Celebrity, Democracy, and Epistemic Power

What, if anything, is problematic about the involvement of celebrities in democratic politics? While a number of theorists have criticized celebrity involvement in politics (Meyer 2002; Mills 1957; Postman 1987) none so far have examined this issue using the tools of social epistemology, the study of the effects of social interactions, practices and institutions on knowledge and belief acquisition. This paper will draw on these resources to investigate the issue of celebrity involvement in politics, specifically as this involvement relates to democratic theory and its implications for democratic practice. We will argue that an important and underexplored form of power, which we will call epistemic power, can explain one important way in which celebrity involvement in politics is problematic. This is because unchecked uses and unwarranted allocations of epistemic power, which celebrities tend to enjoy, threaten the legitimacy of existing democracies and raise important questions regarding core commitments of deliberative, epistemic, and plebiscitary models of democratic theory. We will finish by suggesting directions that democratic theorists could pursue when attempting to address some of these problems

Breaching taboos at work: A dialogue on (while) Breastfeeding

_This dialogue is a tribute to Monica Meijsing, who for a long time has been the only tenured female staff member in the philosophy department at Tilburg University. The two characters in this dialogue talk about a social norm proscribing breastfeeding in public, discussing its role within academia. As the characters discuss this norm, they also consider the dependence of cognition on the body, and the merits of the idea of ‘privileged perspective’ in standpoint epistemology. These are some of the themes on which Monica has spent most of her career as a teacher and researcher. Monica, we hope you will enjoy this piece, and we thank you for being an inspiring role model.