Winning Votes by Abusing Reason

Responsible Belief and Political Rhetoric

Winning Votes by Abusing Reason: Political Rhetoric and Responsible Belief, Jamie Watson argues that political rhetoric, rather than helping us overcome these defects, exacerbates them. And standard attempts to address this problem, such as deliberative democracy and paternalism, tend to either exclude citizens from important decisions or give them the illusion of reasoning well, perpetuating poor and irresponsible political beliefs. This book concludes that, rather than attempt more political solutions, the most promising approach to forming and preserving responsible political beliefs is to adopt individual principles of epistemic caution. The author brings together insights from political philosophy, social epistemology, behavioral psychology, and agnotology to suggest how we might protect our belief-forming behavior from the corrosive effects of political rhetoric. Recommended for scholars of philosophy, rhetoric, political science, and communications.