Intervista a Lisa Herzog

The interview is based on Lisa Herzog’s book Citizen Knowledge: Markets, Experts, and the Infrastructure of Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2024).

Segnalibri Filosofici: I’d like to start the interview by referring to a quote from the introduction of your book: “We’re in a really bad place. But democracies probably were in this bad place for a long time without realizing it. The fact that these problems are now openly discussed makes me cautiously optimistic that it will be possible to address them”. Two years after your publication, what do you think about this debate today? Has your confidence grown or faltered over the past year?

Lisa Herzog: Interesting question. I see light and shadow. What I mean with shadow is right-wing populism and what's happening in the US and the Trump government, I guess that's pretty obvious. But I try to also see positive things and keep up some hope. One thing that gives me hope, for example, is that there seems to be a growing awareness that on the side of science, there needs to be more awareness of how we relate, for example, to commercial funders, and more discussion about what the role of science in society is. There's a lot of discussion about trust in science and what it takes to establish meaningful trust in science. There's also a lot of soul searching about science communication. So, on that end, I also see some positive developments. I wish there was more discussion about the role of social media platforms, and how it can be the case that the richest person in a country just buys a social media platform, which is a main source of communication for citizens. It's completely unclear what kind of biases the algorithms introduce. And there are no external checks and balances whatsoever. So, I think my worries are about what I call in the book the epistemic infrastructures of democracy, and especially traditional media and social media and how they interact. On that part, my worries haven't been taken away.

SF: I think the second question is closely related to this point, because in your book it's clear that there is a relationship between knowledge and political decision-making. You write that “claims to truth or knowledge cannot, on their own, justify political decisions — for that, they always need to be combined with value judgments, and often, different forms of knowledge need to be brought together as well.” Could you explain this a little more?

LH: Yes, of course. Some people have a very demanding, almost mystifying, notion of truth or facts. But I use these terms in a kind of modest and fallible way for saying. Look, we need to connect to the reality out there and we need to have agreement on certain facts. Otherwise, we cannot lead a democratic life together, or in fact any kind of life together. So, in that sense, it's an almost trivial statement to say that policy-making relies on knowledge, because, for many areas, you want to base political decision-making on the best possible evidence. For example, you want to know what can help in a pandemic, how best to contain a virus, and so on. So, we need that kind of knowledge for policy-making, but there is always a combination of statements about facts and statements about values that give us the direction of where you go with policy. You could go back to something very fundamental, e.g. in Hume, namely the fact value distinction, in the sense that facts, as such, never tell us what to do. We always need to refer, however implicitly, to some kind of value. I think sometimes that gets overlooked because there seems to be agreement on the value. So, for example, during the pandemic, there was a sense that we want to preserve people's lives as much as possible. And then the discussion very quickly went to what is the most reliable evidence we have for how we can do this? 
But even there you can see that it is often more complicated. It is helpful to make the value judgements more explicit because you could say, for example, that the implicit value was that we prevent unnecessary deaths. But there are also questions about the mental health of young people, who are locked into their parents’ houses for a very long time. And it should at least be a question that is being openly discussed: how do you weigh these different values? In this case, it is very obvious that there are also different interests of different groups: how do you weigh these? If you leave the value judgements implicit and just say “we know what the direction is and now let's just focus on getting the facts right,”, then you are likely to overlook possible value conflicts. 
And, last but not least, in practice, often facts and values are intertwined in even more complex ways in the sense that you might have lines of research on a certain topic that are already informed by certain value judgements. And this doesn't always need to be problematic, but it can be the case that different lines of research have different implicit value assumptions. In such situations you need to also tease out what these assumptions are. For example, if you compare economics and sociology, very often in economics you have an implicit orientation towards economic growth. And in sociology you have other implicit value orientations, maybe towards social cohesion or something like that. By the way, this is also what makes interdisciplinarity often difficult, having to understand these implicit value assumptions that operate in the background. And that also matters for thinking about how research can inform policy making. The best strategy, I think, is to be as open as possible about such value judgements, and to really have discussions where you try to understand how these values hang together.

SF: When you say in your book that “many of these processes of deliberations happens publicly, and as such, they can reduce individual's independence from each other”, you highlight the importance of the social dimension of knowledge and deliberation. But, in your opinion, could this very phenomenon lead to distorted or biased knowledge?

