While it is fairly uncontroversial that it is an ideal of democratic systems that policies are responsive to the preferences of citizens, it is not clear what this ideal entails more precisely. In particular, it is not clear what ‘public preferences’ means—it might be public opinion as expressed in polls, the preferences expressed by those citizens who actively engage in political debate, or perhaps the preferences policy-makers perceive to be prevalent in the population (see Manza & Cook, 2002, pp. 631-632). Furthermore, it is not obvious what is required for policies to be responsive to such preferences. Typical explications merely hint at an answer, such as that politicians should take preferences into account or that policy should be influenced by public preferences (Brooks & Manza, 2006, pp. 474-475). How preferences should be taken into account or how much they should influence policy is left open—although most agree that “a perfect correspondence” is neither required nor desirable (Gilens, 2005, p. 778). We want here to set aside debates about what responsiveness is or should be. Instead, we focus on a more basic issue—namely, whether there is even a prima facie requirement that the policies of a democratic state should be responsive to citizens’ risk perceptions when these are in apparent conflict with expert beliefs.

The conclusions that can be drawn from the above are limited. We have merely suggested that Sunstein’s proposal of delegating much of the policy-making power to scientific experts doing cost-benefit analyses is not plausibly an ideal solution to risk regulation. So even if Sunstein is right that risk perceptions—of the unfiltered kind that are expressed in the various more or less precise calls for risk-regulating policies—are too tainted by their partial source in cognitive biases to be taken into account in policy making, his alternative may not be much better. At least, his alternative does not embody ideal responsiveness (i.e., responsiveness to counterfactual fact-based preferences). It is doubtful that ideal responsiveness can be fully realized in practice. It may be the case that the available realizable alternatives leave us with a dilemma: if we make policy responsive to expressed risk perceptions, we will be overresponsive to false or unscientific beliefs; but if we make policy unresponsive to these risk perceptions, we will be underresponsive to values. In other words, the seemingly simple ideal of responsiveness to values and nonresponsiveness to blunders may be an unattainable ideal. Call this the responsiveness dilemma.

The idea that the methods of cost-benefit analysis tracks people’s own valuations—their counterfactual fact-based preferences—is not universally accepted. It relies on extrapolation of behaviours in one context, in particular the labour market, to all other contexts, and on assumptions from economics and rational choice theory that are in many ways questionable (see, e.g., Anderson, 1993, ch. 9; Hausman, McPherson & Satz, 2017, ch. 9). Furthermore, the very same biases and heuristics that Sunstein is eager to expel from risk management through the use of scientific estimates are likely to influence people’s valuations of risks in willingness-to-pay studies. Finally, survey studies frequently register a large number of so-called protest valuations (where people state a willingness to pay either nothing or an implausibly large amount, or perhaps decline to state a number at all), indicating a rejection of the very idea of using willingness to pay as a valuation measure for public goods (Kahneman, Ritov, Jacowitz & Grant, 1993). Such responses are typically disregarded, which suggests that cost-benefit analysis is ill equipped to deal with preferences that are not of the type typically relevant in markets. Thus it does not succeed in capturing the counterfactual fact-based preferences of those who reject treating a given policy domain as appropriately governed by the ideals of a market economy.

At least in some places, it seems that Sunstein believes that cost-benefit analysis is a procedure that realizes this. Cost-benefit analysis builds on the approach assumed in decision theory, where (as mentioned above) preferences are a function of separate factual beliefs and value judgments. With respect to factual beliefs, cost-benefit analysis uses the best scientific estimates of the magnitude of risks. As such, it clearly meets the criterion of nonresponsiveness to blunders (although doubts can be had as to whether cost-benefit analysts neglect scientific uncertainty (McGarity, 2002)). With respect to the value judgments, cost-benefit analysts assign a monetary value to a given risk (e.g., a one-in-one-hundred-thousand risk of death per year) based on studies of what people are willing to pay to avoid such a risk, or of what they demand to be paid in order to accept bearing such a risk. Typical ways of measuring willingness-to-pay are studies of wage differentials between risky and safe jobs, and surveys asking people directly for their valuations. Sunstein suggests that “the governing theory” behind this approach “follows [people’s] own judgments about risk protection” (Sunstein, 2014, p. 86). Although he also stresses that the current practice does not fully realize the governing theory—in particular, it does not sufficiently take into account differences in risk valuations across individuals—he seems to believe that the general willingness-to-pay approach measures people’s own valuations of a given risk (as he says, “the limitations [of current theory] are practical ones” (Sunstein, 2014, p. 136)). By combining these valuations with the facts and assuming the framework of decision theory, cost-benefit analysis arrives at the preferences people would have had if they had believed the facts.

