The division of epistemic labor in democracy

Abstract

Thomas Christiano claims that one of the fundamental challenges democracy is faced with is the appropriate division of epistemic labor between citizens and experts. In this article I try to present and analyze Christiano’s solution from the perspective of social epistemology while utilizing the concepts and tools provided by this discipline. Despite fundamentally agreeing with his position, I attempt to propose a certain addition which might enrich this solution with additional epistemic and political responsibility. In the first part, I briefly elaborate on the relevance of social epistemology in discussions regarding the epistemic justification of deliberative democracy. In the second part, I contextualize Christiano’s view within discourses regarding social epistemology and identify his approach as reliability democracy due to his belief that truth-sensitive decision-making processes are ensured through the usage of reliable mechanisms (which allow for expertise to generate the epistemically best decisions possible). In the third part I attempt to provide arguments that support further elaboration of Christiano’s proposals in the direction of ensuring additional epistemic and democratic quality of decisions.

Keywords

• deliberative democracy
• division of epistemic labor
• reliability democracy
• epistocracy
• fundamental and derivative epistemic authority