A general model of a group search procedure, applied to epistemic democracy

Christopher Thompson

pp. 1233-1252

in: Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij, Klemens Kappel, Nikolaj Pedersen (eds), The epistemology of inclusiveness, Synthese 190 (7), 2013.

Abstract

The standard epistemic justification for inclusiveness in political decision making is the Condorcet Jury Theorem, which states that the probability of a correct decision using majority rule increases in group size (given certain assumptions). Informally, majority rule acts as a mechanism to pool the information contained in the judgements of individual agents. I aim to extend the explanation of how groups of political agents track the truth. Before agents can pool the information, they first need to find truth-conducive information. Increasing group size is also important in the initial search for truth-conducive information.