The Case for Democratic Patients: Epistemic Democracy Goes Green

Autores

  • Andrés Cruz Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5007/1677-2954.2018v17n3p423

Resumo

In mainstream democratic theory, non-agents are only considered indirectly: their interests matter if and only if a group of agents cares about them. In this paper, I argue that democratic patients, non-agents whose interests are affected by democratic decisions, have a place of their own in democratic theory. That is, they are entitled to the fair consideration of their interests in the democratic decision-making process. I defend the case for democratic patients by building upon the idea of epistemic democracy as proposed by David Estlund. If democratic procedures ought to be epistemically designed towards achieving right decisions, as Estlund argues, they should consider all relevant evidence fairly, like a jury does. Since democratic patients’ interests are affected by democratic decisions, I argue that they do count as relevant evidence via the All-Affected Principle, which lies at the core of democracy. Then I present some candidates for being democratic patients, which include young children, severely cognitively disabled humans, non-existent future humans, sentient animals and even non-sentient life forms. Whether they turn out to be democratic patients depends on what theories one accepts about agency, interests, and the impact of the outcomes of democracy on interests. I illustrate that point by discussing future humans as possible candidates. Finally, I briefly explore the challenge of designing real-world institutions derived from my argument, outlining what objectives they should aim for and some of the problems they might face.

Biografia do Autor

Andrés Cruz, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

Instituto de Ciencia Política, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

Referências

Brown, Mark B. 2015. “Politicizing Science: Conceptions of Politics in Science and Technology Studies.” Social Studies of Science 45 (1): 3–30. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312714556694.

Brown, Mark B. 2016. “Environmental Science and Politics.” In The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory, edited by Teena Gabrielson, Cheryl Hall, John M. Meyer, and David Schlosberg, 491–504. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Christiano, Thomas. 2012. “Rational Deliberation among Experts and Citizens.” In Deliberative Systems, edited by John Parkinson and Jane Mansbridge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Clifford, Stacy. 2012. “Making Disability Public in Deliberative Democracy.” Contemporary Political Theory 11 (2): 211–28. https://doi.org/10.1057/cpt.2011.11.

Davidson, Marc. 2008. “Wrongful Harm to Future Generations: The Case of Climate Change.” Environmental Values 17 (4): 471–88.

Dobson, Andrew. 1998. “Representative Democracy and the Environment.” In Democracy and the Environment, edited by William E. Lafferty and James Meadowcroft, 124–39. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Donaldson, Sue, and Will Kymlicka. 2017. “Rethinking Membership and Participation in an Inclusive Democracy: Cognitive Disability, Children, Animals.” In Disability and Political Theory, edited by Barbara Arneil and Nancy Hirschmann, 168–97. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Donoso, Alfonso. 2017. “Representing Non-Human Interests.” Environmental Values 26 (5): 607–28. https://doi.org/10.3197/096327117X15002190708137.

Ekeli, Kristian. 2005. “Giving a Voice to Posterity – Deliberative Democracy and Representation of Future People.” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 18 (5): 429–50. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-005-7048-z.

Ekeli, Kristian. 2009. “Constitutional Experiments: Representing Future Generations Through Submajority Rules.” Journal of Political Philosophy 17 (4): 440–61. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9760.2008.00328.x.

Ellis, Elisabeth. 2016. “Democracy as Constraint and Possibility for Environmental Action.” In The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory, edited by Teena Gabrielson, Cheryl Hall, John M. Meyer, and David Schlosberg, 505–19. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Estlund, David M. 2008. Democratic Authority: A Philosophical Framework. Princeton University Press.

Feinberg, Joel. 1986. “Wrongful Life and the Counterfactual Element in Harming.” Social Philosophy and Policy 4 (1): 145–78. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0265052500000467.

Gabrielson, Teena. 2016. “Bodies, Environments and Agency.” In The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory, edited by Teena Gabrielson, Cheryl Hall, John M. Meyer, and David Schlosberg, 399–412. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Garner, Robert. 2017. “Animals and Democratic Theory: Beyond an Anthropocentric Account.” Contemporary Political Theory 16 (4): 459–477. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41296-016-0072-0.

Goodin, Robert E. 1996. “Enfranchising the Earth, and Its Alternatives.” Political Studies 44 (5): 835–49.

Goodin, Robert E. 2003. “Representing Mute Interests.” In Reflective Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Goodin, Robert E. 2007. “Enfranchising All Affected Interests, and Its Alternatives.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 35 (1): 40–68. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1088-4963.2007.00098.x.

Gosseries, Axel. 2008. “Constitutions and Future Generations.” The Good Society 17 (2): 32–37.

Gosseries, Axel. 2014. “The Intergenerational Case for Constitutional Rigidity.” Ratio Juris 27 (4): 528–39. https://doi.org/10.1111/raju.12060.

Guerrero, Alexander A. 2014. “Against Elections: The Lottocratic Alternative.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 42 (2): 135–78. https://doi.org/10.1111/papa.12029.

Holst, Cathrine, and Anders Molander. 2014. “Epistemic Democracy and the Accountability of Experts.” In Expertise and Democracy, edited by Cathrine Holst, 13–35. ARENA Report Series, 1/14. Oslo: ARENA Centre for European Studies.

Horta, Oscar. 2011. “La Argumentación de Singer En Liberación Animal: Concepciones Normativas, Interés En Vivir y Agregacionismo.” Diánoia 56 (67): 65–85.

Jans, Marc. 2004. “Children as Citizens: Towards a Contemporary Notion of Child Participation.” Childhood 11 (1): 27–44. https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568204040182.

Kasperbauer, T. J. 2017. “Mentalizing Animals: Implications for Moral Psychology and Animal Ethics.” Philosophical Studies 174 (2): 465–84. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0692-5.

Kates, Michael. 2015. “Justice, Democracy, and Future Generations.” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 18 (5): 508–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230.2013.861655.

Landemore, Hélène. 2013. Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many. Princeton, NY: Princeton University Press.

Landemore, Hélène. 2017. “Beyond the Fact of Disagreement? The Epistemic Turn in Deliberative Democracy.” Social Epistemology 31 (3): 277–95. https://doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2017.1317868.

Mansbridge, Jane. 1999. “Everyday Talk in the Deliberative System.” In Deliberative Politics: Essays on Democracy and Disagreement, edited by Stephen Macedo, 211–39. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Meyer, Lukas. 2016. “Intergenerational Justice.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Summer 2016. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2016/entries/justice-intergenerational/.

Mouffe, Chantal. 2007. “Artistic Activism and Agonistic Spaces.” Art & Research 1 (2). http://www.artandresearch.org.uk/v1n2/mouffe.html.

Saunders, Ben. 2012. “Defining the Demos.” Politics, Philosophy & Economics 11 (3): 280–301. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470594X11416782.

Singer, Peter. 1974. “All Animals Are Equal.” Philosophical Exchange 5 (1): 103–16.

Stein, Tine. 1998. “Does the Constitutional and Democratic System Work? The Ecological Crisis as a Challenge to the Political Order of Constitutional Democracy.” Constellations: An International Journal of Critical & Democratic Theory 4 (3): 420–49.

Stocker, Thomas F., Dahe Qin, Gian-Kasper Plattner, Melinda M. B. Tignor, Simon K. Allen, Judith Boschung, Alexander Nauels, Yu Xia, Vincent Bex, and Pauline M. Midgley, eds. 2014. Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of IPCC the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Varner, Gary. 1998. In Nature’s Interests? Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Young, Iris Marion. 2000. Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Publicado

2018-12-25

Edição

Seção

Dossiês