Will Mittendorf

In “The Applied Epistemology of Official Stories” (2023), Tim Hayward offers a thorough and convincing rejection of Neil Levy’s claim that we ought to defer to official stories from relevant epistemic authorities. In this response, I take no issue with Hayward’s criticism of Levy. Rather, I suggest that Hayward’s position could go further, and he already implies a deeper problem with the concept of an ‘official story’. In fact, I’m so swayed by several of his claims against things called ‘official stories’, that, in this essay, I investigate the feasibility of a generalist position towards ‘official stories’.

Conspiracy theories are frequently described as a threat to democracy and conspiracy theorists portrayed as epistemically or morally unreasonable. If these characterizations are correct, then it may be the case that reasons stemming from conspiracy theorizing threaten the legitimizing function of democratic deliberation. In this paper, I will argue the opposite. Despite the extraordinary epistemic and morally unreasonable claims made by some conspiracy theorists, belief in conspiracy theories is guided by internal epistemic norms inherent in believing. By utilizing the insights of the Peircean epistemic defense formulated by Cheryl Misak and Robert Talisse, I take it that these epistemic norms implicitly commit the theorist to an open democratic society.

In February 2014, Denmark joined a growing list of European nations to ban kosher and halal butchering methods without pre-stunning. While this policy is a victory for the animal welfare and rights movements, it is also part of a troubling trend of European states limiting religious freedom for religious minorities. This violation of minority rights is not just a problem for liberal democracy, but I suggest it is also a challenge to animal welfare and rights globally. In this chapter, I will look at the ethical, political, and theological issues surrounding the banning of non-stun religious slaughter to underlie a practical policy recommendation that members of a liberal democracy, including proponents of animal welfare and animal rights, ought to oppose bans on kosher and halal butchering without pre-stunning for the sake of religious freedom and animal welfare. First, I will describe the requirements of religious slaughter in Judaism and Islam along with the controversy in Europe ...

Deliberative theories of democracy place the legitimacy of the use of coercive
political power in democratic procedures and outcomes produced through a
process of fair, equal, and reasoned deliberation. Under debate is whether
mutual respect requires the use of ‘public reasons’ rather than ‘the whole truth’
in democratic deliberations. Many deliberative democrats have rejected the
public reason requirement as too exclusionary and unfriendly to reasonable
pluralism, opting instead for an epistemic theory of democracy that places
legitimacy in the epistemic function of democratic deliberation. For instrumental,
outcome-based epistemic theories, legitimacy resides in the ability of
democratic deliberation to determine ‘correct’, ‘likely true’, or ‘best’ solutions
to social problems, while utilizing a procedure-independent standard, such as
a common good, to gauge the epistemic success of deliberation. However,
the procedure-independent standard may fall prey to the same objection from
reasonable pluralism as public reason – it is a requirement that can be reasonably
rejected. In this essay, I briefly outline several outcome-based epistemic
approaches, highlighting the disagreement over the common good as a procedure-
independent standard for correctness. I argue that due to fact of reasonable
pluralism, the most promising path forward for outcome epistemic
democracy is to abandon the procedure-independent standard entirely. I propose
that the pragmatist epistemic democracy offers the best balance of including
and utilizing diverse viewpoints with the truth-tracking, problem solving
ability of group deliberation towards a common good.

In this dissertation, I argue for a pluralist Peircean epistemic approach to democratic
justification to address the challenge of reasonable pluralism. Whereas public reason approaches
to democratic justification require citizens privatize their worldviews, an epistemic approach to
democracy allows citizens the freedom to express their personal reasons while harnessing the
epistemic power of democracy to identify and solve social problems. I find that of the various
epistemic approaches available, Cheryl Misak and Robert Talisse’s Peircean Epistemic Defense
of Democracy (PED) is the most promising because it is widely inclusive of personal reasons,
uses pluralism to further the epistemic goals of democracy, and offers a robust defense of
democratic procedures, norms, and institutions. The PED argues that beliefs aim at truth, and in
holding a belief properly, one must engage in a process of reason exchange to support the truth
of that belief. Moreover, only in a democracy can one properly engage in this process of reason
exchange due to the epistemic requirements of an open society.
The Peircean requirements for proper believing have been criticized for allegedly being
oppressive and exclusive in a similar manner to public reason. What I call the ‘faith objection’
claims that the epistemic norms of religious belief and faith are different and even contradictory
to the epistemic norms imposed by the PED. I disagree with this objection and argue that thePED is inclusive of religious reasons because religious belief and faith are sufficiently
responsive to reasons and evidence. Though this raises a new challenge: if the PED is radically
inclusive, to what extent will reasons that are inaccessible, incommensurable, weak, or false
corrupt the epistemic environment of democracy? For the PED to avoid the faith objection, it
will need to include reasons that are out of the ordinary, for example, conspiracy theories. But if
conspiracy theories or other non-traditional modes of reasoning are rampant in democratic
deliberation, then there may be a decline in the epistemic functioning of democracy, thus
endangering the epistemic justification the PED is built upon. I argue that while the challenge of
including non-traditional reasoning is difficult, it also offers the opportunity for new paths
towards truth. These non-traditional forms of reasoning may be novel approaches to truth that
only some democratic citizens have access. By including conspiracy theories, religion, or other
inaccessible and incommensurable reasoning in public deliberation, the PED can be inclusive of
all democratic citizens, while offering a robust justification of democracy.