The normative appeal of this ideal of policy-responsiveness seems to us considerable (although one might want to consider some minimal criteria for what normative beliefs are above board as well). Its main problem is its hypothetical nature. We agree that the ideal form of democratic responsiveness is to the counterfactual fact-based policy preferences of citizens. But in order to implement responsiveness to counterfactual fact-based preferences, we must know (or have reasonably justified beliefs about) what specific preferences a citizen or group of citizens would have had, if they had believed the facts. Note that this is quite a lot harder than having a justified belief that citizens would not have had their actual preferences if they had believed the facts. The real challenge for those who wish to implement responsiveness to counterfactual fact-based preferences is to devise or point to some method for generating reasonably justified beliefs about the specific preferences citizens would have had if they had believed the facts. The only fail-safe way would be to make sure all citizens sincerely believe the facts, to have them determine their policy preferences given those beliefs, and then to make policy responsive to those preferences. But it is of course not possible to run a counterfactual fact-based version of the entire democratic process. So it seems that the best we can aim for is a method that we have reason to believe generates preferences that are reasonable approximations to people’s counterfactual preferences.

A very plausible explication of the values-not-blunders principle is then this: what democracy requires is responsiveness to the preferences that people would have had if their factual beliefs were true (or at least not contrary to scientifically established facts). [3] Call this their counterfactual fact-based preferences. In so far as policy preferences that ordinary people express currently—call this their actual preferences [4] —are different from their counterfactual fact-based preferences, actual preferences are not the kind of thing democracies need to be responsive to.

However, as we have seen above, the bounded rationality theory that Sunstein relies on provides positive reasons to think that people’s factual beliefs concerning risk are often wrong. And (at least to a large extent) the basic fact that nonexperts’ beliefs about the magnitude of risks often diverge from the best scientific estimates is not in dispute within psychology. So let us suppose that we can be fairly certain that at least some people have erroneous factual beliefs about the magnitudes of various risks. If it were possible to “implant” true beliefs into such people, then it seems plausible that their risk perceptions (i.e., their more or less precise beliefs about what policies should be enacted) would change.

A more important problem with the values-not-blunders principle is that the risk perceptions of ordinary people, being policy preferences, do not straightforwardly fall on either side of the normative-factual belief divide. Consider how an ideally rational person, of the kind one can meet in decision-theory textbooks, would form her policy preferences concerning a risky activity. Such a person would assign a probability and a value measure (“utility”) to each possible outcome of each possible policy, multiply each probability by its utility and sum these products, and advocate the policy that has the highest expected utility. So, even for such a person, a call for a given policy is a consequence of a combination of factual and normative beliefs. Indeed, a policy preference can be made consistent with any factual belief, given that the appropriate adjustments are made to the person’s normative beliefs. The mere fact that the person calls for a given policy does thus not in itself provide evidence that she has a factual belief that is in conflict with the scientific facts.

In many cases, however, policy choice depends on what unique answer is correct in the following sense: if p 1 is true, policy R 1 is required (or preferable), but if p 2 is true, R 2 is required. For example, if gun control works, then gun control is (arguably) required—but if gun control does not work, gun control is not required. In such cases, there is a gap between accepting Sunstein’s values-not-blunders principle, and delegating decision-making authority to scientific experts, even granting that ‘blunders’ includes every belief that is contrary to what science says. Public risk perceptions may play some role in filling that gap.

An important caveat needs to be added. In a number of cases, among which are many that are policy relevant, scientific knowledge comes with sizeable uncertainties attached. This needs to be taken seriously by policy-makers. Uncertainty, in effect, means that a number of states of affairs are consistent with the available evidence. In the case of risk, a plausible (but perhaps too simple) way of fleshing this out is to assign only an interval of probabilities to a given event, rather than a precise probability (for instance, the probability per year of dying from exposure to pesticides may fall in the interval from one in one million to one in two million). In the case of discrete possibilities—for example, whether gun control works to lower the number of gun-related deaths per year or not—uncertainty means that we cannot believe either discrete possibility very strongly (i.e., the maximum permissible credence for the proposition “gun control works” is relatively close to 0.5). Where uncertainty is involved, the scientific evidence thus does not permit us to give a unique answer to the policy-relevant question—e.g., what the probability per year of dying from pesticide exposure is, or whether gun control works to lower gun-related deaths. Instead, a number of unique answers are possible. It does not fall within the remit of scientific experts to select which of the set of scientifically permissible unique answers to use.

