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Democracy and scientific expertise: illusions of political and epistemic inclusion

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Abstract

Realizing the ideal of democracy requires political inclusion for citizens. A legitimate democracy must give citizens the opportunity to express their attitudes about the relative attractions of different policies, and access to political mechanisms through which they can be counted and heard. Actual governance often aims not at accurate belief, but at nonepistemic factors like achieving and maintaining institutional stability, creating the feeling of government legitimacy among citizens, or managing access to influence on policy decision-making. I examine the traditional relationship between inclusiveness and accuracy, and illustrate this connection by discussing empirical work on how group decision-making can improve accuracy. I also advance a Generic Epistemic Principle that any evidence-based decision-making procedures must embrace. Focusing on policy-making, I then measure the distance between these standards and the ones actually implemented in U.S. political settings. Psychological research on individual and group decision-making is a source of normative assessment for existing policy judgment, but it neither rationalizes nor legitimates the actual and typical processes used in U.S. institutions of political decision making. To establish this point, I focus on one characteristic government institution—the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology—that displays deliberative processes at odds with the sciences they advocate, and with the Generic Epistemic Principle. I explain this discouraging condition in terms of several inveterate factors in U.S. politics: a limitlessly money-driven and endless campaigning process that effectively forces elected representatives to align themselves with money and vote strategically, the use of procedural arrangements known to make people feel politically included when they are not, and the unresponsiveness of a majoritarian (vs. consensus) democracy.

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Notes

  1. (Dahl (1989), p. 108).

  2. (Dahl (1989), p. 109).

  3. (Dahl (1971), p. 104).

  4. (Dahl (1998), p. 54); my emphasis.

  5. The epistemic notion of responsibility reaches into most traditions of political theory, especially democratic liberal theory. Indeed, much of the impulse behind the public education movement was, and continues to be, the goal of civic participation. But enthusiasm for democracy is easily transformed into a euphoric optimism about democratic decision-making, and this is the focus of my argument. Most of the policy literature presupposes the view from liberal theory that apt choices in a democracy depend on free, easy, and equal access to information. It also argues that this kind of informed participation is crucial to a legitimate government and, feeling that informed participation is important, conferring greater legitimacy on the government. But this responsibility is merely formal if there are cognitive, social, political, or administrative barriers to acquiring information or participating in the process.

  6. For a survey of the results, see Trout (2009), Chap. 3.

  7. See Estlund (2003).

  8. The argument of this paper assumes that contingent facts about the sources of human well-being are empirical, and that empirical knowledge of them is not just relevant, but required, to design the political structures to achieve those ends. I grant that some political philosophers and academic epistemologists would officially reject the assumption either that we could have knowledge about the nature of human well-being, or that knowledge of it is empirical.

  9. Some epistemologists might be concerned with the appeal to “the evidence” in this expression of the Generic Epistemic Principle. If so, they should feel free to substitute that phrase with “whatever confers relevant epistemic status (e.g., reliable indication, reliable process, causal proximity, consensus, evidence, etc.).”

  10. There are, of course, traditions of moral epistemology. So the principle that one person sees as a principle of political morality could also be a principle of moral or political epistemology. If we regard humans as part of the natural order, then we can expect that there are moral or political truths about human value that can be discovered and whose pursuit we could then recommend.

  11. The brand of applied epistemology known as “Ameliorative Psychology” consists of branches of psychology that formulate normative recommendations for the pursuit of knowledge. They recommend that, when proven superior, we should use actuarial methods or statistical prediction rules, error-catching methods from the heuristics and biases tradition, and the vast knowledge we now have about the limitations of unstructured, impressionistic, and intuitive judgment, when reasoning about matters of significance, like chronic or terminal illness, proneness to violence or recidivism, likelihood of credit default, and a wide range of other diagnostic activities. Nearly always, these areas of psychology yield reasoning strategies that outperform human intuition or subjective judgment as a way of generating knowledge. With the characteristic flourish of Enlightenment projects, advocates of Ameliorative Psychology announce that the science of psychology will set you free.

  12. Hume (1739–1740/1978), p. xxiii.

  13. “Eclecticism” Encyclopaedia, quoted in (Wilson (1872), p. 237).

  14. Notice this is not a knock on the traditional, Generic Epistemic Principle, but rather an observation that decision-making procedures in practical governance and policy-making would be properly chastened by compulsory attention to this very weak constraint on responsible decision-making.

