Science and Representative Democracy: Experts and Citizens

Description

Mauro Dorato charts pressing debates within the philosophy of science that centre around scientific expertise, access to knowledge, consensus, debate, and decision-making. This English-language translation of Disinformazione Scientifica e Democrazia argues that the advancement of science depends on an exponential process of specialization, accompanied by the creation of technical languages that are less and less accessible to the general public. Dorato reveals how such a process must align with representative forms of democracies, in which knowledge and decision-making ought to aim at the society’s general interest. Given the importance of the principle of competence, however, the role of experts as mediators of knowledge threatens the citizens’ autonomy of choice. Consequently, the risk of technocratic regimes calls for new ways to increase literacy about science and its philosophical and probabilistic foundations. Stressing the conceptual conflict between pluralism and conformism, Science and Representative Democracyreveals the obstacles to the functioning of both science and democracy. The book focuses on the analogies between the social values grounding liberal democracies and those favoring the growth of science. Pluralism and openness to criticism are necessary both for the development of scientific knowledge and for the creation of a solid ethical basis for democracy. Conformism and dogmatism, on the contrary, are obstacles to the well-functioning of both science and democracy. The book is research into the common reasons explaining the shared commitment to these values. On the one hand, the advancement of science depends on an exponential process of specialization, accompanied by the creation of technical languages that are more and more inaccessible to the large public and even to scientists working in different fields. Such a process is incompatible with populistic regimes and is suitable only with representative forms of democracies. In the latter institutions, choosing the most appropriate means to promote the general interest necessarily depends on the principle of competence. On the other hand, however, the indispensable role of experts as mediators of scientific knowledge threatens the autonomy of choice of the citizens and therefore calls for new ways to increase the level of literacy about science and its philosophical foundations. The book analyzes the sources of this problem and proposes some solutions that avoid technocratic regimes while at same time giving experts their indispensable role in contemporary democracies. For this purpose, three issues need to be clarified. The first involves the relation between politicians and experts. The former carries the ultimate responsibility for adopting a certain policy and should not justify their scientifically informed choices as if they were exclusively dictated by scientists. The second requires an inquiry into some of the causes of the current mistrust in science, among which a growing lack of scientific literacy with the consequent the disinformation created by the social media, and distrust toward the principle of competency. The third is given by the existence of a conflict of opinions between experts and the necessity of finding reliable ways to decide whom to trust. Cover Halftitle page Series page Title page Copyright page Dedication Contents Figures Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Historical Prologue 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Lippmann’s “Phantom Public” 1.3 Dewey’s Criticism of Lippmann: The Methodological Component 1.4 Dewey’s Criticism of Lippmann 2 How Does Science Work? 2.1 Methodological Premises: Descriptive and Normative Aspects of Science and Democracy 2.2 Scientific Inferences and the Controllability of their Conclusions 2.3 The Fallible Character of Science and its Social Consequences 2.4 The Controllability of Scientific Knowledge as a Social Phenomenon 2.5 The Diachronic Aspect of the Control of Hypotheses and the Evolution of Social Norms 2.6 The Role of Criticism in the Decisional Processes of a Democracy 3 How Does Democracy Work? 3.1 Democracy and the Equality Principle as Founded in the Free Access to Scientific Knowledge 3.2 Democracy as the Government of the People: A Comparison with the Majority Principle in Science 3.3 Democracy as Separation of Powers and the Cross-control of Scientific Hypotheses 4 Representative Democracy, Direct Democracy, and Scientific Specialization 4.1 Two Kinds of Democracies 4.2 Populism, Direct Democracy, and its Problems 4.3 The Risk of Technocracy: Three Objections tothe Compatibility of Autonomous Decisions and Delegations to Experts 4.4 The Confutation of the Three Objections and the Social Character of Knowledge 4.5 The Disagreement Among Experts 5 Scientific Disinformation and the Distrust in Experts 5.1 Three Reasons Why we Intuitively Trust Science 5.2 Swindlers and the Origin of Disagreement Among Experts 5.3 Swindlers 5.4 Doubts and Trust 5.5 Scientific Fraud and Inductive Risk: Two Additional Sources of Disagreement 6 How to Navigate in the Disagreement of Experts 6.1 The Importance of Scientific Literacy for Democracy: Condorcet’s Jury Theorem 6.2 What Should Citizens be Scientifically Literate About? 6.3 Functional Illiteracy, Relapse into Illiteracy, and Cultural Scientific Literacy 6.4 The Evaluation of the Expert’s Competence Through the Web 7 The Role of the History and Philosophy of Science in the Democratic Debate 7.1 The Role of the History of Science in the Formation of a Scientific Mentality 7.2 The Role of Philosophy of Science in the Public Debate 7.3 The Philosophy of Science and the Refutation of Relativism 7.4 The Desirability of the Objectivity of Scientific Knowledge Conclusion Notes References Index