Knowledge, democracy and epistemic risk. A proposal for political epistemology
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
In this work, I propose a conception of knowledge and democracy and their mutual relationships that assumes that the value of both is neither intrinsic nor instrumental. Both forms of order, epistemic in one case and social in the other, are contingent and historical forms whose value, separately and in their mutual relations, depends on constitutive trajectories whose legitimacy must be found in the dynamics of social relations of mutual dependence. Both knowledge and democracy are spaces of conflict as well as cooperation that develop in dynamics of actions and plans under conditions of risk. Epistemic risk is the way in which the various forms of collective reflexive surveillance and control manifest themselves. The general thesis is that democracy is a system that can serve to strengthen epistemic surveillance and thus open up possibilities for resistance against epistemic injustices
Article Details
How to Cite
References
Alfano, Mark (2014). “Stereotype threat and intellectual virtue”. In Owen Flanagan & Abrol Fairweather, Naturalizing Virtue. Cambridge University Press. pp. 155-74.
Anderson Elizabeth (1999) “What is the Point of Equality?” Ethics, 103, pp. 287–337.
Anderson Elizabeth (2009) “Democracy: Instrumental vs. Non‐Instrumental Value” (in Christiano T. and Christman J. (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Political Philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell, , pp. 213–227;
Arneson Richard (2003) “Debate: Defending the Purely Instrumental Account of Democratic Legitimacy,” Journal of Political Philosophy, 11, pp. 122–132;
Baehr Jason (2010) “ ‘Is There A Value Problem?’”, in Adrian Haddock, Alan Millar, and Duncan Pritchard (eds.) The Nature and Value of Knowledge, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Beerbohm, Eric (2012). In our name: the ethics of democracy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Brennan Jason (2011) The Ethics of Voting, Princeton: Princeton University Press,
Brennan Jason “The Right to a Competent Electorate,” Philosophical Quarterly, 61(2011), pp. 700–724,
Brennan, Jason (2016) Against Democracy, Princeton University Press
Brighouse Harry (1996), “Egalitarianism and Equal Availability of Political Influence,” The Journal of Political Philosophy, 4, pp. 118–141
Brighouse Harry “Democracy and Inequality,” (in A. Carter A. & G. Stokes, (eds.), Democratic Theory Today, Cambridge: Cambridge Polity Press, 2002);
Brighouse Harry “Egalitarianism and Equal Availability of Political Influence,” Journal of Political Philosophy 4(1996), pp. 118–141,
Brighouse Harry, “Political Equality and the Funding of Political Speech,” Social Theory and Practice, 21(1995), pp. 473–500;
Broncano, Fernando (2020) “Teoría y práctica de las fraternidades epistémicas”, Dilemata, 33, 11-21
Broncano-Berrocal, Fernando & Vega-Encabo, Jesús (2020). “A taxonomy of types of epistemic dependence: introduction to the Synthese special issue on epistemic dependence”. Synthese 197 (7):2745-2763.
Broncano-Berrocal, Fernando (2017). “Epistemic dependence and cognitive ability.” Synthese 197 (7):2895-2912.
Broncano-Berrocal, Fernando (2019). “Luck as Risk”. In Ian M. Church & Robert J. Hartman, The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy and Psychology of Luck. New York: Routledge Buchanan Allen, “Political Legitimacy and Democracy,” Ethics, 122(2002), pp. 689–719;
Certeau, Michel de (1990) La invención de lo cotidiano. I Artes de hacer, trad. de Alejandro Pescador, Ciudad de México, Universidad Iberoamericana (2000)
Charles Beitz, Political Equality: An Essay in Democratic Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989);
Christiano Thomas (1996), The Rule of the Many: Fundamental Issues in Democratic Theory , Boulder: Westview Press
Christiano Thomas (2003) “Is Democracy merely a Means to Social Justice?” in Reeve A. and Williams A. (eds.), Real Libertarianism Assessed: Political Theory after Van Parijs, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, , pp. 172–200,
Christiano Thomas (2008) The Constitution of Equality: Democratic Authority and its Limits, Oxford University Press.
