Intro Special Issue: Pragmatism and Epistemic Democracy

What do truth and democracy have to do with each other? Not much, one might think. After all, the whole point of democracy is that people are entitled to vote no matter their knowledge or virtue, let alone their wealth or lineage. So, in principle, and sometimes in practice, the foolish and corrupt are entitled to rule over the wise and virtuous, just as the foreign-born and/or poor may come to govern rich natives. Such possibilities should be understood as a feature, not a bug, of democratic politics. Hence democracy has historically been the object of derision, aversion and contempt by those who suppose that knowledge and/or virtue are important qualifications for government.