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THE EPISTEMOLOGY
OF DEMOCRACY
Edited by Hana Samaržija
and Quassim Cassam
The Epistemology of Democracy
This is the first edited scholarly collection devoted solely to the episte-
mology of democracy. Its fifteen chapters, published here for the first
time and written by an international team of leading researchers, will
interest scholars and advanced students working in democratic theory,
the harrowing crisis of democracy, political philosophy, social epistemol-
ogy, and political epistemology.
The volume is structured into three parts, each offering five chapters.
The first part, Democratic Pessimism, covers the crisis of democracy,
the rise of authoritarianism, public epistemic vices, misinformation and
disinformation, civic ignorance, and the lacking quantitative case for
democratic decision-making. The second part, Democratic Optimism,
discusses the role of hope and positive emotions in rebuilding democracy,
proposes solutions to myside bias, and criticizes dominant epistocratic
approaches to forming political administrations. The third and final
part, Democratic Realism, assesses whether we genuinely require emo-
tional empathy to understand the perspectives of our political adversar-
ies, discusses the democratic tension between mutual respect for others
and a quest for social justice, and evaluates manifold top-down and
bottom-up approaches to policy making.
Hana Samaržija is a Ph.D. student in Philosophy at the University of
Warwick. Her papers on countering epistemic injustice and seeking epis-
temically high-quality alternatives to democracy have been published in
Social Epistemology and other academic journals as well as in the edited
book The Philosophy of Fanaticism: Epistemic, Affective, and Political
Dimensions (Routledge, 2022).
Quassim Cassam is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick,
an Honorary Fellow of Keble College, Oxford, and a Fellow of the British
Academy.
The Epistemology
of Democracy
Edited by
Hana Samaržija
and Quassim Cassam
First published 2023
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Hana Samaržija and Quassim
Cassam; individual chapters, the contributors.
The right of Hana Samaržija and Quassim Cassam to be identified
as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their
individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
ISBN: 978-1-032-31725-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-31726-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-31100-3 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003311003
Typeset in Times New Roman
by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
Contents
List of Contributors vii
Introduction: What the Epistemology of Democracy Is All About 1
HANA SAMARŽIJA
PART I
Democratic Pessimism 15
1 Sexy but Wrong: Diversity Theorem Defenses of Democracy 17
JASON BRENNAN
2 A Belated Failure: Condorcet in Contemporary Epistemic
Conditions 32
HANA SAMARŽIJA
3 Social Epistemic Miserliness: Populism against Democracy 51
NENAD MIŠČEVIĆ
4 Critical Thinking and Trusting Experts in Real-life Democracies 70
SNJEŽANA PRIJIĆ SAMARŽIJA
5 The Dangers of Disinformation 90
ÅSA WIKFORSS
PART II
Democratic Optimism 113
6 The Politics of Resentment: Hope, Mistrust, and Polarization 115
ALESSANDRA TANESINI
vi Contents
7 Against the Individual Virtue Approach in the Epistemology
of Democracy 135
MARKO LUKA ZUBČIĆ
8 Institutional Cynicism and Civic Virtue 152
IAN JAMES KIDD
9 Myside Bias in Individuals and Institutions 170
KEITH E. STANOVICH
10 Listening for Epistemic Community 195
HANNA KIRI GUNN
PART III
Democratic Realism 213
11 Sensemaking, Empathy, and Democracy 215
QUASSIM CASSAM
12 Political Skepticism, Bias, and Epistemic Colonization 233
MICHAEL P. LYNCH
13 Economic Inequalities and Epistemic Democracy 250
IVAN CEROVAC
14 What Political Enemies Are for 270
ROBERT B. TALISSE
15 Top-Down and Bottom-Up Solutions to the Problem of
Political Ignorance 287
ILYA SOMIN
Index 316
List of Contributors
Jason Brennan is the Flanagan Family Professor at the McDonough
School of Business, Georgetown University. He is the author of sixteen
books, including Crack in the Ivory Tower: The Moral Mess of Higher
Education (Oxford University Press, 2019).
Quassim Cassam is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Warwick, UK, an Honorary Fellow of Keble College, Oxford, and a
Fellow of the British Academy.
Ivan Cerovac is an External Research Fellow at the University of Rijeka.
He is the author of Epistemic Democracy and Political Legitimacy
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) and John Stuart Mill and Epistemic
Democracy (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022), and he writes and teaches
on a range of topics in ethics and political philosophy, including
political legitimacy, social justice, and democratic theory.
Hanna Kiri Gunn is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the Cognitive
and Information Sciences Department at the University of California,
Merced. Her main area of research concerns the applied ethics and
epistemology of epistemic communities and epistemic agency.
