Democracy, Epistemology and Deweyan Pragmatism

Abstract

In this chapter I argue that theories of epistemic democracy tend to make either underdeveloped or inadequate ontological, epistemological, and political assumptions about social reality, human cognition, and democratic citizenship, rendering their theoretical framework and arguments unfit for the problem of democratic judgment. In the first part of the chapter I discuss and point out weaknesses of contemporary epistemic theories of democracy. In the second part of the chapter I lay out the preliminaries of an account of the epistemic dimensions of democracy that offers an alternative theory of democracy to purely epistemic theories; this alternative theory is critically informed by John Dewey’s pragmatism and will guide me throughout the rest of the book. I introduce a Deweyan perspective on the epistemic dimension of democracy by presenting the way in which a pragmatist perspective in general, and the Deweyan conceptions of democracy and epistemology in particular, can avoid some of the most fundamental problems of the theories of epistemic democracy. The chapter introduces three key elements of a Deweyan argument for democracy. The first is a focus on diversity of experiences and perspectives as an epistemic resource in constructing political problems and solutions, which preconditions the argument that equality and inclusion tend to be conditions that make democratic judgments and decisions better. The second is a focus on judgment as a form of cognitive action that occurs within a process of inquiry and that takes place against the background of experiences that are qualitatively saturated. The third is the acknowledgement that democratic politics (even under ideal circumstances) involves trade-offs between equality and inclusion on the one hand and the desire for better judgments and decisions on the other, without offering a clear-cut criterion for how to resolve these trade-offs in the abstract.