LH: Yes, it can – we've seen lots of cases of that. We all have our blind spots, and future generations will certainly tell us “Oh, you were blind in this way and that way.” So, in that sense, there is a general appeal to epistemic humility in my arguments here. But sometimes it's also quite visible that, for example, certain groups of experts are very homogeneous: a very similar type of people, all may be educated at the same institutions, and thereby having a very similar mindset. And that's something where you would say: wouldn't it be wiser and probably give us better epistemic results if we tried to get a plurality of perspectives together, to be fully aware of all the blind spots we might have? This is why from the perspective I'm taking - that knowledge is a socially constructed phenomenon -, you immediately get a connection to the discussion about what Miranda Fricker called epistemic justice: justice in our role as bearers of knowledge. Because if you have groups that exclude certain people for the wrong reasons, then you also get epistemic deficits. It is morally wrong, but it is also epistemically dysfunctional: you impoverish your own possibilities of getting at the best possible set of perspectives on certain things.

SF: The role of experts has been increasingly undermined in recent years.  Do you think it is possible for them to regain credibility, or is the situation irreversible?

LH: Let me say first that it is true that experts have been publicly criticized a lot recently, and there are certain areas, such as climate change or vaccinations, where there is a lot of controversy. But many people who criticize experts in one field still rely on expert knowledge in many, many other fields of their life. And if you look at general studies about trust, e.g. trust in different professions, then scientists, and also medical experts, are still ranked quite highly compared to many other professions. So, the picture is a bit more differentiated. But if you ask what can be done better, I think there are a couple of strategies that we can do in the here and now and start immediately, as it were. There are already lots of initiatives ongoing. One thing is to improve the public dialogue between experts and citizens, in which experts also enter into personal dialogue with other. One empirical study that I quote in the book says that experts are often perceived as competent, but not as warm, in the sense that they would care about things. That is why it is important to show that experts care, and I think personal communication can be very important for that. 
Ultimately, I think there is a more fundamental challenge: given the levels of socio-economic inequality, and also the kind of differentiation of different parts of society into different life worlds, if experts are seen as belonging to a certain part of society and are perceived as speaking only for that group, that will remain a challenge for trust in experts. So ultimately, we need to ask deeper questions about what kind of social structures we actually want. What kind of educational settings do we want, how is access to opportunities actually regulated in society? I've come to think that a meaningful relationship between experts and citizens is very difficult to maintain if you have ever-growing socio-economic inequality. Because what you then often see is that experts are perceived as just being part of the “elite,” and not as working for the common good or for normal people. I think improving social justice, and also improving equality of opportunity, would in the long term also help to improve the relationships between experts and society.

SF: In your opinion, why does the idea of free knowledge create so much fear in society? I think that, in certain situations, there is an attempt to shape knowledge in one particular way because it's simpler or perhaps easier to control and explain.

LH: Well, I think it depends very much on what kind of context we're talking about. But knowledge can certainly be a way of controlling others, in the sense that if you can determine which facts are, for example, included in a report, which is then discussed politically, that can give you quite a bit of power. You see a lot of political processes these days, where it's not the case that we first agree on the facts, and then we argue about interest and values, but it's all intertwined and the facts themselves become a matter of dispute. On the one hand, when you say “open knowledge,” that sounds very positive in the sense that knowledge should be made available. Maybe you're thinking of open access of, of publications and these kinds of things. I agree that this is often very laudable and very important. 
What I would warn against, however, is the idea that by just making knowledge somehow public, for example by putting a PDF online somewhere, this would be enough. Many forms of knowledge are specialized and require expertise. You need someone who can explain things, who understands the broader relevance and can contextualize certain bits of information in a broader landscape of evidence. So, the way I'm thinking about the relation, especially between specialised knowledge and the general political discussion is that we also need people who do the translating job, as it were. Who brings specialized knowledge from the niches to the general discourse? Who can really create a dialogue and allow members of the general public to also question and maybe also doubt certain specific points? 
And I don't think you were implying this, but some people seem to dream of a return to a situation where people just trust experts unconditionally. They just do what the doctor says, no questions asked. Maybe this was the case historically, but I'm not sure it is the model that we should want for the future, because citizens should be taken seriously as moral equals. And just because someone is an expert in one field doesn't mean that they are an authority about everything, of course. So, I think a kind of critical questioning should be possible in many cases. And of course, I am aware that our lives are too short to do this in all cases where we depend on expert knowledge. But for example, if you have a disease, you do not only want to be told by the experts what you should do for your therapy, but also to ask questions or hear a second opinion and get in touch with other patients, so that you can hear what they experienced, and so on. So, I think we should also have a certain trust in people who are the recipients of expert knowledge, we don't need to think of them as “these stupid people who don't want to listen.” We should also take seriously that sometimes, they might have good reasons for doubting or questioning expert claims, for example because they belong to a group that has, historically, been treated badly by experts. That is another reason why dialogue and this possibility of asking questions and getting answers and deliberating about these things together are so important to me.

