Brennan2019DemocracyUninformed

#digitalethics2024 #noteType/litnote

#digitalethics2024 #noteType/litnote

Bibliographic info

Brennan, J. (2019). Democracy as Uninformed Non‐Consent. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 36(2), 205–211. https://doi.org/10.1111/japp.12359

Commentary

In this article, Brennan is very critical of Carol Gould's ideas about democratic institutions facilitating informed consent. Carol Gould sees a weakness in how consent is used in the digital space. Mainly, there is something wrong with how we give consent to basically everyone who asks on the internet, resulting in a lack of actual consent. As a solution, she proposes a way that consent can actually be grounded in a democratic process. However, Brennan is very skeptical of this idea. He argues that democratic processes cannot facilitate consent, let alone informed consent. The main argument Brennan uses to support this point is that consent is something very personal. This personal aspect is always lost if we use a form of democracy to facilitate consent. On top of that, by using democratic institutions, individuals will be less informed because they are less involved with the actual consent given.

I think the critique given by Brennan is fair if we understand these democratic institutions in a certain way. If Gould's arguments were interpreted in a more nuanced way by Brennan, not all of these criticisms would hold equally.

Excerpts & Key Quotes

Democracy has no pla???

My view is that regardless of whether consent is instrumentally and/or intrinsically
valuable, democracy will not help much. ‘Democratic consent’ is incoherent – it is not
real consent. Further, democratic decision procedures incentivise participants to be
ignorant and irrational, and so they are usually not informed choices either. Democracy is thus uninformed non-consent.

Comment:

In this passage, it becomes clear that Brennan has a certain aversion to democracy. For Brennan, democracy is just a bridge away from the individual, and consent, for Brennan, is precisely something that is connected to the person. Democracy, the bridge, is incoherent with consent. Furthermore, Brennan thinks people engaged in the democratic process are not really informed. As a result, participants are not truly informed by participating in the democratic process.
This passage sums up Brennan's critical attitude towards the democratic process and its possible relation to giving consent.

For someone such as I, who thinks informed consent is intrinsically valuable,
democratic decisions are no substitute. Democracy does not supplement and
strengthen informed consent. Collective agency, whatever value it may have, is not a
substitute for individual rights.

Comment:

Brennan made a distinction between consent being instrumentally valuable or intrinsically valuable. This distinction notes that consent can be either seen as something that can help achieve a certain goal or something that has value in the process itself. Brennan thinks consent has value in and of itself, which is a prominent reason why democratic processes cannot replace consent. Even if democracy reaches the same goal, consent is intrinsically valuable.
Secondly, Brennan argues that democracy does not strengthen informed consent. I would have to disagree here because it will supplement consent for the reason that the criteria people have to consent to are chosen on a democratic basis, thus better representing the criteria important to the general public. However, this will never substitute the individual right to consent. I think the main concern of Brennan is the fact that we will lose the fundamental individual aspect of consent if we introduce democratic measures to the consent process. But this is not necessarily the case.

Flaws in the democratic system will limit it's usage in the digital space

The less individual input matters, the more group
decision-making will tend to encourage the majority of individuals within the group to
be uninformed or misinformed, and so lead to epistemically flawed collective decisions.

Comment:

Brennan points out that the democratic process often leads to people being less well-informed or even misinformed. We can see this in the political process as well. People rarely know what they are voting for; they are often uninformed or misinformed. This aspect of democracy is not what makes it valuable. What makes democracy valuable is that people with a less substantial voice in the community have something to say about the decisions made. But whether this works in practice is another matter.
Brennan points out the possible flaws in Gould's idea and is very critical in his analysis. Maybe he is too sceptical, but we shouldn't brush it aside because of that. It is important to take these points into account when we consider possible ways to improve the consent-giving process, as this process is still very much flawed and in desperate need of improvement. However, as many sceptics do, Brennan doesn't provide an alternative solution.