave for now the definition of epistemic judgment open, but I take it to include judgments concerning the truth or falsity of a proposition, the likelihood that a given belief is true, the decision to not completely discount a contrasting belief, the judgment that an argument is reasonably strong, the judgment that some argument is not a defeater to a currently held commitment, the judgment that some proposal is worthy of further investigation, and so on.
- 4.
It might be thought that Philip Tetlock’s (2005) study of policy experts would apply here. Tetlock found that experts in fields such as political science and economics typically performed much worse in predicting political and economic events than simply relying on existing regression analyses typically published in scientific papers. While such experts performed better in their predictions than untrained undergraduates, they were not significantly different than well-read amateurs. Tetlock’s analysis is important, but it does not account for the presence or absence of intellectual virtues, and it focuses only on prediction (forecasting) rather than (say) judgments of what counts as good or right action for a community. In the case of forecasting, virtues may or may not be necessary in particular cases, but they are also clearly not sufficient to successfully forecast. Indeed, the intellectually humble scholar would be one who would refuse to forecast when unable to do so, a character trait that might have been lacking in Tetlock’s population.
- 5.
Much more could be said about the relation of intellectual virtues to normative political judgment. Any given individual will have intellectual virtues developed to varying degrees, and any two individuals may possess different intellectual virtues. Although we might expect that such differences disappear at the population level in a way that contributes to the wisdom of crowd, this might not hold in all cases. Different professions and cultural institutions may lend themselves to the development of different intellectual virtues and vices, and these differences may appear at the regional if not necessary national level.
- 6.
As an example, the 6th Wave of the World Values Survey asks individuals to what extent they trust individuals belonging to another religion. In Sweden 75% affirm that they “Trust Completely” or “Trust Somewhat,” compared to only 35% in Turkey. https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWV6.jsp.
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Peterson, G.R. (2022). Intellectual Virtues, Epistemic Democracy, and the Wisdom of “the People”. In: Peterson, G.R., Berhow, M.C., Tsakiridis, G. (eds) Engaging Populism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05785-4_15
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