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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.
List of contents
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 Miščević
4. Critical Thinking and Trusting Experts in Real-life Democracies
Snježana Prijić 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 Zubčić
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
About the author
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.
Summary
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.