A natural solution to this problem is to add in a principle for selecting respectable factual beliefs. One plausible such principle, congruent with the ideal of enlightened decision making we mentioned in the introduction, would be to use science as a standard-setter. On such a view, any belief conflicting with the scientifically established facts is not entitled to democratic responsiveness. There are ways of questioning this principle, and especially ways of questioning whether (and how) it could be justified given standard understandings of public reason and the nature of factual disagreements (see, e.g., Jønch-Clausen & Kappel, 2015; 2016). However, we believe the price of giving it up is exceedingly large; since the scientific method is the best known way of generating true factual beliefs, it seems that denying that science can act as gatekeeper for beliefs is tantamount to giving up on having any standards of right and wrong in the empirical domain. So we will accept that beliefs in conflict with established scientific fact are such that democratic governments need not respond to them.

Is he right about this? One possible reason to think that he is not arises if one thinks that the general principle—that democracies should respond only to values, not to blunders—is false. But it is an open question what it would mean for the principle to be false, since it is unclear what the principle says. The problem is that “values” and “blunders” are not exhaustive of the possible descriptions we may give of people’s psychological attitudes. True factual beliefs, for example, are clearly neither values nor blunders. Sunstein’s principle, then, says that policies should be responsive to people’s normative beliefs, but need not be responsive to their false (or perhaps only obviously false) factual beliefs. This leaves entirely open what we should do when different people or groups hold divergent factual beliefs, none of which is clearly false. In other words, Sunstein’s principle has nothing to say about the criteria for selecting which factual beliefs, beyond the clearly false ones, should be allowed to play a role in policy making.

Sunstein can be seen as arguing that there is no such prima facie requirement. At least, he argues that citizens’ policy preferences with respect to the regulation of risk-creating activities should play a relatively limited role in policy making. As an alternative, he argues that a major role should be given to cost-benefit analyses performed by experts in regulatory agencies. More precisely, he supports the current (as of 2016) United States system, in which a central agency of the federal government (OIRA, the Office for Informational and Regulatory Affairs) has a mandate to review and reject, on the basis of cost-benefit analyses, regulations suggested by the various technical agencies dealing with environmental, health, and safety policies (such as the Environmental Protection Agency or the Occupational Safety and Health Administration). A main reason for this is a belief that the technical agencies’ regulatory priorities reflect public risk perceptions, rather than scientific estimates (Sunstein, 2002, p. 53, citing Roberts, 1990). The details of Sunstein’s proposals are complex, but the main underlying idea is that policy need not be responsive to public risk perceptions, since on his view these are largely (as we have seen above) the products of cognitive biases of various kinds. This conclusion he derives from a general principle: “democratic governments should respond to people’s values, not to their blunders” (Sunstein, 2005, p. 126). Since risk perceptions are based on blunders, democratic governments are not required to be responsive to them.

3.1.2. Cultural cognition

Kahan and his coauthors argue that cultural cognition theory further undermines Sunstein’s approach. Recall first what the cultural cognition theory says about how people form risk perceptions. On the cultural cognition model, risk perceptions are not formed in the way assumed by decision theorists (and by Sunstein)—that is, by combining pure factual beliefs about the numerical magnitude of risks (expected deaths, probabilities of ecosystem damage, and the like) with pure normative beliefs about how bad the various possible bad effects of a policy are. Instead, people assess (probably mostly unconsciously) the relationship between a possibly risky activity and their cultural worldview—and thus assess at the same time whether restricting the activity is justifiable, or perhaps required, according to their view of the ideal society. Thus, as we mentioned above, hierarchical individualists balk at regulation of industry because it questions the competence of elites (hierarchy) and assumes the inadequacy of market solutions (individualism). Conversely, egalitarians dislike the activity of capitalist industry generally, and thus welcome restrictions. Based on such general assessments of the value of activities and of restrictions on them, people form factual as well as normative beliefs about the risks and benefits of the activity, in a kind of post-rationalization procedure, in which motivated assessment of evidence concerning the effects of the activity and policy is central.[5] Consequently, “citizens invariably conclude that activities that affirm their preferred way of life are both beneficial and safe, and those that denigrate it are both worthless and dangerous,” and even the factual aspect of risk perceptions (could they be isolated) “express [citizens’] worldviews” (Kahan et al. 2006, p. 1105).

