The Rule of the Knowledgeable
It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
~Jonathan Swift
Argument Extraction
Epistocracy
Some have expressed to me a sentiment that is very close to the following: I can believe whatever I want to believe. I politely disagree with them. I try to explain that their view is uncomfortably close to a discredited view in philosophy—a view called alethic relativism. Alethic relativism is the view that what is true (or false) for one individual or social group may not be true (or false) for another; moreover, according to this view, there is no principled way for privileging one group’s claim over the other (see Herrick 2015, chapter 5). In other words, it's possible that we each have our own truth. This, I hope you can see, is a woefully inadequate view. I mean... The view is ridiculous. Here's a Socratic-style argument against alethic relativism.
- If alethic relativism is true, then no one (or no culture) has ever been wrong in their belief claims.
- But obviously people (and cultures) have been wrong about their beliefs.
- Hence, alethic relativism must be false.
In general, I take what I think is the most defensible view: that you need to have good reasons for believing what you believe. On some days, like days when I'm crabby (which are increasing in number the older I get!), I go a few steps further. I might say that not only should you only believe in things that you have good reason for believing in, but you should do due dilligence and actually explore your beliefs. If you find yourself lacking enough support for one of your beliefs, you don't deserve to hold on to it. Luckily I'm not always so crabby. I'll settle for this in this class: you can keep your beliefs if you can defend them.
In case you haven't noticed, so far in this course we've challenged quite a few beliefs. In City of Words, we wondered whether it makes sense to define discrete categories of mental health and mental illness; we also discussed that it is potentially the case that some non-normal psychological dispositions, like depression, might actually help you see reality more objectively—the so-called depressive realism hypothesis. In ...for the Stronger, we saw that conflict can be a vital part to certain institutions. In particular, we saw that scientific communities are groups of people with shared epistemic norms (i.e., norms about what more or less counts as an acceptable hypothesis, evidence for said hypothesis, evidence against said hypothesis, etc.) that nonetheless compete with each other for grant money, prestige, and faculty positions. Contrary to what Plato says, this is an instance of internal conflict giving rise to something positive: scientific progress. In Three Red Flares, we explored the view that going on to higher education is mostly just about signaling to employers that you are moderately intelligent and willing to conform to mainstream social norms and do boring work without giving up; i.e., college is not about what you learn but what you signal. In A Certain Sort of Story, we saw that, whether it be through legacy media or the new media, most Americans aren't being informed very well; it's either propaganda or click-bait (or both). In part 1 and part 2 of The One Great Thing, we are presented with a worrisome hypothesis: the American educational system, like that of other countries, is designed to instill in young minds blind nationalism, mindless optimism, and subservience to political/economic elites, among other things. In Stability, we considered whether or not certain societal conditions might make one's own community more or less stable. In particular, we saw the possibility that extreme wealth/income inequality might lead to destabilization, and we heard an argument about how identity politics is possibly making politics and getting an education more difficult. Lastly, in Fragility, we covered a pet topic of mine: the possibility that rolling out artificial intelligence in all domains of human life might prove to be extremely disruptive to society.
I have one more proposal for you in this unit. In the video below, I introduce an idea and I plant a seed. Depending on how you look at it, this idea will be either radically un-American or as American as apple pie.1 In short, in this video we will make our first argument against democracy. And we're just getting warmed up.
So what does Brennan want? He argues for an epistocracy, sort of. What is an epistocracy? This is a form of government very similar to the democratic republic that Americans are used to but that requires of voters that they show competence on political matters before voting. This—whether it be in the form of required civics training before elections for anyone that wants to vote or economics pop quizzes at the ballot box, etc.—might solve the problem that many modern democracies face: voter ignorance. Why does Brennan "sort of" argue for epistocracy? He actually only argues that if an epistocracy can deliver more political goods than a democracy, then we should opt for an epistocracy, and obviously that's a big "if".
What do you think?
- Read from 437e-445e (p. 125-135) of Republic.
FYI
Suggested Reading: Bryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter, Chapters 1 and 2
TL;DR: BookTV, After Words: Hobbits, Vulcans, and the flaws of democracy
Supplemental Material—
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Podcast: The Economics Detective, Democracy Versus Epistocracy
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Video: Bryan Caplan, "The Myth of the Rational Voter" Lecture
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Reading: W. J. Korab-Karpowicz, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on Plato: Political Philosophy, Section 4
Related Material—
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Video: CrashCourse, The Cold War
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Video: Learn Liberty, Make Progress, Not Work
Advanced Material—
Video: Modern War Institute, Dr. Hal Brands on American Grand Strategy in an Age of Upheaval
Video: Chicago Humanities Festival, John Lewis Gaddis: America & the Cold War
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Reading: W. J. Korab-Karpowicz, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on Plato: Political Philosophy
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Book: Bryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter
Footnotes
1. See Klarman 2016 for an argument that the founding father's deliberately sought to minimize the power of the people in political matters.