Volume 40, 2024
Conflict, Crisis, and Catastrophe
Jimmy Alfonso Licon
Pages 113-126
https://doi.org/10.5840/socphiltoday202485112
Democracy Incentivizes Bullshit
From Weak Incentives to Epistemic Crises
Democracies face an epistemic crisis: incentivizing bullshit. Here ¡°bullshit¡±¡ªcoined by philosopher Harry Frankfurt¡ªmeans convincing truth-insensitive statements or claims. This paper focuses on several democratic factors that incentivize bullshit: deliberative transparency, epistemic spillover effects, and rational irrationality. These factors pollute the epistemic commons, decrease institutional trust, and enact epistemic injustice. Unfortunately, it is difficult to separate democratic governance from incentivizing bullshit.