Democracy

4. Democracy and knowledge

In his Republic Plato says that ‘it is not in the natural course of things for the pilot to beg the crew to take his orders’ (c.380–367 bc: 489b). The implication is that if we want as a group to go to the right place, it is not sensible to assume that everyone has an equally valid opinion. Instead we should follow the lead of those who know. Hence democracy, which treats everybody’s opinions equally, is inefficient as a means of determining the right thing to do (see Plato §14).

This argument makes several presuppositions and can be resisted by contesting them. Some people can only know more than others about something if there is indeed something to be known. That is, if there is a truth about the matter independent of people’s opinions. But this is precisely what might be contested when the question is what the state should do. This being a matter of value, it might be held that no independent truth, and hence no knowledge, is available. More precisely, it might be thought that a line can be drawn between areas in which knowledge is available, and which, for example, might be handled by a professional, trained civil service; and areas for which no knowledge is obtainable, and which should be left to democratic, untrained, amateur decision. Benjamin Barber (1984), for example, takes the area of politics to be one of action, not truth; and for him democracy takes over in the areas where metaphysics fails, creating its own epistemology.

It should be noticed, however, that an argument for the goodness of democratic decision making cannot simply be made on the basis of a complete scepticism about values. For if no truths about values are available, then no truths about the value of democracy are available either. Hence a valid argument cannot be made from this premise to a conclusion that it is true that democracy is of value.

Conversely, even if it is allowed that there are independent truths about value, it does not directly follow that democracy is an inappropriate way of discovering these truths. For it is quite possible that the truth about what in general the state should do is the kind of truth about which people have a roughly equal capacity. Furthermore, even if people do not have equal capacity, as long as it cannot be told which ones are superior, democracy may still be the appropriate method to use. The Platonic argument assumes that there is a truth about what should happen; that this truth is better known to some people than others; and that it is possible to tell independently of their views which these people are. All these assumptions could be resisted.

If people are of roughly equal capacity (or it cannot be told who is superior) then, as long as everyone is more likely than not to be right, voting and adopting the majority view is an efficient method to use. For the majority decision has a higher probability of being right than any individual decision, as Condorcet (§2) was the first to show. In other words, if I have to make a sequence of decisions about the truth of something and I am in a group each of whose members gets the answer right more often than not, then I do much better systematically following the majority view of the group than my own initial views.

Even if some people clearly have better informed views than others, it still does not follow that democratic decision making is inefficient. For if it is obvious who the experts are, then people with an interest in discovering what is right will generally follow their views. In other words, the same answers will be arrived at as would happen if, as in Plato, the better informed were made dictators. Democracy will not be inferior in discovering of the truth, and will have other advantages.

On the other hand, if it is not obvious who the experts are, then it is indeed the case that the majority view may not follow expert opinion. But, if some people are dictators, it may also be the case that the people who are made dictators are not the ones who are better informed. The dangers of mistake in following majority opinion are matched by the dangers of mistake in making the wrong people the dictators. The Platonic argument only works if the experts can be recignized in advance, for example (as in Plato’s Republic), because they are educated in a way which ensures that they will have expertise.