SF: In my presentation in Bologna, I really focused on the role of schools in society. Based on my studies for my master’s thesis and my PhD project, I believe that schools today are becoming increasingly corporatized, almost like factories. Do you think this is true? And if so, do you think there is a solution? Because if schools turn into factories, they lose their most important role: creating citizens.

LH: The way you frame it, “the school becomes a factory,” contains a judgement, and of course, I agree, that's not what a school should be. I cannot really speak to the empirics here because I think it is very different in different countries. What you do see in many countries is that there is less money for public schools and then, often, more privileged parents try to pay for private schools for their kids. And those schools can sometimes be very good in the sense that they really treat children as individuals and so on. But then that this is only the case for the privileged few and the rest gets maybe you would call the factory experience. But I really want to be cautious because I see a lot of very engaged, very passionate teachers really trying to do their best. And I think often the fault is not with them, but with the lack of resources that many public schools experience these days. 
I think there are fantastic concepts out there of how you could strengthen this dimension of creating citizens, how you can involve pupils, for example letting them select their own representatives or do projects with other members of society and learn to organize themselves as teams. So, the ideas are all out there. But what I really worry about is this combination of a lack of public resources and the flight of the privileged. As societies, we are apparently not willing to invest in public schools. And then it can become a self-reinforcing circle, because rich parts of society say they have to pray for private schools anyway, they don’t want to pay high taxes for public education. So, the whole idea that schools are really a common thing paid out of taxpayer money, and everyone goes there, can unravel. I think that this would be horrible, also because schools are places of encounters - of course, the kids meet each other, but the parents also meet each other. One idea that I think is very nice – even though it is just one little step and not the whole solution – is by Richard Sennett, who suggested that you should put schools at the boundaries between different parts of cities, so that people from these different neighborhoods would come to interact there in their everyday lives and the kids would become friends and so on. This is not the whole solution. We need better funding and all lots of other things. Maybe we also need more social recognition for the importance of the role of the teacher, that would be another thing. But this role of schools as places for the neighborhoods for people to get together seems very important to me. So, you said that they educate citizens, but in a way they also contribute to civic engagement on the part of parents. In Germany, schools are also often the places where voting takes place. This is a coincidence, but there's something symbolic about this being a public space where other public activities can also take place. And all of these things get undermined if you don't invest in public schools.

SF: In your book, you say that “we know as a group, not as individuals”. What happens if the group disappears? Are there any alternatives?

LH: I'm not sure whether in human life groups can ever completely disappear because we are social animals. I think it is often more a matter of reconfiguring what groups there are and how they interact. But I think there's one aspect, which is maybe where you're trying to get with your questions, and correct me if I'm wrong. One thing that my social account of knowledge emphasizes is that we’re dependent on each other and we need to complement each other, and we need to listen and each of us needs to be epistemically humble and recognize the limits of their own knowledge. And that, by the way, also holds if you're a top world expert in one area, you’re still dependent on others for so many other things! 
Now in the educational system – and I fear sometimes that starts already at schools – you also have this competitive element. It is very much about standing out from the others, knowing better than the others, getting a good grade, getting your little stickers because you're the best. And that can implicitly contain a message that you can know on your own. And if you're the top student, you don't need to listen to the others. They can learn from you, but you would not learn from them. So, there can be a wrong picture of meritocracy, which really overshadows this idea that we are better knowers if we work together in groups. And I think that is a difficult and problematic development. I don't know whether you should have schools completely without any grading, but I think it needs to be at least balanced with more emphasis on doing things together, learning to work in teams, and so on. Instead of just a kind of creating the impression that this is a competitive race where you need to be brilliant on your own.