Kahan et al. argue that cultural cognition theory undermines Sunstein’s view in two related ways. First, they claim that Sunstein’s strategy of using cost-benefit analysis to realize the values-not-blunders ideal “borders on incoherence” (Kahan et al., 2006, p. 1105). In other words, the fact that risk perceptions are due to cultural cognition means that the cost-benefit approach does not realize the ideal embodied in the values-not-blunders principle. On one reading, this would merely be the claim we have just made: that cost-benefit analysis fails to respect values. But of course this would be completely independent of the cultural cognition theory. The values we have argued are overridden in cost-benefit analysis are ordinary normative beliefs (about the value of a human life, say), not culturally influenced factual beliefs (about how many lives a certain activity will claim). Second, they suggest that “bringing the role of cultural cognition into view severely undermines the foundation for Sunstein’s refusal to afford normative significance to public risk evaluations generally” (Kahan et al., 2006, p. 1004). That is, they suggest that acknowledging the role of cultural cognition undermines the case for nonresponsiveness to citizens’ actual policy preferences.

How might the fact that people’s risk perceptions are shaped by cultural cognition further undermine the cost-benefit analysts’ approach and/or strengthen the case for responsiveness to actual preferences? We suggest that cultural cognition points to two different facts that may be important: (1) that the relationships between values (in the form of cultural worldviews), factual beliefs, and policy preferences are not as Sunstein and others assume, and (2) that risk perceptions are rooted in cultural worldviews, and therefore are expressions of citizens’ values.

Let us first consider issue (1). Here, the claim would be that the fact that risk perceptions are due to cultural cognition means that they do not behave in ways that Sunstein and others assume—for example, that changes in factual beliefs do not change preferences in the way assumed—and that this undermines the strategy of cost-benefit analysis further and/or strengthens the case for responsiveness to actual preferences. Such a claim could be made in two ways: (i) Since both factual beliefs and policy preferences are due to the same underlying cause, we should not expect changes in factual beliefs to change policy preferences. As Kahan et al. put it, risk perceptions originating in cultural evaluation are not ones individuals are likely to disown once their errors are revealed to them. Even if individuals could be made to see that their cultural commitments had biased their review of factual information … they would largely view those same commitments as justifying their policy preferences regardless of the facts. Kahan et al. 2006, p. 1105

On this reading, an individual’s counterfactual fact-based preferences are likely to be the same as his actual preferences (i.e., the preference he would hold if he believed the facts is likely to be the same as the preference he currently holds). If that is the case, people’s actual preferences are at least a good approximation of their counterfactual fact-based preferences. Thus we have a solution to the problem of how to achieve responsiveness to counterfactual fact-based preferences—namely, to use actual preferences. Or, to put the matter differently, it is not true that responsiveness to actual preferences is overresponsiveness to faulty factual beliefs, since actual preferences are not influenced by factual beliefs at all—faulty or not. Reading (i) would, then, give reason to be responsive to citizens’ actual preferences.

Reading (i) faces two problems. The first problem is that the claim that changes in factual beliefs do not change policy preferences seems too strong, and it goes beyond what can be justified by the evidence that the cultural cognition theory relies on. Cultural cognition is primarily a thesis about how cultural commitments lead to biased assessment of evidence, such that one believes the evidence supports the factual beliefs that fits one’s cultural commitments best. But it is possible to debias people at least to some degree, and to bring them towards mutual agreement on the facts. And furthermore, there is evidence that such debiasing alters people’s policy preferences, bringing previously opposed parties closer together (Cohen et al., 2007). So it seems to us that the fact of cultural cognition does not justify ignoring the problem of overresponsiveness to false beliefs.

The second problem is that, at least in many policy domains, preferences may lose some of their claim to democratic responsiveness if they turn out to be too resistant to the facts. Resistance to changes in factual beliefs may reveal policy preferences to be based in kinds of value judgments that are unacceptable from a liberal-democratic point of view—e.g., a desire to regulate purely private behaviour (such as sexual behaviour or harmless commercial activities) or worldviews that deny the fundamental equality of all citizens (such as racist or sexist views). If it were the case that citizens’ policy preferences would not change regardless of what the facts are, we would at least need to examine the substantive content of those preferences in more detail—and to reserve judgment as to whether those preferences merit democratic responsiveness until we have a better understanding of what that substantive content is. (ii) Since policy preferences and factual beliefs are both caused by people’s cultural worldviews (i.e., their most basic values), any change in factual beliefs requires a change in basic values.