  15. Many industrial European nations have government bodies that overlap with the charges of the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. England has The House of Lords Committee of Science and Technology (http://www.parliament.uk/hlscience); France has The Parliamentary Office for Scientific and Technological Assessment (http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/english/opecst.asp); Sweden has no overall committee for science policy, but convenes 15 parliamentary committees, each with its own resources with which to handle committee-specific scientific issues that arise (http://www.riksdagen.se/templates/R_Page____794.aspx); Denmark has The Ministry of Science, Technology and Development. It is a national umbrella office that oversees and funds many subsidiary committees (for one of its charges, see http://en.vtu.dk/).

  16. In Chaps. 6 and 7 of Trout (2009), I offer a number of ameliorative recommendations for better democratic decision-making. A number of other philosophers (Cartwright 2007; Goldman 1999; Kitcher 2001) have attempted to address the kind of expert knowledge that must be acquired and managed for responsible citizenship (also see Bishop and Trout 2005). Psychologists, too, care deeply about these issues, and have developed serious alternatives to the disappointing, existing, decision structures for policy choice. See, for example, Fischhoff and Eggers (2013).

  17. Kahneman et al. (1982).

  18. It is true that the claim that we ought to use frequency formats depend on further normative premises that may not be a proper part of Ameliorative Psychology. We might observe, then, that the recommendation to use frequency formats may be conditional (e.g., “Use frequency formats if you want to live a longer, healthier life”, or that a normative declaration is neither distinctly philosophical nor especially controversial, however short it falls from certainty (e.g., a longer, healthier life is better than a shorter, less healthy life.).

  19. Lovie and Lovie (1986).

  20. Trout (2009) discusses many examples of cost savings gleaned from scientifically-crafted decision procedures, such as parole decisions. See especially pp. 163–168. For a comprehensive view of the epistemic superiority of SPRs, see Trout (2005).

  21. It is worth noting that, while some political theorists (e.g., Estlund 2008; Talisse 2005) might find this kind of epistemic principle politically relevant, some proceduralists about political legitimacy (e.g., Christiano 1996) might not.

  22. Tyler (2000) is a good place to start.

  23. Citizens Assembly on Electoral Reform, British Columbia (2004).

  24. Quoted in (Dawes and Corrigan (1974), p. 105).

  25. (Dawes and Corrigan (1974), p. 105).

  26. Stoner (1961). See also Stoner (1968).

  27. (Sunstein (2009), pp. 5–12).

  28. Kerr et al. (1975).

  29. Tedeschi (1981).

  30. Laughlin and Early (1982), Sanders and Baron (1977).

  31. For a nice introduction to the topic of priming, see Aitchison (2003).

  32. By most estimates, 60–70 % of a legislator’s life is campaign fundraising, not legislating or informing oneself about proposed legislation.

  33. It is this affront to dignity that prompted critical theorists like Horkheimer, Adorno and Habermas to decry the truth-distorting role of ideology.

  34. (Tyler (2000), p. 17).

  35. When I was in Cuba in 1993, I was talking to a conference assistant. As he explained the way the neighborhood voting proceeded in Havana, he mentioned that it must be different in the U.S., where you could become president by being rich. Though it is not clear whether he was suggesting wealth was a necessary or sufficient condition, it is easy to interpret the claim to mean that if you were wealthy, you could make a credible run at the presidency, and certainly a congressional or senatorial seat. And this was hard to argue with, coming off of a presidential push by Ross Perot, viewed by the vast majority of the electorate as disturbingly unhinged.

  36. Rich (2010).

  37. http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11173; minute 14:20–15:05.

  38. (Sinclair (1935/1994), p. 109).

  39. Reps. Bartlett, Lipinski, and McNerney; the committee also contains 4 MDs.

  40. http://science.edgeboss.net/real/science/scitech09/072909m.smi.

  41. Transcribed from Full Committee Markup debate 7/29/09. Accessed and transcribed 5/27/10. http://science.edgeboss.net/real/science/scitech09/072909m.smi Relevant debate starts at 58:30 in video.

  42. Representative Rohrabacher, July 29, 2009, at the meeting on HR 3247 in the House Committee of Science & Technology.

  43. (Maskell (2007), p. 1).

  44. http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html; last accessed September 27, 2010.

  45. Chris Mooney dissects the social-psychological forces behind science-denial, in http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/denial-science-chris-mooney.

  46. See Chap. 4, in Trout (2009).

  47. Lijphart (1999).

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Andy Kondrat, Paul Moser, Peter Sanchez, David Schweickart and two referees for Synthese, for their comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this paper.

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Trout, J.D. Democracy and scientific expertise: illusions of political and epistemic inclusion. Synthese 190, 1267–1291 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-012-0226-4

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