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ABSTRACT
Contrary to what some critics of epistemic democracy claim, the association between democracy and truth does not necessarily make the former inhospitable to conflict, contestation, and pluralism. With the help of John Stuart Mill and William James, truth can be interpreted so as to make it compatible with a democratic politics that appreciates conflict and dissent. In some circumstances, truth claims are politically relevant and should become the object of democratic deliberation.
Notes
1 The terms conflict, dissent, and pluralism shall be used without distinction. Such indiscriminate use is also employed by the critics of epistemic democracy, such as Carlo Invernizzi Accetti (Citation2014) and Nadia Urbinati (Citation2014). Likewise, I shall not differentiate the expressions “epistemic paradigm” and “epistemic conception” or the words wiser and more truthful.
2 Surprisingly enough, in an article where she briefly addresses Mill's conception of truth, Urbinati does recognize that truth can be compatible with a democratic politics that appreciates dissent and liberty (Urbinati Citation2012, 214). In a manuscript that she is currently working on, Urbinati makes a similar concession regarding Dewey`s idea of “warranted assertibility” (Urbinati Citation2016b, 2). Both of these texts stand out when compared to the other writings of the author, who has time and again criticized epistemic democracy for being contrary to liberty and disagreement. In Democracy Disfigured (2014), for instance, the possibility of interpreting truth in such a way as to make it compatible with liberty and dissent is not mentioned at all. I thank Urbinati for sharing her manuscript with me.
3 In Democracia e representação, Luis Felipe Miguel advances a similar critique: “the epistemic view [of democracy] is close to an idealistic perception of politics, one in which the multiplicity of voices would bring about a more complete vision of reality and thus a cognitively superior decision. Political conflict is therefore kept away” (Miguel Citation2014, 244-45).
4 Rawls makes a distinction between truth claims and reasonable claims: whereas the former should be excluded from public reason because they are not political, the latter are appropriate for political deliberation. For a fuller account of Rawls's conception of truth, see Audard Citation2007, 215-18 and Landemore Citationforthcoming.
5 As Charles Girard points out, “the epistemology of public discussion” elaborated by Mill had “the conflicting quest for truth” as one of its main components (Girard Citation2015, 191, 199). “Mill believed that truth could only emerge from the conflict and collision of ideas” (Alexander Citation1965, 128). “The Millian market of ideas . . . produces a diffuse and constantly moving ‘truth,’ which emerges in a dynamic form from the clash between conflicting points of view” (Landemore Citation2013, 88; see also Rosen Citation2012, 196). On the centrality of conflict in Mill's political philosophy, see López Citation2014, Pollitzer Citation2015, and Turner Citation2010.
6 As Lisa Disch points out, Mill's conception of political conflict testifies to the fact that parties “play a constructive role in democratic politics” (Disch Citation2009, 622). A conflictual debate orchestrated by different political parties can construct truth and knowledge. (On the role of parties in Mill's political philosophy, see Kinzer Citation2007, ch. 6; López Citation2014, 313-18; Muirhead Citation2014, 99-105; and Rosenblum Citation2008, 143-56.) Although he valued party conflict, Mill recognized that in some circumstances the opposition between parties can hinder truth. Partisanship obstructs the epistemic properties of democratic deliberation when, for instance, politicians from one party refuse to examine or accept any proposal that is presented by other parties (Mill, CW XIX, 452). The deliberative conflict that Mill considers pivotal to the development of truth differs from blind opposition.
7 Here is found one of the reasons that, in fact, epistemic democrats endeavor to keep dissent alive. By objecting to the decision chosen by the majority, dissenting individuals and groups posit alternatives and remind the majority that their decision is only one among many possibilities. Their dissent can thus favor the maintenance of a revisionist and fallibilistic spirit (Anderson Citation2006, 16-17). On Millian fallibilism, see Skorupski Citation1991, 291-95. Charles Girard (Citation2014) argues that Mill's fallibilism gestures at an epistemic conception of democracy that is compatible with egalitarianism. Fallibilism assumes that we may all be equally wrong and thus justifies the need for democratic deliberation and majority rule (Girard Citation2014, 133-38).
8 As one of the most recent defenders of the epistemic paradigm has put it, one “way to enhance the epistemic properties of deliberation is to develop formalized methods that challenge assumptions and groupthink—methods such as . . . ‘devil's advocacy,’ and other types of alternative and competitive analysis” (Landemore Citation2013, 122).
9 “Mill asserted not only that human nature changed significantly, and that consequently one could not build universal theories on the basis of its form in any particular historical society, but that it could be shaped deliberately” (Duncan Citation1977, 251).
10 According to Landemore, one of the epistemic advantages of representative democracy is the temporal expansion inherent in the representative mechanism itself, which favors citizens’ critical reflexivity: “Representative democracy is a more intelligent form of democratic regime than direct democracy per se . . . because it is less immediate, allowing people time for reflecting on and refining their judgment” (Landemore Citation2013, 10).