Christiano Thomas “Is Democracy Merely a Means to Social Justice?” (in Andrew Reeve and Andrew Williams, (eds.), Real Libertarianism Assessed: Political Theory after Van Parijs, New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2003),
Christiano Thomas, “Debate: Estlund on Democratic Authority” Journal of Political Philosophy 17(2009), pp. 228–240;
Code, Lorraine (1987). Epistemic responsibility. Hanover, N.H.: Brown University Press by University Press of New England.
Cohen Joshua “Democratic Equality,” Ethics 99(1989), pp. 727–775;
Cohen Joshua, “Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy” (in Alan Hamlin and Philip Pettit (eds.), The Good Polity, Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell, 1989)
Craig, Edward (1999) Knowledge and the State of Nature: An Essay in Conceptual Synthesis, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Dworkin Ronald, “What is Equality? Part 4: Political Equality,” University of San Francisco Law Review, 22(1987), pp. 1–30;
Eric Beerbohm, In Our Name: The Ethics of Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012);
Estlund David, Democratic Authority: A Philosophical Framework (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).
Fantl, Jeremy; Mcgrath, Matthew (2007) “On Pragmatic Encroachment in Epistemology”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 75 (3):558-589.
Fricker, Miranda (2009). The Value of Knowledge and The Test of Time. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 64:121-138
Fricker, Miranda (2017) Injusticia epistémica: El poder y la ética del conocimiento, trad. Alicia García, Barcelona: Herder, orig. 2007, Oxford University Press
Goguen, S. (2019) “Positive Stereotypes” en Sherman, Benjamin R.; Goguen, Stacey (eds.) (2019) Overcoming Epistemic Injustice: Social and Psychological Perspectives (Collective Studies in Knowledge and Society. Londres: Bloomsbury Publishing
Goldberg, Sandy (2011) “The Division of Epistemic Labor” Episteme 8.1: 112–125, p112
Goldman, Alvin (1999) Knowledge in a Social World , Oxford: Clarendon Press
Goldman, Alvin (2010) “System-Oriented Social Epistemology”, Szabó Gendler, Tamar & Hawthorne, John (eds) Oxford Studies in Epistemology vol. 3, Oxford University Press.
Goodin Robert (2003), Reflective Democracy, Oxford University Press.
Goodin, Robert E. & Spiekermann, Kai (2018). An Epistemic Theory of Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Griffin Christopher (2003) “Democracy as a NonInstrumentally Just Procedure,” Journal of Political Philosophy, 111, pp. 111–121
Griffin Christopher (2016) “Voting turnout, Equality, Liberty and Representation: Epistemic Versus Procedural democracy,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 19, pp. 283–300.
Griffin Christopher G. (2003), “Democracy as a Non-instrumentally Just Procedure,” Journal of Political Philosophy 111, pp. 111–121;
Howard Jeffry (2019), “The Labors of Justice: Democracy, Respect, and Judicial Review,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 22, pp. 179–199.
Kitcher, Philip (2001) Science, Truth, and Democracy, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Kolodny, Niko (2014a). “Rule Over None I: What Justifies Democracy?” Philosophy and Public Affairs 42 (3):195-229.
Kolodny, Niko (2014b) “Rule Over None II: Social Equality and the Justification of Democracy”. Philosophy and Public Affairs 42 (4):287-336.
Kvanvig, Jonathan L (2005) “Truth is not the Primary Epistemic Goal”, in Matthias Steup & John Turri, Contemporary Debates in Epistemology. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 285-295
Lackey, Jennifer, 2007, “Why We Don’t Deserve Credit for Everything We Know”, Synthese, 158(3): 345–361
Landemore Hélène (2017) Democratic reason: Politics, collective intelligence, and the rule of the many, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
López-Guerra Claudio (2014) Democracy and Disenfranchisement: The Morality of Electoral Exclusions, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Luhmann, Niklas (1993) “The concept of Risk”, in Risk: A Sociological Theory, trad. Rhodes Barrett, Berlín: De Gruyter Brill
Medina, José (2011). “Toward a Foucaultian Epistemology of Resistance: Counter-Memory, Epistemic Friction, and Guerrilla Pluralism”. Foucault Studies 12:9-35.
