Why Exchange Reasons? Rejecting the Epistemic Inference

When citizens deliberate, they aim at truth, weighing reasons and evidence to figure out which decisions are correct. Many theorists infer that the justification of deliberative democracy must therefore be, at least partly, epistemic. I call this the “epistemic inference” and argue that it fails. It conflates the aim of an activity (i.e., what participants intend to achieve within a practice) with its purpose (i.e., what makes the practice worth having). Deliberators must aim at truth, yet the point of deliberation need not be epistemic. Instead, it can lie in purely procedural values such as respect, equality, and freedom. Proceduralists can thus accept that deliberation aims at truth without conceding that its justification must be epistemic.