Source: PHI022
Radical epistemology democratism is Descartes’s idea that a person should carry out enquiry himself because others’ opinions are not reliable due to disagreement.
Descartes’s reason for believing so includes:
- Everyone is equipped with basic competence and good sense.
- Everyone is bestowed more or less the same amount of competence, so everyone is capable of carrying out enquiry on their own.
- Through radical epistemology democratism, everyone should eventually arrive at the same answer, because now disagreement would only arise from people having access to differing or limited amount of evidence.