Ian James Kidd teaches and researches philosophy at the University
of Nottingham. His research interests include social and applied
epistemology and moral and epistemic virtues and vices.
Michael Patrick Lynch is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of
Philosophy at the University of Connecticut and the author of Know-
It-All Society and The Internet of Us, among other books.
Nenad Miščević is a Full Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Maribor and has, until recently, also been teaching at the Central
European University in Budapest. He has worked on various
philosophical subjects, emphasizing epistemology, philosophy of
language, and political philosophy.
viii List of Contributors
Hana Samaržija is a Ph.D. student of Philosophy at the University of
Warwick. Routledge and Social Epistemology have published her
works on social epistemology, political epistemology, political
polarization, and epistemic injustice.
Snježana Prijić Samaržija is a Professor of Epistemology at the Faculty of
Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Rijeka. The main
areas of her scientific interest are social philosophy, epistemology, and
applied ethics. During her two rector’s mandates, she published her
last book, Democracy and Truth: The Conflict Between Political and
Epistemic Virtues (Mimesis International, 2018).
Ilya Somin is a Professor of Law at George Mason University. He is the
author of six books, including Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration,
and Political Freedom (Oxford University Press, rev. ed. 2021),
Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government Is
Smarter (Stanford University Press, 2nd ed. 2016), and The Grasping
Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain
(University of Chicago Press, rev. ed. 2016).
Keith E. Stanovich is a Professor Emeritus of Applied Psychology at the
University of Toronto. He is the author of The Bias That Divides Us
(MIT Press, 2021) and has received the Thorndike Career Achievement
Award from the American Psychological Association.
Robert B. Talisse is W. Alton Jones Philosophy and Political Science
Professor. at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He
specializes in democratic theory, emphasizing justice, citizenship,
public deliberation, and political disagreement.
Alessandra Tanesini is a Professor of Philosophy at Cardiff University.
Her latest book is The Mismeasure of the Self: A Study in Vice
Epistemology (Oxford University Press, 2021).
Åsa Wikforss is a Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at Stockholm
University and researches the intersection of epistemology, philosophy
of mind, and political psychology. She is the author of two popular
books and a member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Science and
the Swedish Academy.
Marko Luka Zubčić is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Center for
Advanced Studies South East Europe at the University of Rijeka and
an associate lecturer at the Faculty for Humanities and Social Sciences
in Rijeka. His research field is institutional epistemology, focusing
on the economic and institutional design conditions of epistemic
reliability in complex social systems.
Introduction
What the Epistemology of
Democracy Is All About
Hana Samaržija
0.1 Introduction
This volume is the first international publication devoted exclusively
to the novel field of the epistemology of democracy. The contemporary
significance of the epistemology of democracy is difficult to overstate.
Democracy is at a crossroads, with recent volumes spelling out its proce-
dural failures and the frequency of its collapses (Brennan 2016; Levitsky
and Ziblatt 2018). Ever since venerated political philosophers first penned
their classic theses, the wisdom of crowds appeared as the best way to
resolve the problem of political governance (Mill 1982; Locke 1988;
Rousseau 2003). A diverse group of informed citizens cognizant of their
interests, seeking the common good while guarded by the division of pow-
ers and canceling each other’s biases, was guaranteed to arrive at the best
possible conclusion about their joint problems (Goodin and Spiekermann
2018). However, these presuppositions have recently received a more criti-
cal reading, albeit long taken for granted. Profoundly disquieting decisions
made by multi-million electorates cast doubt on the hitherto unchal-
lenged and seemingly perennial belief in the wisdom of crowds (Cassam
2019). Deliberation between political parties essential to representative
democracy, allegedly the most procedurally just political system we are
acquainted with, repeatedly fails to deliver what many would regard as
sensible policies (Ahlstrom-Vij 2012). In their contemporary epistemic
conditions, liberal representative democracies depend primarily on their
voters, who are often accused of being ignorant, ideologically biased,
uninformed, and prejudiced (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996; Delli Carpini
2005; Fricker 2006; Caplan 2007; Ahlstrom-Vij 2018). If those concerns are
correct, irresponsible citizens cannot select responsive and epistemically
responsible governments (Ahlstrom-Vij 2020). Accordingly, numerous
elected politicians seem unconcerned by expert scientific warnings about
oncoming recessions, the climate crisis potentially injurious to our life on
Earth, and stealthy pandemics that have cost us millions of lives. It came
as little wonder political epistemologists instinctively focused on probing
democracy for its professed commitment to electoral equality and political
DOI: 10.4324/9781003311003-1
