Cognitive Complexity in a Deliberative Experiment

Proponents of deliberative democracy frequently champion its ideal with reference to epistemological benefits. However, the fact of pluralism in contemporary societies cast serious doubts on strong epistemological accounts. This paper seeks to contribute to the question of deliberative epistemology by, first, arguing for a form of pure epistemic proceduralism. Starting from Pettit's premise-based approach to arguing, we show that this theoretical approach provides an empirically sound cue on deliberative epistemology and is conceptually closer to the main idea of deliberative democracy. The upshot is that deliberative epistemology should be about individual "cognitive complexity" enhancements as opposed to merely about better outcomes. Secondly, we go on to solidify our claims empirically by analyzing whether deliberation actually correlates with higher degrees of cognitive complexity. For the topic on the Swiss expulsion initiative ("Ausschaffungsinitiative"), we conduct a group discussion experiment. We test the relationship of deliberative quality and cognitive complexity between the discussants.