Epistemic Proceduralism
A common ground between a fierce debate
(Sacred Journeys Community: The Gift of Justice)
Epistemic proceduralism is a democratic theory coined by David Estlund. It argues democracy is legitimate because it has the best chance to make good decisions with everyone’s input. It serves as a middle ground to the debate between proceduralism and epistemic democracy.
Epistemic Democracy argues legitimacy comes from democracy’s ability to make the best decisions, while proceduralism argues it is not about the outcome, but the fair method used to reach a decision. These ideas have permeated in politics since its inception, Aristotle argued democracy has an unexpected epistemic success that allows the wisdom of the many to rise above individual expertise. The three most prominent arguments for epistemic democracy are Condorcet’s Jury Theorem (CJT), the effects of cognitive diversity, and information gathering and sharing.
CJT postulates under the right conditions the probability that most voters support the correct decision approaches one. Rousseau is believed to be the first to use CJT in democracy. He argues in the social contract that when a sufficiently informed populace deliberates the outcome would always be just.
The second is Aristotle’s argument, democratic procedures are best able to use the cognitive diversity to extract the best possible solution. This is connected to the “diversity-trumps-ability” theorem which believes a random selection of average ability people is outperforms a systemic selection of the highest ability people in the same group.
The last is John Dewey’s stance that democracy includes “a consultation and a discussion which uncovers social needs and troubles”, meaning democracy can hear the direct concerns of citizens.
Proceduralist Democracy is the opposite of Epistemic, it believes the legitimacy of democracy does not come from whether it has the best outcome or not but the mere fact the procedure involves everyone. Two of democracies most famous thinkers were proceduralists, Robert dahl and John Rawls.
John Rawls original position is a thought experiment that argues true justice is rules everyone would agree to under a veil of ignorance where they forget everything about themselves. This is proceduralist at its core because its definition of justice is not an outcome but a process that Rawls argues always has a just result because of the way it was produced.
Robert Dahl developed his idea of the Polyarchy. In it, democratic legitimacy is determined by the extent to authority is controlled by societal organizations. Dahl analyzes democracy by its processes, civil liberties, peaceful transfer of power, agenda control, etc. This is once again a proceduralist approach because it assumes the procedure of more inclusion is the key to a strong democracy rather than any outcome.
Epistemic Proceduralism gives credibility to these two arguments but finds a way to give credibility to both. Its main argument is similar to CJT but does not say it always leads to the best result only that it has a better chance, and that result should be respected because of the procedure used.