Just to clarify my point. The argument for an epistocracy of the educated is analagous to David’s argument for democracy in the sense they both rely on epistemic considerations. The former argument claims there are epistemic benefits (relative to universal suffrage) to be had by giving the educated more voting power. The latter argument claims there are epistemic benefits to be had (relative to some randomized procedure) by having a democratic system of decision-making. If the conjectural/latent features objection applies to the epistocracy argument, I think it applies to David’s argument for democracy as well, albeit not in precisely the same way. They are, after all, both arguments which favour giving political power to a certain group of people on the basis of alleged epistemic benefits. An opponent of democracy only needs to say something like this:

‘There is reason to believe (or to worry) that people, in general, are vulnerable to certain biases (like racism) and cognitive errors (like regret-aversion or confirmatory bias). We thus have reason to believe that even though there are epistemic benefits to the practice of democracy (e.g. deliberation etc…), those benefits are outweighed by the probability of biases and cognitive errors that people generally make. This is a qualified reason to believe that randomized decision procedures (or an epistocracy of people who have been selected by virtue of being less prone to such biases) will do better in epistemic terms than univeral suffrage’.

My claim is that if the conjectural/latent features objection is qualified when applied to the epistocracy argument, I think this modified version of it is qualified as applied to democracy. More generally, I think the conjectural/latent feature objection to the epistocracy argument is fairly weak, and thus if it is a qualified way of objecting to an epistemic argument, it seems hard to believe there can be no qualified objections to the epistemic argument in favour of democracy that David advances.

If people are given freedom whether to vote, then predictably some won’t and abstention is unlikely to be evenly distributed (e.g. the young, old and poor may vote less). It seems that this, like weighted voting, effectively gives certain social groups more power. If that’s objectionable, then perhaps that’s reason to compel everyone to vote.

Thanks for the great post. I want to raise a worry I have about this chapter, a worry that relates to a long discussion we had regarding chapter 2. David claims that objections based on latent or conjectural features of an educated class are qualified objections, and thus sufficient to defeat proposals for an epistocracy of the educated. An epistocracy of the educated is ruled out because it is vulnerable to qualified objection. On pp. 218-219 David then reminds us of a passage in chapter 2, where he considered the possibility that universal suffrage might be vulnerable to qualified objections, and thus would be ruled out as well. David’s response to that objection was to declare that departures from universal suffrage introduce an extra element or degree of authority, and that additional increment ‘is subject to the qualified acceptability requirement, whereas its absence is not’ (p. 219). Universal suffrage is thus the default, from which departures need to be justified in a manner that is immune to qualified objection.

I think this passage poses problems. I believe that objections based on latent or conjectural features are roughly as plausible when applied to the populace as a whole, as they are when applied to a sub-set of the populace like the educated. That is, it is roughly just as plausible to suppose that the potential biases and epistemic flaws of the general public will outweigh whatever epistemic benefits universal suffrage brings, as it is to worry about this with regard to some sub-set of the population like the educated. If objections based on latent/conjectural features can be used to defeat the argument for epistocracy, why can’t they be used to defeat the argument for universal suffrage? Why can’t they be used as qualified objections to the claim that democracy will do better than random procedures? David’s position, maybe, is that universal suffrage is a default, from which only departures need to be justified in a manner that is not vulnerable to qualified objection. If this is his position, then this means even though there are qualified objections against the epistemic argument for democracy, they can be ignored because universal suffrage is the default from which only departures need to be justified. But this makes David’s epistemic arguments in favour of democracy unecessary – all the work is done by the assumption that universal suffrage is the default and the further arguments showing departures cannot avoid qualified objection – we are left with no independent argument explaining why universal suffrage is the default.

Since I think this is not the view David wants to take, perhaps he would not agree with my claim that the latent/conjectural features objection is qualified when applied to universal suffrage. But that response doesn’t strike me as plausible, plus it has the added problem of ad-hocery that Blain mentions. I must have misunderstood something, so hopefully David will point out where I’ve gone wrong.

One general worry I have (which doesn’t directly relate to the arguments of this chapter) is about the extent of inequality that may be acceptable. If we allow certain inequalities, it might be that some people are effectively excluded altogether. One example might be the weighted voting rules adopted by the EU (or whatever it was then) in the 1950s: if I recall correctly, Germany, France and Italy each had 4 votes, Belgium and Netherlands 2 and Luxembourg 1. A ’super-majority’ of (I think) 12 votes was necessary to pass motions.

Now this isn’t really the context that David is talking about, but presumably if we extend his argument there’s no fairness-based objection to such inequalities; they can only be rejected on epistemic grounds. The problem with this case of weighted voting is that Luxembourg effectively had no power, because it was never pivotal to a winning coalition (any group that won with Luxembourg would also win without). That, to me, looks like an objection to this distribution of votes. I’m not sure whether David can give some epistemic-based reason for this (perhaps along the lines that there’s a loss in excluding a certain distinct perspective?).

As I say, that’s a bit of a digression, but perhaps it’s worth thinking about as I’m aware of a few recent proposals of weighted voting - by Brighouse and Fleurbaey, and Heyd and Segall - based on differential interests at stake rather than epistemic considerations. I’m not quite sure whether David’s argument is intended to exclude those too. That is, does establishing a qualified objection on epistemic grounds mean we can also (with slight modifications to the argument) block other arguments for weighted voting, or is it simply a rejection of one (epistemic) argument for weighted voting that allows other (non-epistemic) arguments for such?

Finally, I share Blain’s worry that things seem a bit ad hoc. Presumably, given that Plato would say it’s unjust to treat unequals equally, he’d claim there’s some sort of qualified objection to giving the uneducated equal votes (which they don’t really deserve). After all, the uneducated will presumably also be biased in certain ways (e.g. disproportionately poor), so couldn’t we simply end up facing conflicting (possibly qualified) objections, unless what it is to be ‘qualified’ is spelled out in more detail?

Second, my apologies for the big gaps between the paragraphs. I spent over an hour trying to figure out how to have ‘normal’ gaps, but to no avail. The only alternatives seemed to be cutting and pasting from my Word file with no modification (which produced the current ‘double gaps’ between paragraphs), or having no paragraph breaks at all (a far worse option). I’m sure that there’s some simple trick to fix this, but I was unable to figure it out. If someone knows what needs to be done, I’d be happy to edit my post into a more aesthetically pleasing form.