Ressource pédagogique : Many-Minds Arguments in Legal Theory
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La sagesse collective : principes et mécanismes Colloque des 22-23 mai 2008, organisé par l'Institut du Monde Contemporain du Collège de France, sous la direction du Professeur Jon Elster. Intervention de Adrian Vermeule, Harvard Law School, 23 mai 2008 Many-minds arguments are flooding into legal theory. Such arguments claim that in some way or another, many heads are better than one; the genus includes many species, such as arguments about how legal and political institutions aggregate information, evolutionary analyses of those institutions, claims about the benefits of tradition as a source of law, and analyses of the virtues and vices of deliberation. This essay offers grounds for skepticism about many-minds arguments. I provide an intellectual zoology of such arguments and suggest that they are of low utility for legal theory. Four general and recurring problems with many-minds arguments are as follows: (1) Whose minds?: The group or population whose minds are at issue is often equivocal or ill-defined. (2) Many minds, worse minds: The quality of minds is not independent of their number; rather, number endogenously influences quality, often for the worse. More minds can be systematically worse than fewer because of selection effects, incentives for epistemic free-riding, and emotional and social influences. (3) Epistemic bottlenecks: In the legal system, the epistemic benefits of many minds are often diluted or eliminated because the structure of institutions funnels decisions through an individual decisionmaker, or a small group of decisionmakers, who occupy a kind of epistemic bottleneck or chokepoint. (4) Many minds vs. many minds: The insight that many heads can be better than one gets little purchase on the institutional comparisons that pervade legal theory, which are typically many-to-many comparisons rather than one-to-many.
"Domaine(s)" et indice(s) Dewey
- Philosophie et psychologie (100)
- Interaction sociale, communication (302)
- Droit (340)
Thème(s)
Intervenants, édition et diffusion
Intervenants
Éditeur(s)
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C.E.R.I.M.E.S.
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COLLEGE DE FRANCE
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AUTEUR(S)
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Adrian Vermeule
ÉDITION
C.E.R.I.M.E.S.
COLLEGE DE FRANCE
EN SAVOIR PLUS
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Identifiant de la fiche
4052 -
Identifiant
oai:canal-u.fr:4052 -
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- LOMv1.0
- LOMFRv1.0
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Entrepôt d'origine
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Date de publication
22-05-2008