Democracy, Epistocracy, and the Epistemic Problems of Politics:

مرکز و کتابخانه مطالعات اسلامی به زبان های اروپایی

منو

" Democracy, Epistocracy, and the Epistemic Problems of Politics: "
Richardson, Brandon Samuel Coliva, Annalisa

Document Type	:	Latin Dissertation
Language of Document	:	English
Record Number	:	903891
Doc. No	:	TL49q2m9xq
Main Entry	:	Richardson, Brandon Samuel
Title & Author	:	Democracy, Epistocracy, and the Epistemic Problems of Politics:\ Richardson, Brandon SamuelColiva, Annalisa
College	:	UC Irvine
Date	:	2020
student score	:	2020
Abstract	:	ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATIONDemocracy, Epistocracy, and the Epistemic Problems of Politics: How Centralized Decision Making Undermines Three Fundamental Democratic ValuesbyBrandon Samuel RichardsonDoctor of Philosophy in PhilosophyUniversity of California, Irvine, 2020Professor Annalisa Coliva, ChairThe empirical evidence of widespread ignorance of voters in modern democracies has led some philosophers to question traditional justifications for democracy. These philosophers attempt to resolve this problem by arguing for limits on who can vote with the goal of increasing the competence of the average voter. Epistemic democrats attempt to assuage these worries by looking to a priori theorems that purport to show that democracy can be competent despite the widespread ignorance of voters. In this dissertation I argue for a fuller account of what it means to be competent in making political decisions, without which we face a problem I call the graveyard spiral. I then use this account of competence to show that epistemic democrats and epistocrats fail to give us a reason to expect competence in government, which leaves us open to the graveyard spiral problem. Because of this, I argue that these views face a trilemma of democratic values. I argue that in order for competence to be satisfied, public problems should be addressed at the lowest levels of complexity to reduce the problems with tracking the effects of decisions, but also to increase the variety of solutions to public problems. Through a process of encapsulating public problems and decentralizing the decision making process, we can expect meta-competence to be satisfied and to avoid the trilemma.
Added Entry	:	Coliva, Annalisa
Added Entry	:	UC Irvine