Liberal democracy
Citizens: the cognitive burden placed on average citizens under most liberal models of democracy are more extensive than under the competitive-elitist account, but, as we will see, less than that on the modal deliberative account.
On a Madisonian account, for example, their main function is to select leaders with sound judgment, not just those whose policy packages promise the most payoff for one personally. Rather than staging all political conflict (constrained only by the broadest sense of public sentiment), leaders on the liberal model should, in the words of Federalist 10,“refine and enlarge the public views.” Note that, here, members of the public are, in a sense, the first actors, in contrast to the competitive-elitist view.Under pluralism, most citizens are members of sub-groups that have more or less coherent values and interests. As such, they must articulate those values and interests, and thus need corresponding levels of cognitive humility so as not to under or even oversell their individual views. While they ought to be open to the possibility of being factually wrong, they also ought not to be so preoccupied with doubt that their views are not heard and enlarged by their representatives. Unlike in the competitive-elitism model, citizens must only select among representatives rather than among policy bundles, so they have a greater risk of their interests not being met if they are not appropriately articulating those interests.What cognitive humility gives us is a fairer epistemic dynamic in citizens' expression of their choices, such that personality is not predicting who is heard. But citizens are not generally responsible for wisely balancing and reconciling those values and interests against other groups. Hence the demands on both their cognitive and conative humility are more specific and less intense than those expected of their elected representatives.
They are less intense in that there is a backstop against their arrogance and greed (i.e., the presumably more virtuous representatives).They are more specific in that their conative humility need not apply so much to their desire for first-order political goods, just so long as it does not extend to punishing elected officials who wisely and fairly sacrificed some of those first-order goods to the just demands of others and the commonweal more generally.Officials: on the liberal model, elected officials are empowered by selection, but are more constrained than on the competitive model, where they stage almost all political conflict. Thus they need a middling level of cognitive humility. As with the elitist model, cognitive humility is required for parties to peacefully transfer power to others when the majority and minority balance changes. If each party is appropriately aware of the justifications for their beliefs and open to the possibility that they might be wrong, it will be easier to pass the torch to another ideological group than if they inappropriately overvalue the positive epistemic status of their beliefs. In addition, however, on the liberal model they must also attempt to “refine and enlarge the public views” by making reasonable trade-offs between social groups.
Conative humility is important for representatives on a Madisonian understanding of liberal democracy for similar reasons.The peaceful transfer of power and reasonably balancing group interests are only possible when officials understand that their desires do not warrant more attention than the desires of other elected officials, since they were all chosen by the same selection process and represent plural worldviews and interests. Even if the quality of representatives differs such that some do a better job encapsulating the interests of their districts and some do worse, this would still not warrant officials discrediting the desires of others on this basis. Not only would other officials not know the quality of other officials' representation unless they were well acquainted with another official's constituents, but the selection model of liberal democracy does not require that representation be good as long as the official has the legitimacy of having been elected.
Ultimately, epistemic virtue on a liberal model depends on the ability of incumbent representatives to exercise self-restraint, since they are in a position to achieve their desires if they believe they are deserving (Neblo, 2004). In theory, if they recognize that their own knowledge is limited, then they are more likely to acknowledge that government itself ought also to be limited (Kober, 1997).Experts: since on the liberal model officials are presumed to have some of the knowledge and judgment allocated to experts on the elitist model, their need for both cognitive and conative humility is correspondingly less, though that is not to say negligible. At the cognitive level, they need to avoid confusing their own desires with their expertise, and, at the conative level, they need to avoid exploiting their superior knowledge against elected officials (and, to a lesser extent, the public).Which is to say that they need both types of humility to a moderate degree.
11.5