The Epistemic Standards of Public Reason*

Abstract

Abstract: Many contemporary philosophers have adopted the deliberative theory of democracy, according to which, a political decision is legitimate if it was established by a deliberative procedure. In this article I argue that the important objections which affect proceduralist and epistemic versions of this theory can be overcome if we carefully distinguish the epistemic and the political dimensions of democratic deliberation, instead of trying to derive one from the other. Moreover, we have to understand how does the deliberative process itself contribute to the legitimacy of the political decision and what is the role of the standards and conditions that are justified independently of the procedure. Using this distinction I will try to demonstrate that the deliberation itself is insufficient to secure the epistemic correctness and the political legitimacy of political decisions

Keywords

• deliberative democracy
• epistemic standards
• conditions of possibility
• conditions of reality
• legitimacy