Expertise, Agreement, and the Nature of Social Scientific Facts or: Against Epistocracy

Reiss, Julian

Abstract

Taking some controversial claims philosopher Jason Brennan makes in his book Against Democracy (Brennan 2016) as a starting point, this paper argues in favour of two theses: (1) There is No Such Thing as Superior Political Judgement; (2) There Is No Such Thing as Uncontroversial Social Scientific Knowledge. I conclude that social science experts need to be kept in check, not given more power.

Citation

Reiss, J. (2019). Expertise, Agreement, and the Nature of Social Scientific Facts or: Against Epistocracy. Social Epistemology, 33(2), 183-192. https://doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2019.1577513

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Mar 8, 2019
• Publication Date: 2019
• Deposit Date: Mar 20, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 20, 2019
• Journal: Social Epistemology
• Print ISSN: 0269-1728
• Electronic ISSN: 1464-5297
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 33
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 183-192
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2019.1577513
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1335049