Paarshva (Year 12)
Editor’s note: Year 12 student Paarshva wrote this essay for entry into the annual John Locke Institute Global Essay Prize. Paarshva explores the debate between the political wisdom of the ‘lettered’—those with formal education and theoretical knowledge—and the ‘unlettered’—those with experiential, practical knowledge. It examines whether the collective judgment of the unlettered can protect against flawed ideas and supports its analysis with case studies like Brexit and the 2008 Financial Crash. CPD
The ‘lettered ‘refers to those whose political judgment derives primarily from formal education, theoretical knowledge, and abstract reasoning and the ‘unlettered’ encompasses those whose political wisdom emerges from direct experiential engagement with policy consequences, custom, and what Hume termed “natural belief” formed through habitual social practice. “Bad ideas” in this context will be extended to political judgments that lead to outcomes that harm collective welfare. “Protect against” involves the capacity of one group’s judgment to serve as an effective corrective mechanism when the other group’s reasoning becomes systematically biased or detached from empirical reality. The scope of the essay is restricted to contemporary case studies that are pertinent to this question such as Brexit and the 2008 Financial Crash while supported by theoretical research that add to the understanding of the topic.
While Hume celebrated the wisdom of “unlettered men” in opposition to theoretical knowledge, contemporary democratic failures highlight that epistemic inequalities cause collective experiential judgment to be unreliable for complex policy decisions. However modern research surrounding the extent of human rationality, particularly explored by behavioural economists, challenges the reliability of knowledge gained from experience. While the wisdom of the ‘lettered’ may not be infallible, it would certainly me too far of a reach to state that ‘unlettered men’ protect against any bad ideas, as they collectively lack the ability to discern what is good or bad and this can be proven experientially and demonstrated through manipulation of the Condorcet Jury Theorem.
In ‘Essays Moral, Political and Literary,’ Hume argues that “the vulgar are apt to carry all national reflections to extremes”, which means that ‘unlettered men’ are in a better position to make political decisions as they directly experience the consequences of political decisions. This suggests that Hume prioritised experiential wisdom over theoretical reasoning. This creates a fundamental tension within democratic nations between ‘the lettered’ who have been highly educated and possess all theoretical knowledge and ‘unlettered men’ who despite their lack of theoretical knowledge have access to wisdom gained from lived experience.
Hume’s said that custom is the great guide of human life, which reflects his radical epistemological perspective which inverts traditional belief regarding knowledge and authority and highlights his preference for ‘unlettered wisdom’. Hume suggests that lived experience is preferential to knowledge gained from theoretical engagement when it comes to political decision making. This marks the distinction between ‘the lettered’ and ‘unlettered men’. Hume’s position challenges the Platonic assertion that theoretical knowledge should govern society and practical affairs while pre-emptively supporting modern cognitive science findings about the limitations of explicit reasoning in complex social environments. This research on bounded rationality demonstrates that rather than undertaking full cost-benefit analysis, humans act as ‘satisficers’ – seeking satisfactory solutions with available information rather than optimal ones. Hume’s ‘is-ought’ distinction can also be applied to this discussion. Hume claims that we cannot derive what ought to be from what is. We cannot state that ‘the lettered’ ought to hold greater political authority because of their theoretical knowledge. This creates an “epistemic authority fallacy” which is the assumption that superior factual knowledge automatically confers superior political judgment. Hume’s reasoning is based on a belief that moral evaluations depend on sentiment and the human capacity for sympathy rather than formal reasoning, arguing that formal education may narrow moral foundations. Therefore, “unlettered men” may possess epistemically superior access to the foundations of political judgment. The educated elite’s tendency to filter moral intuitions through theoretical frameworks can produce moral parochialism. This creates an epistemic paradox, as the knowledge which qualifies them for political authority also disqualifies them from understanding their own shortcomings, thus highlighting Hume’s rationale behind celebrating the wisdom of ‘unlettered men’.
Aristotle observed the strength of collective wisdom in his works, an insight validated by more modern research. At a 1906 county fair in Plymouth, 800 people participated in estimating the weight of a slaughtered ox. The median guess of 1207 lbs was accurate within 1% of the true weight of the Ox, demonstrating that aggregate judgement can exceed individual expertise. The Condorcet Jury Theorem formalises the above phenomena and posits that if each member has more than a 50% chance of making the correct decision, the probability that the correct decision is made tends to 100% as the sample size increases. This suggests that the collective wisdom of ‘unlettered men’ can far exceed the wisdom of ‘the lettered’. A diverse group brings together different experiences and perspectives, fostering creativity and innovation. This overall suggests a narrative that the cumulative decision-making of the ‘unlettered’ are what contributes to democratic success.
The 2008 financial crash is largely considered a time when experts made a costly wrong decision. Economic experts systematically underestimated the risks of their financial decisions in creating housing bubbles. Many citizens sensed that housing bubbles were being formed, however they were powerless to prevent the crash. This evidence suggests that there have been times when the wisdom of ‘unlettered men’ surpassed that of ‘the lettered’ due to their exposure to the actual housing market rather than theoretical information. Furthermore, “Virtually all of Europe’s statesmen and military leaders failed to anticipate the nature, duration and effects of World War I”. In contrast, Friedrich Engels, though outside military expertise, accurately predicted in 1888 that any future war would be “a world war indeed of an extent and violence hitherto undreamt of”. This shows how supposed outsiders can sometimes see what experts miss. These cases show a clear pattern that experts often suffer from overconfidence in predicting outcomes within complex and interconnected systems, whereas popular intuition often proves more accurate as ordinary people tend to face the consequences of decisions more directly, giving them relevant information. These are arguments of the ‘epistemic authority fallacy’ and therefore support Hume’s argument that ‘unlettered men’ protects ‘the lettered’ within a democratic system.
