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International audience ; We study the effects of deliberation on epistemic social choice, in two settings. In the first setting, the group faces a binary epistemic decision analogous to the Condorcet Jury Theorem. In the second setting, group members have probabilistic beliefs arising from their private information, and the group wants to aggregate these beliefs in a way that makes optimal use of this information. During deliberation, each agent discloses private information to persuade the other agents of her current views. But her views may also evolve over time, as she learns from other agents. This process will improve the performance of the group, but only under certain conditions; these involve the nature of the social decision rule, the group size, and also the presence of "neutral agents" whom the other agents try to persuade.

International audience ; We study the effects of deliberation on epistemic social choice, in two settings. In the first setting, the group faces a binary epistemic decision analogous to the Condorcet Jury Theorem. In the second setting, group members have probabilistic beliefs arising from their private information, and the group wants to aggregate these beliefs in a way that makes optimal use of this information. During deliberation, each agent discloses private information to persuade the other agents of her current views. But her views may also evolve over time, as she learns from other agents. This process will improve the performance of the group, but only under certain conditions; these involve the nature of the social decision rule, the group size, and also the presence of "neutral agents" whom the other agents try to persuade.

Epistemic democracy defends the capacity of 'the many' to make correct decisions and seeks to justify democracy by reference to this ability. Epistemic democrats marshal substantial evidence from the history of political thought and a set of models to support their claims. The essay assesses this evidence and argues in favor of more empirical testing. It also cautions against using the contextually limited evidence of wise decisions as a basis for justifying democratic decision making. Instead, the article sketches a 'deflationary model' that relies on neither an independent standard of correctness nor the more ambitious assertions of the reliability of the mechanisms. That model, termed judgment democracy, retains epistemic democracy's attractive respect for individual judgments and concern with institutional design, while eschewing its least plausible features. Adapted from the source document.

Epistemic democracy defends the capacity of "the many" to make correct decisions and seeks to justify democracy by reference to this ability. Epistemic democrats marshal substantial evidence from the history of political thought and a set of models to support their claims. The essay assesses this evidence and argues in favor of more empirical testing. It also cautions against using the contextually limited evidence of wise decisions as a basis for justifying democratic decision making. Instead, the article sketches a "deflationary model" that relies on neither an independent standard of correctness nor the more ambitious assertions of the reliability of the mechanisms. That model, termed judgment democracy, retains epistemic democracy's attractive respect for individual judgments and concern with institutional design, while eschewing its least plausible features.

In this paper I discuss some problems for epistemic democracy as it is presented and defended by Ivan Cerovac in his book Epistemic Democracy and Political Legitimacy (2020). I discuss three problems I think are present in his discussion about the role of experts in democratic de-liberation. The first problem is concerned with what the proper design for the educative role of technical experts is in deliberative democracy. The second problem deals with the question if there is a certain moral duty of justification towards other citizens of our choice of normative experts. This implies that, in the first place, we have a duty to consult opinions of those who know better than us when we are in the process of enacting decisions that have an influence on the lives of other citizens. Finally, I briefly mention the problem of Constitutional or Supreme Court; namely, are they normative experts or technical experts because this group of experts is not present in Cerovac's discussion of the role of experts.

Introduction -- Two criteria: Education and competence -- The epistemic value of political conflict -- Democracy and the quality of political outcomes -- Political representation and filtering mechanisms -- Plural voting proposal -- The epistemic role of partisanship -- Filtering mechanisms and antipaternalism -- Conclusion.

Introduction -- Two criteria: Education and competence -- The epistemic value of political conflict -- Democracy and the quality of political outcomes -- Political representation and filtering mechanisms -- Plural voting proposal -- The epistemic role of partisanship -- Filtering mechanisms and antipaternalism -- Conclusion.

After presenting some of Cerovac's theses (2020), the article explains some challenges to the criticism of all forms of epistocracy that he developed. The objections are expressed through the employment of some elements of Rawls's conception of public justification, more precisely of public reason. It is remarked that Rawls's theory of public reason has two sides. One is rep-resented by the characterization of reasonable disagreement. The other side is represented by the fact that disagreement is not reasonable in all cases. In such situations, limited forms of so-phisticated epistocracy are justified.

Epistemic democrats are rightly concerned with the quality of outcomes and judge democratic procedures in terms of their ability to 'track the truth'. However, their impetus to assess 'rule by experts' and 'rule by the people' as mutually exclusive has led to a meagre treatment of the role of expert knowledge in democracy. Expertise is often presented as a threat to democracy but is also crucial for enlightened political processes. Contemporary political philosophy has so far paid little attention to our reliance on experts and has not sufficiently addressed the question of how expertise can be used to improve the epistemic quality of democratic decision making. We believe this lack of interest is spurred by a too hasty acceptance of arguments dismissive of the political role of experts. The paper examines a series of often-cited epistemic objections and concludes that several of them are overstated or misconceived, yet they all reflect real difficulties that need to be addressed. On this background, we tentatively outline a set of mechanisms that can contribute to alleviating the irreducible problem of epistemic asymmetries and ensuring that experts really are experts and use their expertise in the right way. ; Norges forskningsråd 254767 ; acceptedVersion