Collective Deliberation as Epistemic Cooperation

In this paper, I suggest that collective deliberation processes should be seen as cooperative epistemic activities. After considering a well-known argument for why they cannot result from a majoritarian aggregating procedure, I focus on the limitations of a functionalist approach to collective agency and suggest that Tomasello’s approach to cooperation can shed light on how collective deliberation works. I then argue that understanding collective deliberation in terms of epistemic cooperation sheds light on both the structure and the normative implications of collective deliberation processes.