March 2008

In this chapter Estlund asks the question whether an ‘epistocracy of the educated’ — whether, as J.S. Mill recommends, the educated should receive more votes than the uneducated — could satisfy the ‘qualified acceptability requirement’, that is, be a political principle to which no qualified objection could be levelled. Most epistocratic proposals are defeated because they could not satisfy the qualified acceptability requirement, as there exists qualified disagreement in pluralist societies over who counts as ‘wise’ with respect to political matters. Thus epistemic proceduralism rules out ‘invidious comparisons’ amongst citizens with respect to their normative political wisdom (as explained in chapter II). However, given the widespread view that a ‘good political education’ promotes good political decision-making, and that under Mill’s proposal all citizens would have at least one vote, can the Millian proposal for additional votes for the educated satisfy the qualified acceptability requirement?

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Thanks to Rebecca for the great summary and questions about this chapter, and to Jonathan and Ben for pitching in. The chapter proposes a way to combine, in broadly deliberative approach to democracy, a central role for an ideal deliberative situation with a similarly central place in democratic practice for activities other than deliberating. I suggest that an ideal deliberation can be used as a template by which to identify actual deviations. Where there are deviations that clearly insert power over reason in favor of a particular point of view, the epistemic core of my approach recommends efforts to restore the epistemic balance. Where this can’t be done by removing the skewing element of power, it can sometimes be done by injecting power on the other side of the question in a way that attempts to neutralize the first, skewing element. The thing to emphasize is that this will often be yet a further departure from the ideal deliberative situation. An abuse of power by a certain company or industry that tilts the political system in their favor might responsibly be answered by a boycott. A boycott is primarily an exercise of brute market power, and not a rational argument in response to the company’s view. I suggest that this is a way to keep deliberation in its place: central to the theory, less central to political practice.

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[David's response to Harry on chap. 9 is now below this post, so don't miss it -- SCM]

Summary

In this chapter, Estlund seeks to identify the correct role played by an ideal deliberative situation in democratic theory. He argues that while in practice, democratic communication should not aim to resemble ideal deliberation, nonetheless the idea has an important function as a template through which to examine real-life instances of democratic communication and identify deviations from the ideal. Real deliberative practices and institutions should not aim to mirror the model deliberative situation because when epistemic distortions arise as a result of deviations from the ideal, it may be justified to employ further deviations to remedy these. This leads him to defend a model of wide civility for the informal political sphere, which makes room for sharp, disruptive and even suppressive forms of participation under certain circumstances. This wide version of civility is appropriate only for the informal public sphere, however. In formal political institutions such as the courts and legislatures the norms of narrow civility still apply. In summary then, it seems that there are three main arguments at work in this chapter: (1) that the appropriate way to think of the ideal deliberative situation is not as a set of prescriptions for citizens to aim at, but rather as an analytical tool for diagnosing and remedying failures; (2) that there might be good epistemic reasons to reject the narrow civility inherent in model deliberation in favour of a wider version; and (3) that while the use of countervailing deviations from the ideal might be appropriate in the informal political sphere, formal instances of political deliberation ought still to be governed by the requirements of narrow civility.

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Thanks to Harry for the excellent summary and comments. His two comments really amount to a single challenge: Since a smaller-than-universal sample of the population could deliberate or vote with as much epistemic value as the universal franchise, doesn’t epistemic proceduralism end up endorsing non-democratic political institutions after all?

It’s one challenge, but with two parts. So, first, is it true that a sample could be trusted (beyond qualified disagreement) to deliberate with as good effect as if the whole adult population were enfranchised? Then, second, if so, would deliberation and/or voting by a sample count as democratic?

There’s a third question in play, raised when Harry writes, “Democracy is, in part, justified because we have an obligation to allow other people to play a full role in determining how our collective affairs will go, precisely because they have a stake in how things will go.” Here the question is not what counts as democratic, but whether we are obligated to enfranchise all adult citizens. Read the rest of this entry »

Synopsis.