Suppose a given citizen actually has faulty factual beliefs, and that these beliefs are due to cultural cognition. According to reading (ii), the basic values this citizen actually holds are not the basic values she would hold in the counterfactual case where she came to believe the facts. The cost-benefit analysts’ method is essentially an attempt to disentangle actual factual beliefs from actual value judgments. The analysis then recombines actual value judgments with the true facts, and thereby generates a policy preference. But on reading (ii), such an approach does not succeed in revealing citizens’ counterfactual fact-based preferences. The cost-benefit method uses a citizen’s actual values, but cultural cognition shows that these are likely to be different from her counterfactual fact-based values. In other words, a citizen’s counterfactual fact-based preferences are not (as Sunstein believes) a function of her actual values and the facts, but a function of a new set of values and the facts.

Reading (ii) would show that the cost-benefit analysts’ method does not successfully track people’s counterfactual fact-based preferences. It also suggests that it is difficult to predict how people’s preferences would change if they sincerely came to believe facts that are in conflict with their cultural worldviews. Thus it lends support to the use of more deliberative methods, wherein real flesh-and-blood people are allowed to undergo a change in their views in response to facts and arguments (unlike methods like cost-benefit analysis, which seeks to infer what people would prefer from data about what they actually believe, value, and prefer). Consequently, the “deliberative debiasing” methods Kahan et al. argue in favour of using are supported by this reading (Kahan et al., 2006, pp. 1100-1104).

Kahan et al.’s other claim—that cultural cognition supports responsiveness to actual preferences—is not supported by reading (ii). At best, reading (ii) shows cost-benefit analysis to be a worse approximation of the ideal of responsiveness to counterfactual fact-based preferences than we might otherwise have thought. However, this merely makes the responsiveness dilemma worse, by making one of the horns of that dilemma worse. It is not obvious, however, that reading (ii) is of much help in deciding how to choose when faced with a responsiveness dilemma—that is, if we have to choose between responsiveness to actually expressed preferences and (something like) cost-benefit analysis.

Let us now move to issue (2), the fact that cultural cognition theory shows risk perceptions to be expressions of values. Kahan et al. state that “when expert regulators reject as irrational public assessments of the risks associated with putatively dangerous activities … they are in fact overriding values” (Kahan et al. 2006, p. 1105). It is, unfortunately, not clear what is meant by “public assessments of … risks” in this quote. On the one hand, the phrase might refer to policy preferences, such as that a given activity A is dangerous and should be regulated. On the other hand, it might refer to people’s purely factual beliefs about the magnitude of risks. Let us now consider each of these two readings of issue (2) in turn (we call them readings (iii) and (iv) to avoid confusion with (i) and (ii) above): (iii) Experts are overriding G 1 ’s values because they implement a policy R 2 that is different from G 1 ’s preferred policy R 1 .

Recall that the kind of case we are interested in has the following structure: (a) the public wants a technology or another potentially risky thing restricted, (b) this policy preference is based on a belief that the thing in question is risky, and (c) expert consensus is that the thing is not very risky. In the group-based framework of cultural cognition, ‘the public’ should be replaced with some cultural group. So we assume that a cultural group G 1 wants the activity A restricted through policy R 1 , and that G 1 wants this because they believe p, that A carries certain risks. The experts, based on sound science, believe Øp (i.e., that A does not carry those risks) and therefore implement a policy R 2 that does not restrict A appreciably.

In cases of this kind, it is hard to see why we should accept that implementing a policy other than R 1 overrides G 1 ’s values. By assumption, G 1 prefers R 2 because they believe p—the implication being that they would not have preferred R 1 if they had believed Øp (i.e., that R 1 is not their counterfactual fact-based policy preference). Once more, there are now two possibilities for what G 1 ’s policy preference would then have been if they had believed Øp. First, G 1 might have preferred, or at least acquiesced to, R 2 , the policy implemented by the experts. In that case, the expert decision procedure would have achieved its ideal aim. Thus there would be no reason to be responsive to G 1 ’s actual preference, and we would have no reason to object to the experts’ decision procedure either. Second, G 1 might have preferred some third possible policy R 3 . In that case, we would still have no reason to demand that policy be responsive to G 1 ’s actual preferences. However, there would be reason to complain that the experts’ decision procedure has failed to be responsive to G 1 ’s values. Insofar as we cannot tell a priori whether G 1 would have preferred (or acquiesced to) R 2 or not, the conclusion that follows is that we cannot be confident that the experts’ decision procedure is responsive to G 1 ’s values, in the absence of some effort to determine what G 1 ’s counterfactual fact-based preferences are.