Medina, José (2013) The Epistemology of Resistance, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Medina, José (2017) “Varieties of Hermeneutical Injustice.” en The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice, eds- Ian James Kidd, José Medina y Gaile Pohlhaus Jr., New York: Routledge.
Medina, José (2023) The Epistemology of Protest: Silencing, Epistemic Activism, and the Communicative Life of Resistance, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mouffe, Chantal (1999). El retorno de lo político: Comunidad, ciudadanía, pluralismo, democracia radical. Barcelona: Paidós.
Mouffe, Chantal (2000). The Democratic Paradox. Londres: Verso.
Mouffe, Chantal (2013). Agonistics: Thinking the World Politically. Londres: Verso.
Mulligan Thomas “On the Compatibility of Epistocracy and Public Reason,” Social Theory and Practice 41(2015), pp. 458–476);
Mulligan Thomas, “Plural Voting for the Twenty-first Century,” The Philosophical Quarterly 68(2017), pp. 286–306,
Ober Josiah (2010) Democracy and Knowledge: Innovation and Knowledge in Classical Athens, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Pettigrew, Richard, (2019), “Veritism, Epistemic Risk, and the Swamping Problem”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 97(4): 761–74.
Pritchard Duncan, 2009, “The Value of Knowledge”, The Harvard Review of Philosophy, 16(1): 86–103.
Pritchard, Duncan (2007) Epistemic Luck. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Queloz, Matthieu (2021) The Practical Origins of Ideas. Genealogy as Conceptual ReverseEngineering, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Saffon Maria Paula and Urbinati Nadia, “Procedural Democracy, the Bulwark of Equal Liberty,” Political Theory 41(2013), pp. 441–481;
Scheffler, Samuel, “What is Egalitarianism?,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 31(2003), pp. 5–39.
Scott, James (1990) Los dominados y el arte de la resistencia, Ciudad de México: Ediciones Era (2000)
Sen Amartya (1999) Development as Freedom, New York: Afred A. Knopf Inc, 1999)
Shklar, Judith (1990) The Faces of Injustice Yale: University Press, 1990
Somin Ilya (2013), Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Sosa, Ernest (2021) Epistemic Explanations: A Theory of Telic Normativity, and What it Explains, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sperber, Dan ; Clément, Fabrice ; Heintz, Christophe ; Mascaro, Olivier ; Mercier, Hugo ;
Origgi, Gloria & Wilson, Deirdre (2010). “Epistemic Vigilance”. Mind and Language 25 (4):359-393.
Talisse Robert (2009), Democracy and Moral Conflict, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Talisse, Robert, Aikin, Scott. (2014) Why We Argue (And How We Should): A Guide to Political Disagreement, Londres: Routledge
Urbinati Nadia (2014), Democracy Disfigured (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,.
Van Parijs Philippe (1996), “Is Democracy Compatible with Justice?” The Journal of Political Philosophy 4, pp. 101–117.
Vega-Encabo, Jesús (forthcoming). Autonomy and knowledge: comments on Adam Carter’s Autonomous Knowledge. Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
Walzer Michael (1983) Spheres of Justice: A Defence of Pluralism and Equality, Oxford: Martin Robertson
Williams, Bernard (2002) Verdad y veracidad. Una aproximación genealógica, trad. Alberto Ávarez, Rocío Orsi, Madrid: Tusquets 2006 (original Truth and Truthfulness, Princeton: Princeton University Press)
Ziliotti, Elena (2020). “Democracy’s Value: A Conceptual Map”. Journal of Value Inquiry 54 (3):407-427.
Zimmerman, Michael J. and Ben Bradley (2025) “Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Value”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2025/entries/value-intrinsic-extrinsic/>.