11 In his book on the public sphere, Habermas (Citation2014, 314) contends that in Mill's conception of public deliberation, one can identify a “perspectivistic theory of knowledge.”
12 The association between representation and social perspective has gained a prominent role in contemporary studies on representation mainly due to Iris Marion Young (Citation2000). The similarities between Young and Mill are interesting, yet to approach them here would lead us too far afield. For a good comparison between both writers, see Donner (Citation2016). Here I follow Young's distinction between interests and perspectives: whereas the former relate to more specific and concrete demands, the latter are more fluid and correspond simply to a certain way of seeing the world that each group has.
13 In other words, since every social group has its own “cognitive bias,” an adequate understanding of other groups’ interests and points of view makes the presence of these groups imperative (Christiano Citation2008, 89).
14 This point is worth highlighting, if only because some scholars question Mill's democratic credentials by claiming that he was not in favor of granting political power to the laboring classes (e.g., Wood Citation2000, 229).
15 Robert Talisse (Citation2005, 100-101) argues that the common feature of all detractors of epistemic democracy is the uncritical acceptance of the “crucial principle underlying Platonism,” to wit, the thesis that political cognitivism requires a metaphysical commitment to “fixed and immutable” entities.
16 James distinguishes truths that refer solely to “matters of fact” from truths that refer to “relations among purely mental ideas” (James [1907] Citation1987, 577). The latter are different than the former because they are immutable. The same applies to Mill, who also, as we saw, excluded mathematical truths from his fallibilism (Mill [1859] Citation2008, 41).
17 Notice that “discovering” is different from “actively constructing”; as Henri Bergson proclaimed in his preface to the French translation of Pragmatism, “one could summarize the essential of the pragmatist conception of truth with the following sentence: whereas for other doctrines a new truth is a discovery, for pragmatism the latter is an invention” (Bergson Citation1911, 11). When he affirms it as a human invention, James does not aim to reduce truth to a mere idiosyncrasy; rather, his wish is to draw attention to its socially constructed character (ibid.). It is beyond our scope to detail here how the socially constructed aspect of truth relates to its objectivity and to Jamesian epistemological realism. For an analysis that contains a good clarification of these issues, see Putnam Citation1997.
18 As Gianni Vattimo has put it, “the farewell to truth [as correspondence] is the commencement, and the very basis, of democracy” (Vattimo Citation2014, xxxiv). “As long as truth is conceived as adequatio, as correspondence to a given (a datum) objectively present, the danger of political Platonism never goes away” (ibid.). Vattimo's recent attempt to elaborate a non-Platonic conception of truth that fortifies democracy pays tribute, as he recognizes, to the pragmatist tradition (ibid., 133ff).
19 José Luis Martí (Citation2006b), a fierce adherent of epistemic democracy, argues that valuing democratic deliberation for the sake of truth is compatible with the idea that the democratic procedure has a value of its own. Valuing democracy instrumentally is consistent with valuing it for its own sake (Anderson Citation2009 and Knight et al. Citation2016, 144). The same position is endorsed by David Estlund (Citation2008), the philosopher whom Urbinati (Citation2014, 93) identifies as one of the greatest examples of the epistemic paradigm she repudiates. Estlund clarifies that his epistemic proceduralism establishes only that the democratic procedure has “a tendency” to produce “correct” outcomes (Estlund Citation2008, 107). According to him, we must follow the democratic procedure's outcome even when we find it “mistaken” (Estlund Citation2008, 108). Quoting Urbinati's critique, Lisa Hill inaccurately mentions Estlund (Citation2008) as one example among many “epistemic democrats [who] are more concerned with the outputs of the democratic process, that is, they are unconcerned about whether the procedure used to determine issues excludes certain people or violates the equality principle: what matters is that the outcome is the correct one” (Hill Citation2016, 2-3). As chapter six of Democratic Authority makes it clear, what makes a law legitimate is its conformity to democratic procedure, not its truthfulness (Estlund Citation2008, 108-10).
20 We are endorsing here the pragmatist conception of truth (present also in chapter two of On Liberty), which posits that truth would be a name for those assertions that so far have proved most efficient in solving our problems.
21 Even writers who work within the epistemic paradigm can fall prey to this solecism. Felix Gerlsbeck, for instance, rebuts the argument that epistemic democracy is incapable of accommodating democratic disagreement by suggesting that epistemic democrats should abandon the concept of truth, for the latter's “substantive content” may indeed bring about discord regarding “fundamental value commitments” (Gerlsbeck Citation2016, 8). Looking for mistakes and achieving epistemic reliability, he contends, are different from trying to reach “truthful” or “correct” outcomes (ibid., 10-11, 16-17).
22 “DR. STOCKMANN – Do not believe me, if you want, but truths do not have, as you imagine, the resistance of a Methuselah” (Ibsen [1882] Citation1984, 176). This is not to claim that Dr. Stockmann was a democrat; just after having his freedom of speech denied, he proclaims that he opposes democracy.