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Democratic reason : politics, collective intelligence, and the rule of the many

Hélène Landemore's dissertation "Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many" uses the idea of collective intelligence as an argument for democracy. The dissertation first defends a normative claim about the necessary component of any sensible justification for democracy. According to that argument, no justification for democracy is complete that does not establish the epistemic credentials of democracy, i.e. its ability to make the "right" decisions more often than not, where "rightness" is defined by a context and a set of fundamental values. In other words, democracy would have no normative authority--the moral right to claim obedience to its laws--if we did not assume that it is at least as intelligent a way to make choices as a random decision-procedure. The dissertation then makes a second, positive theoretical claim about the likely epistemic properties of democracy, generalizing Aristotle's famous claim that "many heads are better than one" into a strong epistemic argument for democracy. According to that argument, under conditions of sufficient cognitive diversity, democracy is at least as good as and occasionally better than, other non democratic regimes at producing smart decisions, because democratic procedures such as deliberation and majority rule channel the collective distributed intelligence of the people, or what this dissertation proposes to conceptualize as "democratic reason."

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  • "Individual decision making can often be wrong due to misinformation, impulses, or biases. Collective decision making, on the other hand, can be surprisingly accurate. In Democratic Reason, Hélène Landemore demonstrates that the very factors behind the superiority of collective decision making add up to a strong case for democracy. She shows that the processes and procedures of democratic decision making form a cognitive system that ensures that decisions taken by the many are more likely to be right than decisions taken by the few. Democracy as a form of government is therefore valua."
  • "Hélène Landemore's dissertation "Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many" uses the idea of collective intelligence as an argument for democracy. The dissertation first defends a normative claim about the necessary component of any sensible justification for democracy. According to that argument, no justification for democracy is complete that does not establish the epistemic credentials of democracy, i.e. its ability to make the "right" decisions more often than not, where "rightness" is defined by a context and a set of fundamental values. In other words, democracy would have no normative authority--the moral right to claim obedience to its laws--if we did not assume that it is at least as intelligent a way to make choices as a random decision-procedure. The dissertation then makes a second, positive theoretical claim about the likely epistemic properties of democracy, generalizing Aristotle's famous claim that "many heads are better than one" into a strong epistemic argument for democracy. According to that argument, under conditions of sufficient cognitive diversity, democracy is at least as good as and occasionally better than, other non democratic regimes at producing smart decisions, because democratic procedures such as deliberation and majority rule channel the collective distributed intelligence of the people, or what this dissertation proposes to conceptualize as "democratic reason.""@en
  • "Individual decision making can often be wrong due to misinformation, impulses, or biases. Collective decision making, on the other hand, can be surprisingly accurate. In Democratic Reason, Hélène Landemore demonstrates that the very factors behind the superiority of collective decision making add up to a strong case for democracy. She shows that the processes and procedures of democratic decision making form a cognitive system that ensures that decisions taken by the many are more likely to be right than decisions taken by the few. Democracy as a form of government is therefore valuable not only because it is legitimate and just, but also because it is smart. Landemore considers how the argument plays out with respect to two main mechanisms of democratic politics: inclusive deliberation and majority rule. In deliberative settings, the truth-tracking properties of deliberation are enhanced more by inclusiveness than by individual competence. Landemore explores this idea in the contexts of representative democracy and the selection of representatives. She also discusses several models for the "wisdom of crowds" channeled by majority rule, examining the trade-offs between inclusiveness and individual competence in voting. When inclusive deliberation and majority rule are combined, they beat less inclusive methods, in which one person or a small group decide. Democratic Reason thus establishes the superiority of democracy as a way of making decisions for the common good."

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  • "Electronic books"
  • "Livre électronique (Descripteur de forme)"
  • "Ressource Internet (Descripteur de forme)"

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  • "Democratic reason : politics, collective intelligence, and the rule of the many"
  • "Democratic reason : politics, collective intelligence, and the rule of the many"@en
  • "Democratic reason politics, collective intelligence, and the rule of the many"

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