My dissertation engages classic and contemporary political philosophy in arguing that citizenship in liberal democracies requires a demanding level of epistemic engagement from their citizens. My work is crucial for all of us who want to live in societies that rely on accurate knowledge and deliberative persuasion to live freely and equally with each other.
By liberal democracies, I mean governments whose three principal values are liberty, equality, and the common good. Liberal democracies structure their laws and institutions in ways to meet those values. Past and contemporary philosophers writing in liberal democratic theory have argued that achieving those values imposes obligations on citizens to participate and be engaged in their own governance. I argue that one distinct kind of those obligations is epistemic. Epistemic(derived from the Greek root episteme, meaning knowledge or understanding) means having to do with the ability to know or find knowledge. Civic participation requires epistemic engagement in the sense that we as citizens must know about liberal democratic values, norms, laws, processes, and institutions. For example, citizens must be informed and know their rights. I call this type of epistemic duties I have identified civic epistemic obligations or CEOs.
However, highlighting the epistemic obligations of citizenship reveals a problem for philosophical theory and citizens’ lived experience of participation. Contrary to an idealized vision of political decision-making often assumed in the philosophical literature, reasoning about political choices does not happen through some process of detached critical reflection. Among the challenges to the epistemic duties of liberal democratic citizenship I explore are the psychological and cognitive limitations empirical research has revealed over the past five decades and crises in polarization, misinformation, and a general decline in strong civic institutions.
Given the data, the obligation to participate mindfully cannot be merely an expectation imposed on individuals. Instead, epistemic participation requires strong institutions supporting individual cognitive development and informed debate throughout our civic connections. We can reshape our approach to epistemic obligations and reshape our news and political institutions through increased civic education from kindergarten to college campuses and to adult learning programs. And by reducing economic and time constraints on citizens so that they have more of themselves to devote to political participation at all levels of governance.
What I think is important about this research is that I have found that the literature on democratic theory has not addressed civic obligations through the lens of normative epistemology as I am doing. Further, while countless political theorists have recommended institutional responses to political ills, those arguments are made only for the sake of fixing governing mechanisms. Instead, I propose reforms that make citizens themselves better at achieving liberal democratic ideals throughout their political lives. But more importantly, my work is vital for citizens of liberal democracies who risk alienation from each other because we can’t escape the echo chambers we have built around ourselves or risk estrangement from loved ones who have fallen prey to false and pernicious conspiracy theories. Or risk the peaceful transfer of power we saw threatened on January 6, 2021.
Philosophy With Watson 