Collective Wisdom
Principles and Mechanisms

The contributors to this volume discuss and for the most part challenge whether many minds can be wiser than one.

Hélène Landemore (Edited by), Jon Elster (Edited by)

9781107010338, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 16 July 2012

418 pages, 17 b/w illus. 8 tables
24 x 16.2 x 3 cm, 0.75 kg

“Can crowds be anything but unwise? Is there any reason to suppose that collective judgments could be accurate? The papers gathered in this volume suggest some stimulating ways to claim that those questions could be answered affirmatively and that the so called ‘mob’ might sometimes be less foolish and less unreliable than it has commonly been taken to be. Very rewarding in times when democracy is so frequently deemed unable to cope with complex questions.” – Jean-Fabien Spitz, Professor of Political Philosophy, University of Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne

James Madison wrote, 'Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob'. The contributors to this volume discuss and for the most part challenge this claim by considering conditions under which many minds can be wiser than one. With backgrounds in economics, cognitive science, political science, law and history, the authors consider information markets, the internet, jury debates, democratic deliberation and the use of diversity as mechanisms for improving collective decisions. At the same time, they consider voter irrationality and paradoxes of aggregation as possibly undermining the wisdom of groups. Implicitly or explicitly, the volume also offers guidance and warnings to institutional designers.

1. Collective wisdom: old and new Hélène Landemore
2. Prediction markets: trading uncertainty for collective wisdom Emile Servan-Schreiber
3. Designing wisdom through the web: the passion of ranking Gloria Origgi
4. Some microfoundations of collective wisdom Scott Page and Lu Hong
5. What has collective wisdom to do with wisdom? Daniel Andler
6. Legislation, planning, and deliberation John Ferejohn
7. Epistemic democracy in classical Athens: sophistication, diversity, and innovation Josiah Ober
8. The optimal design of a constituent assembly Jon Elster
9. Sanior pars and major pars in the contemporary aeropagus: medicine evaluation committees in France and the United States Philippe Urfalino
10. Collective wisdom: lessons from the theory of judgment aggregation Christian List
11. Democracy counts: should rulers be numerous? David Estlund
12. Democratic reason: the mechanisms of collective intelligence in politics Hélène Landemore
13. Rational ignorance and beyond Gerry Mackie
14. The myth of the rational voter and political theory Bryan Caplan
15. Collective wisdom and institutional design Adrian Vermeule
16. Reasoning as a social competence Dan Sperber and Hugo Mercier
17. Conclusion Jon Elster.

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP], Social & political philosophy [HPS], Philosophy: epistemology & theory of knowledge [HPK]