April 2008

I’m grateful to Zofia for the excellent summary and questions. Let me say something about her question in order:

On her (1): Zofia asks whether there is really much point to hopeless ideal theory if we really know it won’t be met. I wrote that one of the benefits of such theory is that we can surprise ourselves, but suppose we really do know that certain standards will never be met. She’s write that, since we’re limiting our concern here to standards that are not beyond people’s abilities, I would insist that it is usually pretty hard to really know that they won’t ever be met. But I hasten to emphasize that my defense of hopeless aspirational theory does not rest on this conjecture. The fact, if it is one, that a certain kind of normative political theory will never be met, is not a defect in the theory. More concessive theory is valuable and important too, of course.

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Summary

Much research demonstrates that voters are largely ignorant about the issues and institutions at stake when they vote. Some research also suggests that voters are selfish and irrational. Such poor voter performance might be thought to pose problems for an epistemic theory of democracy since if the performance is bad enough democracy may not deliver on its epistemic promise – it might fail to outperform choosing policies ‘with a roulette wheel’ (262). Estlund has two answers to the challenge posed by the reports about voters’ poor performance. The main answer consists in showing that there is in general value in theories that demand of people that they behave better than they in fact behave or are ever likely to behave.

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Thanks again to Jonathan for the very useful summary and comments. I’ll consider his three questions in order.

First, Jonathan raises a small exegetical question. Does Rawls suggest the kind of democracy/contractualism analogy of the kind I’m discussing? Nothing in my argument depends on this, but it’s still interesting. Here’s the passage I use in support of my claim that he uses the analogy:

The guarantee of fair value for political liberties is included in the first principle of justice because it is essential in order to establish just legislation and also to make sure that the fair political process specified by the constitution is open to everyone on a basis of rough equality. The idea is to incorporate into the basic structure of society an effective political procedure which mirrors in that structure the fair representation of persons achieved by the original position.

Jonathan says that Rawls could just mean that the original position is fair and so by mirroring it in actual political procedures would also be fair, and good in that way. This, Jonathan says, wouldn’t be the same as saying that since the choices in the hypothetical original position constitute justice, choices in a structurally similar real procedure would tend to be similar, thus tracking justice. So on Jonathan’s possible reading the fairness of the original position would be a kind of fairness that has nothing to do with the subsequent claim that choices made in that kind of fair procedure count as principles of justice for a social basic structure. That way this same kind of fairness could be thought of as a value in real institutions quite apart from anything about what kinds of substantive decisions they would make.

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Summary
In this chapter, David wants to distinguish his epistemic argument for democracy from what he calls the democracy/contractualism analogy (I’m going to refer to this simply as the analogy or the analogy argument). The analogy rests on two key claims. The first is that justice or moral rightness is best understood via some version of moral or political contractualism. The second claim is that democratic outcomes have the capacity to track the requirements of justice or morality because democratic institutions can be arranged in a manner that is sufficiently similar the structure of the hypothetical choice situation of whatever theory of contractualism is favoured. David rejects the analogy because he believes this latter claim is false. If democracy does track justice (something David obviously doesn’t want to deny) it is not because democratic institutions mimic the features of a hypothetical contract scenario.

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Thanks to Loren for the great summary and questions. Loren is largely sympathetic, so, as a reward, this can be more brief than most weeks. But he does raise two concerns.

First, Loren proposes a way of avoiding the disjunction problem. He says that we might suppose there is one correct way of enumerating the alternatives, leading to n alternatives, and then take individual competence to be above 1/n. “After all, we might reply that the assumption of slightly better than random voter competence presupposes correct specification of the choice problem.” I’m not sure what a correct specification of the problem would mean. Suppose we are deciding about building a bridge. We could build a cheap bridge, an expensive bridge, or no bridge. Suppose the best thing is to build a cheap bridge. If we ask the voters to choose between these three options, random competence would be 1/3. If we give them two choices: Build a bridge (cheap or expensive), or build no bridge, random competence is .5. I don’t know what it would mean to say one of these is the correct way to put the question. In any case, Loren says that even if there is a correct or privileged way to enumerate the alternatives it would remain unclear who should get to make that decision. I don’t know how to evaluate that point because I don’t get the idea of a privileged enumeration. For all I can tell, if there is a privileged enumeration it might be beyond reasonable objection. So I might benefit from some clarification of this suggestion. Read the rest of this entry »

If your account of democratic authority uses the term “epistemic” then sooner or later you’re going to have to deal with the Jury Theorem. And here is where David takes up the gauntlet.

I’ve made that seem rather dramatic, but by this point in the book the gauntlet isn’t especially heavy! After all, in preceding chapters we’ve seen a model form of deliberation, a distinction between formal and substantive epistemic value, and a careful distinction between a “test” for finding the correct answer to some shared problem (such as majority rule), and a “testing system” (such as a constitutional democracy within which majoritarian decision procedures are embedded). The Jury Theorem, as tantalizing as it may be to some democratic theorists, does not appeal to discussion and argument, relies on claims about voter competence and the substantive correctness of some choices, and it applies in the first instance to specific tests (voting and majority or plurality rule), not to a testing system per se.

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Blain’s summary is accurate and helpful, and he raises several good questions. I take those up before turning to questions by the other participants.

Blain’s first worry is whether, in the absence of an account that would give us clear boundaries for the reasonable or the qualified, we are unable to go forward with this kind of approach at all. Is any way of going forward bound to be unacceptably ad hoc? I try to indicate an alternative to this defeatist position. I mention this methodological stance briefly in several places, including pp. 63-64, p. 217, and p. 286, note 3. Notice that the wish for clear boundaries is no particular support for Blain’s second concern, that the principle of acceptability should be defended by resting it on a deeper principle of respect. It might seem as though having such a deeper account would also give us the boundaries we want. But I see no general reason to think it would. Suppose the duty not to lie is based on the categorical imperative. That’s very little help in in knowing what the exceptions are to this duty, or whether (as Kant thought) there are none. Depth and specificity are quite independent features of moral theories.

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