Virtue Epistemology and the ‘Epistemic Fitness’ of Democracy

Dados Bibliográficos

ID6349166
AutoresColin Farrelly (0000-0002-3889-3778, Queen's University, autor correspondente)
Ano2012
Volume10
Fascículo1
Páginas7-22
Data de publicação2012-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoPolitical Studies Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1478-9299 • E-ISSN: 1478-9302
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/j.1478-9302.2011.00243.x
OpenAlexW1507824196
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas2
Referências citadas20

In this article I explore three distinct advantages of linking virtue epistemology to an epistemic defence of democracy. First, because intellectual agents and communities are the primary focus of epistemic evaluation, virtue epistemology offers political theorists the opportunity to develop an epistemic defence of democracy that takes ‘realism’ seriously (e.g. the cognitive limitations and biases of humans). Second, because virtue epistemology conceives of epistemology as a normative discipline, it builds normative criteria into the exercise of assessing the ‘epistemic fitness’ of a political arrangement (e.g. democracy vs. epistocracy). Third, by assessing the epistemic powers of democracy from a virtue-epistemological perspective, a more robust (Deweyan) conception of democracy needs to be employed and assessed than the minimalist conception employed by the Condorcet Jury Theorem

Democracy · Epistemic virtue · Epistemology · Epistemology of Wikipedia · Normative · Political science · Politics · Social epistemology · Sociology · Virtue · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Law · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics