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Croatian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 20 No. 60, 2020.

Original scientific paper

The Limits of Expertism

Nenad Miščević ; University of Maribor, Maribor, Slovenia / Central European University, Budapest, Hungary

Full text: english pdf 122 Kb

page 453-464

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Abstract

Snježana Prijić-Samaržija’s book discusses the epistemic grounding of democracy, stressing the epistemic role of experts in her political-epistemological favorite, the project of “reliability democracy”. Her proposal, inspired by Christiano, lets citizens play an important role in setting the aims, whereas experts deliberate about means of reaching them. I argue that it is not easy to reach a consensus about goals and values. What is needed is democratic deliberation in deciding, encompassing both experts and laypersons. We should retain the duality of less ideal deliberation in real-world and of hypothetical contractualist deliberation, within moral-political thought-experiments, in the tradition of Habermas and Scanlon in the ideal theory. I leave it open whether our author might ultimately agree with this picture of reliability democracy.

Keywords

Democracy; epistemology; deliberation; experts.

Hrčak ID:

253674

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/253674

Publication date:

15.12.2020.

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