For better or worse, democracy and epistemology are intertwined. For one thing, politics is partly a matter of gathering, assessing, and applying information. And this can be done responsibly or incompetently. At least since Plato, a leading critique of democracy has focused on the ignorance of ordinary citizens. Historically, this kind of critique has supplied the basis for several nondemocratic proposals. Yet it has also worked in the background of a range of views within democratic theory. Among these are views that have relied on markets as mechanisms for sharing and distributing information.
But there are hazards to market-based thinking about democracy. In Citizen Knowledge: Markets, Experts, and the Infrastructure of Democracy (Oxford UP, 2023), Lisa Herzog explores three conceptually distinct sites where democracy interfaces with epistemology: markets, expert communities, and public deliberation. The result is an integrated political epistemology for democracy.
Robert Talisse is the W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University.
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Maria Kronfeldner, "What's Left of Human Nature? A Post-Essentialist, Pluralist, and Interactive Account of a Contested Concept" (MIT Press, 2018)
Samuel Schindler, "Theoretical Virtues in Science: Discovering Reality Through Theory" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
Carrie Figdor, "Pieces of Mind: The Proper Domain of Psychological Predicates" (Oxford UP, 2018)
Shannon Spaulding, “How We Understand Others: Philosophy and Social Cognition” (Routledge, 2018))
David Rondel, “Pragmatist Egalitarianism” (Oxford UP, 2018)
Robert A. Wilson, “The Eugenic Mind Project” (MIT Press, 2017)
Candice Delmas, “A Duty to Resist: When Disobedience Should Be Uncivil” (Oxford UP, 2018)
Anjan Chakravartty, “Scientific Ontology: Integrating Naturalized Metaphysics and Voluntarist Epistemology” (Oxford UP, 2017)
Shelley Tremain, “Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability” (U Michigan Press, 2017)
Brian O’Connor, “Idleness: A Philosophical Essay” (Princeton UP, 2018)
Keya Maitra, “Philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita: A Contemporary Introduction” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018)
Steven Gimbel, “Isn’t That Clever: A Philosophical Account of Humor and Comedy” (Routledge, 2018)
Eric Winsberg, “Philosophy and Climate Science” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
Elizabeth F. Cohen, “The Political Value of Time: Citizenship, Duration, and Democratic Justice” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
Edouard Machery, “Philosophy Within Proper Bounds” (Oxford UP, 2017)
William A. Edmundson, “John Rawls: Reticent Socialist” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
Ruth G. Millikan, “Beyond Concepts: Unicepts, Language, and Natural Information” (Oxford UP, 2018)
Christian B. Miller, “The Character Gap: How Good Are We?” (Oxford UP, 2018)
Alexus McLeod, “Philosophy of the Ancient Maya: Lords of Time” (Lexington Books, 2018)
Gloria Origgi, “Reputation: What it is and Why it Matters” (Princeton UP, 2018)
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