Abstract
In this chapter, we take stock of everything we discussed so far in order to address two challenges of democratic life. The first challenge is that most voters understand essentially nothing of the policies they vote for. It would seem natural to think that the psychology of reasoning might be helpful in that respect—that is, that we could help citizens to vote better. I argue that this is extremely unlikely to work. The second challenge is that voters needlessly construe other (differently minded) voters as stupid and malevolent, when they could as easily get along with one another. In this regard, I argue, the psychology of reasoning has an important role to play, in order to help citizens realize that what they see as a moral chasm is really only the result of good people deluding themselves and one another.
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Bonnefon, JF. (2017). Democracy. In: Reasoning Unbound. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60049-3_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60049-3_7
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