Chapter 9 advances the first stage of an argument which is completed in chapter 10. I’ll just concentrate on the part of the argument that is presented in chapter 9, but it is worth seeing where it is going. The burden of the two chapters is to show that feasible democratic procedures have substantially more than random probability of finding the correct answers to what society should do. Chapter 9 only argues that an imaginary situation which Estlund calls a model epistemic deliberation would have a substantially better than random chance of getting the right answers, but he also says that this model is not an ideal for which it would be sensible to strive. Rather, it illustrates how an ideal democracy could be justified epistemically, and the subsequent chapter will argue that feasible democratic procedures for which it would be sensible to strive are relevantly like this “ideal”. The point is to “defeat a certain kind of sceptic, the one who denies that any (nonutopian) democratic arrangements could tend to perform better than random”.

How does the argument of this chapter work, then?

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Again, I’m gratified to see such a clear and accurate summary of the chapter. Let me start with Simon’s excellent questions, drawing connections to Jonathan’s where appropriate.

Simon’s question (1) is whether the system of justice that arises in Juristic Prejuria has some unique claim to obedience or whether other schemes might also arise and place similar claims on people’s obedience. This question grants, at least for the sake of argument, that the case for the jury system’s original authority goes through. It then asks, since it goes through for this arrangement, why wouldn’t it go through for multiple parallel arrangements? So the specific challenge in (1) is not to the argument for the original authority of the jury system. But if parallel arrangements can make an equal claim to authority then the authority of the jury system seems to be limited by those other possibilities. It will only work as an analogy for the authority of a whole political system if it grounds unique authority. Read the rest of this entry »

The argument of this chapter is an analogy between the authority of democracy and the authority of a jury trial system. A jury system that possesses certain qualified epistemic features (i.e. epistemic benefits that no qualified point of view could reject) also possesses authority. This authority is “original” since it does not depend on prior authorisation through consent or some political procedure. Analogously, a democratic system that possesses similar qualified epistemic features, also possesses original authority. Most of the chapter is spent developing the case for the authority of a jury system, so I will focus on that. I imagine that some may be more interested in the strength of the analogy between democracy and the jury system, but I think there is a lot to be done looking at the analogue itself.

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Thanks to David (I’ll call him David L. lest readers get confused about the multiple Davids on the screen) for his excellent summary and questions. The first issue he raises is about my appeal to symmetry between consent and non-consent. I say that it’s interestingly asymmetrical if consent is sometimes null but non-consent never is. David L. is quite right that symmetry of this kind is not automatically an important thing, and so it’s no basis for thinking that non-consent must also be capable of being null. But Jonathan is also right, I think, to say that we might find the asymmetry morally puzzling. That’s all I had in mind. The asymmetry just opens up a question. After that, it does no argumentative work. I refer back to the question of symmetry once or twice as I argue for normative consent, but only to stay clear about what it was that was initially puzzling.

David L.’s main concern is focused around my airplane crash example. I should say that I don’t intend that example to elicit strong predictable intuitions. (It is not like the famous trolley problems in that way.) Rather, it is just a story I can use to illustrate what it is that I want to claim. It has also proven very useful to my critics in helping them make clear just where they think I go wrong. You’re welcome.

The main line of worry seems to be that I haven’t clearly or adequately answered what I call the direct authority objection, which holds that normative consent is superfluous. As David L. points out, the crucial distinction is between what conditions materially entail authority, and what conditions morally ground authority. So it’s important first to see that these are two separate things. I give as an example the fact that all present facts about masses, forces, etc., must materially entail all the moral facts. (This claim is available to lots of different metaethical views, though not all, I admit.) But those facts don’t morally ground or support the moral facts. For example, the micro-physical facts that entail that I consent to your using my pen do not morally ground your permission even though they do guarantee it by way of guaranteeing that I consent. Read the rest of this entry »