SF: I think this question is closely related to my academic interest. In your opinion, how important are the ideas of recognition and social solidarity in rebuilding a community capable of defending democratic values?

LH: Well, at very fundamental level, you could say that without civic solidarity we will not have any chance of doing that. But on the other hand, I also want to say that a democratic society is, to use Rawls’s term, a “community of communities.” So, we will always have smaller groups and structures where people are solidaristic with each other and that can be good for democracy. But sometimes you also get group mechanisms that can be in tension with democratic values. 
So, I think there are very interesting questions here, which I don't explore in the book, but that have been on my mind for a while: how can you have, on the one hand, more solidarity insofar as it is needed for people and also helps them in their lives – but in a way that does not rely on there being this “other” that you need to delineate yourself from, but instead still has a constructive relation, and also, maybe, some kind of second order solidarity with other group. I mean, democracy as we currently think of it also has a competitive element in the sense that there are different parties, and we vote, and we do deliberate together, we hopefully come to compromises - but sometimes we have to also accept that there will be no compromise, sometimes we lose out. And so, I think while I'm very much in favour of calling for more solidarity, I also think we need to acknowledge that it is not the only ingredient. And the question is, what kind of solidarity does democracy need? There's a notion that got discussed a lot in German discourse, when Habermas and others brought it up: “constitutional patriotism.” This is a certain kind of solidarity: we all accept that there are certain rules of the game that we all agree on. And then, within that framework, there can be reasonable disagreement, but which doesn't question this framework. But I think what we see at the moment with certain forms of right-wing populism is that they've moved out of the reasonable disagreement within that framework, towards a questioning of the very principles of that framework. And that's worrying me a lot, but I'm certainly not the only one there.

SF: I think I have just one last question. When I read your book, I find a lot of both Honneth's and Gramsci's thinking. Is it just my impression, or were these two authors important for your book?

LH: It's very interesting that you're raising this. So, I worked with Axel Honneth a while ago and before I came to Honneth, I had already done a lot of work on Hegel. I think the core idea I took from both is the importance of recognition for human life. That is something that is very deeply rooted in my thinking. And I guess I might have first gotten it from Hegel, but then Honneth was also an influence on me – I wanted to work with him because I was convinced that his key ideas about recognition were right. I think it is a key factor of human motivation that you want to be recognised by others, but there can also be misrecognition, etc. And I just find this a very important and interesting lens for looking at human society. 
Now, Gramsci – it's very interesting because I've never worked on him. I had read him as a student and then sometimes, you know, returned to it, but it was never someone on whom I would be writing a paper on or so. But I think this idea about the way in which ideas function in society, that is something that I find extremely interesting. Another author that I want to mention where I'm also getting somewhat similar ideas from is Anthony Appiah, with his idea of the role of honor for social, what he calls “moral revolutions.” So, this is a related approach; it has both the Gramsci and the Honneth angle in the sense that people care about being well regarded and there are certain dominant ideas about what is well regarded. And when those shifts, then society as a whole can also shift. So that is something I'm very interested in. 
It's also, in a way, I guess, a commitment that comes with my decision to be an academic. This decision was in part informed by this assumption that ideas matter in society. For a long time, when I was a PhD student still, I had all kinds of possible futures in front of me, I imagined I could be an NGO worker or whatever. And then I did a few internships, and I came to realize that so many practical questions are influenced by implicit assumptions. For example, I did an internship in Morocco on sustainable development, and it was very much influenced by certain ideas about what actually economic development is, what's good about it, how do you steer it, and so on. And so, whenever I left academia for a short time to work in some practical field, I came back thinking that all these social practices are so much imbued by ideas. And there's this famous quote from Keynes where he says that “the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slave of some defunct economist”. And so that made me think: this is not the only level that matters for social change, but it is an important one, and it's one that I'm very interested in. And in that sense, my very choice to become an academic writer about these things is informed by the assumption that ideas matter. And I hope that this is not wrong and that they still matter!

SF: Thank you very much for your time!