The Epistemology of Democracy

1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-032-31725-0
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 332 Seiten, Format (B × H): 235 mm x 159 mm, Gewicht: 590 g

This is the first edited scholarly collection devoted solely to the epistemology 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 epistemology, 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 emotional empathy to understand the perspectives of our political adversaries, 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.

Zielgruppe

Academic and Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Samarzija, Hana

Samaržija, Hana

Cassam, Quassim

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Philosophie: Allgemeines, Methoden

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: What the Epistemology of Democracy Is All About
Hana Samaržija

Part I: Democratic Pessimism

1. Sexy but Wrong: Diversity Theorem Defenses of Democracy
Jason Brennan

2. A Belated Failure: Condorcet in Contemporary Epistemic Conditions
Hana Samaržija

3. Social Epistemic Miserliness: Populism against Democracy
Nenad Mišcevic

4. Critical Thinking and Trusting Experts in Real-life Democracies
Snježana Prijic Samaržija

5. The Dangers of Disinformation
Åsa Wikforss

Part II: Democratic Optimism

6. The Politics of Resentment: Hope, Mistrust, and Polarisation
Alessandra Tanesini

7. Against the Individual Virtue Approach in the Epistemology of Democracy
Marko Luka Zubcic

8. Institutional Cynicism and Civic Virtue
Ian James Kidd

9. Myside Bias in Individuals and Institutions
Keith Stanovich

10. Listening for Epistemic Community
Hanna Kiri Gunn

Part III: Democratic Realism

11. Sensemaking, Empathy, and Democracy
Quassim Cassam

12. Political Skepticism, Bias, and Epistemic Colonization
Michael P. Lynch

13. Economic Inequalities and Epistemic Democracy
Ivan Cerovac

14. What Political Enemies Are for
Robert B. Talisse

15. Top-Down and Bottom-Up Solutions to the Problem of Political Ignorance
Ilya Somin

Über Autor(innen)

Hana Samaržija is a Ph.D. student in Philosophy at the University of Warwick. Her papers on countering epistemic injustice and seeking epistemically 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.