Epistemic Norms of Political Deliberation

Abstract

Abstract The epistemic accountability conception highlights that epistemic considerations matter for political legitimacy. The validity of contributions to political deliberation doesn’t just depend on whether someone has standing to contribute and on purely practical considerations. It also depends on the epistemic status of those contributions. This means that well-ordered political deliberation is subject to some epistemic norms. In this chapter, I first introduce the general idea. I then discuss candidate epistemic norms. I argue that political deliberation shouldn’t be subject to a truth norm or a knowledge norm. But it should be subject to a justified belief norm. I also discuss procedural epistemic norms: a responsiveness norm and an epistemic justice norm.