William Berger (U. of Penn.) on Fact/Value distinction and the Epistemic Virtues of Majority Rule
Channel: Radio-CRÉ
Date: 2017-11-23

Discussant: Briana McGinnis

William Berger

How I Learned to Stop Worrying about the Fact/Value Distinction and Love the Epistemic Virtues of Majority Rule

While epistemic democrats have argued that democracy is good at converging on correct outcomes, the claim has faced resistance. Opponents note that political disagreements are commonly disputes of values rather than fact, and as such voting offers only a procedurally fair means of selecting among candidate alternatives, but cannot be thought to select the correct option. This paper offers four cases which circumvent such objections. Cases of unanimous agreement constitute one clear case. Additionally, however, majority rule results offered by epistemic democrats can be seen to offer instrumental support to the deontic priority of democracy. While democracy is valued in light of procedural and outcome-independent grounds, it is also important that voters have the capacity to aim at the ends they so desire. These majority rule results thus come to bolster democratic theory by advancing the instrumental virtues of democracy, above and beyond deontic ones.

Caméra et montage: Marc-Antoine Plouffe