This argument, however, presents an incomplete narrative of historical events. While ‘the lettered’ may have underestimated the risks of the financial crash, their estimations were incorrect partially because they failed to account for the reactive nature of ‘unlettered men’, whose views were entrenched in confirmation bias that gave rise to a bullish outlook contributing to the initial housing bubble. However, when sentiments shifted, panic selling accelerated, causing the subsequent crash in 2008. This highlights that the housing bubble was driven by popular participation and enthusiasm, with real estate speculation becoming a popular pastime. The belief that housing prices could never go down is an example of folk wisdom that has proven to be catastrophic. Therefore the 2008 financial crash cannot solely be blamed on ‘the lettered’ as equal blame can be attributed to ‘unlettered men’. Moreover, the irrationality of ‘unlettered men’ contributed to the predictions of ‘the lettered’ failing. Furthermore, the argument that Engels was a member of ‘unlettered men’ who pre-empted the tragedy of World War two is also untrue as he was evidently an intellectual elite and a wealthy industrialist. In fact, many experts felt that WW1 would be a war of attrition, and this belief was ignored by the masses who felt they would be ‘home by Christmas’.
Jason Brennan in his work ‘Against Democracy’ argues that widespread voter ignorance and irrationality undermines democratic outcomes. Brennan distinguishes between “hobbits” (uninformed and apathetic voters), “hooligans” (partisan and dogmatic voters) and “vulcans” (rational and well-informed voters), contending that most citizens fall into the first two categories, which leads to “bad government” and “unjust policies” as the hobbits and hooligans outvote the Vulcans. Caplan argues that this irrationality creates a “recipe for mendacity” when rational politicians must cater to irrational voter demands, undermining effective governance. This argument suggests that voter behaviour also impacts the policy making capacity of government under a democracy. This is because leaders recognise the incompetence of the voting public but are helpless to this and must therefore adhere to it due to desiring power. This means tailoring policies around public favour rather than what they understand as maximising efficacy. This is clearly illogical as qualified world leaders are making decisions at the whim of the unqualified public. This suggests that ‘unlettered men’ are not protecting ‘the lettered’ as their bad ideas are causing political chaos.
Brexit is one example of this mechanism. There is a huge amount of research that highlights how the Brexit vote can be used as an example of Voter Incompetence. 59% of voters earning under £20,000 supported Leave, often to “punish” elites perceived as beneficiaries of globalisation, despite evidence that Brexit would disproportionately harm low-income regions. Brexit’s legacy is a policy fractured along educational and generational lines. While 75% of university graduates opposed Brexit, 64% of those without qualifications supported it. Confirmation bias entrenched these views: pro-Leave Facebook groups circulated 1.2 million more misinformation posts than Remain groups, creating echo chambers resistant to fact-checking. Caplan’s “rational irrationality” explains why 41% of Leave voters dismissed expert forecasts of post-Brexit recession as “Project Fear”.
Brexit is an example of a clear political failure as voters were so blinded by nationalist sentiment that they were unable to recognise the impact of immigrant labour on UK companies. A tightening of immigration laws meant labour was harder to find for companies, due to the absence of immigrants who were willing to work longer hours for a lower pay. While this meant that some locals regained their jobs, prices rose due to companies having to pay more for labour. This started the cost-of-living crisis that has been plaguing the UK since Brexit. This strongly suggests that ‘unlettered men’ do not have the knowledge to be able to make political decisions. The Condorcet Jury Theorem therefore does not apply here, as ‘unlettered men’ do not have a 50% chance of making the correct decision due to their own epistemological limitations. Consequently, the chances of the correct decision being made tends towards 0 as the sample size increases if we apply the same logic. This would suggest that an adjusted interpretation of the Condorcet Jury Theorem proves that the collective wisdom of ‘unlettered men’ is unreliable and any irrationality can be amplified in a collective. This argument is a strong criticism of Hume’s overall views on the matter as it supports the idea that ‘unlettered’ wisdom is highly fallible.
Contrary to Hume’s scepticism regarding wisdom and theoretical strength, empirical evidence suggests that collective wisdom from experience has failed due to the presence of clear epistemic barriers to political decision making. This can be accredited to a fundamental subjectivity related to sensory experience which hinders assimilation of true knowledge due to unequal access which Miranda Fricker terms “testimonial injustice”, where access to credible information is based on social positioning. For example, in a diverse, multi-cultural society, the political views that would emerge differ greatly from the views that would emerge from an area consisting of a predominant culture. This therefore suggests that factors such as the ‘postcode lottery’ (disparity in access to information and facilities based on where you were born) determine the political views of an individual reliant on experience to guide their judgement. This suggests that the wisdom of ‘unlettered men’ is not reliable due to a persistent structural inequality which results in the experiential wisdom of citizens being compromised, undermining the notion of collective wisdom as described by the Condorcet jury theorem.
Rather than Hume’s notion of ‘unlettered wisdom’ prevailing due to political engagement and direct exposure to consequences of decisions, we observe epistemic parochialism where the limited nature of human experience prevents the understanding of complex political and socio-economical systems. This misguided experience has contributed to democratic failures such as Brexit, an event that undermines the strength of ‘unlettered wisdom’. Overall, Hume’s support for ‘unlettered wisdom’ has been proven unfounded by new evidence from case studies, all of which point to fundamental gaps in experiential wisdom.
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