But perhaps the assumption that G 1 prefers R 1 because they believe p is not correct. That is, perhaps the case is one in which G 1 would prefer R 1 regardless of the facts—G 1 ’s factual belief that A is dangerous is merely a post hoc rationalization of the group’s policy preference, which it holds for other reasons than that A is dangerous. Kahan and Braman (2008, pp. 51-54) suggest that it is only in cases of this kind—where people would not alter their policy preference even if they came to believe the facts—that there is a demand for policy responsiveness to preferences. At the same time, however, they speculate that people would not be inclined to hold on to their preferences if they were to realize that their factual beliefs are the product of cultural cognition, at least in the case they are discussing (cases of self-defence). The same might well be the case in typical instances of risk regulation. In the case where people would hold on to their policy preferences after coming to believe the facts, the problem we mentioned under reading (i) above recurs: G 1 ’s preference for R 1 has some basis other than that A is in fact risky, and that basis may show the preference to be less reasonable than it initially seemed.

Consider, for example, the case of regulation of industry pollution. Recall that hierarchical individualists tend to be sceptical of such regulation because it casts doubt on the competence of societal elites and the ability of market forces to solve problems, and consequently tend to believe that the risks associated with industry pollution are low. But suppose hierarchical individualists were brought to sincerely believe that some industry’s emission of a certain chemical C creates severe risks to the health of those exposed, but that they persisted in their policy preference (not to regulate). What could the basis of such that preference then be, other than a blatant disregard for the welfare of those who will likely suffer health problems? A similar problem arises for egalitarians, who are inclined to approve of restrictions of “commerce and industry, which they see as sources of unjust social disparities” (Kahan, 2012, p. 728), and who consequently tend to believe that the risks associated with industry pollution are high. Suppose egalitarians persisted in their desire to regulate emissions of C even after having sincerely accepted that C does not pose a serious risk to anyone. The only possible basis of such a preference is then a general anti-industry agenda. By persisting in their preferences, both the hierarchical individualists and the egalitarians would violate basic norms of risk regulation, such as that people have some right to be protected against serious risks and that harmless private behaviour cannot be restricted.

Thus it seems to us that in the case of risk regulation there is reason to be sceptical of policy preferences that would not change if people were to come to believe the facts. So, while the possibility that policy preferences would not change if people came to believe the facts does provide some reason to be responsive to those preferences, there will simultaneously be a reason not to be responsive. However, in cases where people merely overestimate risk (or underestimate, as the case may be), persisting in policy preference is less problematic. It may reflect, for example, a judgment that the aim of protecting people’s health is very important relative to the aim of securing favourable conditions for business. But this is just the general problem with cost-benefit analysis we identified above. It is not obvious that the phenomenon of cultural cognition adds much to that problem. (iv) Experts are overriding G 1 ’s values by denying the pure factual beliefs of G 1 (i.e., p), since those factual beliefs express values.

Since believing p is an expression of G 1 ’s values, the validity of G 1 ’s values is denied when expert regulators implement a policy based on the fact that Øp is true. We think the view that merely denying (a group of) citizens’ factual views is to be underresponsive to their values has both strange and dangerous implications. Suppose, for example, that the experts in this case implement G 1 ’s preferred policy R 1 , but also believe (and state publicly) Øp. On the view considered, the implication would be that the experts’ policy making is insufficiently responsive to the values of G 1 in this case, even though G 1 got its preferred policy implemented. That seems to us a strange implication, which requires an excessive demand for responsiveness.

Alternatively, consider a case like the one we mentioned above, where G 1 would at least acquiesce to the expert’s implementation of R 2 if they were to come to believe the truth (i.e., Øp). One might think that, since the belief p is an expression of G 1 ’s values, implementing R 2 exhibits a lack of responsiveness to G 1 ’s values even though R 2 is G 1 ’s counterfactual fact-based preference (or a least would be acceptable to G 1 in those counterfactual circumstances). In effect, this would amount to denying that policy preferences that unequivocally depend on factual beliefs that do not meet the required correctness criterion (i.e., beliefs that are blunders or contrary to scientifically established facts) do not merit democratic responsiveness. This seems to us a dangerous implication. In factual matters, priority must be given to the truth, and to our best methods for finding out the truth. And in fact, Kahan et al. seem to share our worry here. In a response to Sunstein’s response to their original paper, Kahan and Slovic “admit to a fair measure of ambivalence about when beliefs formed as a result of cultural cognition merit normative respect within a democratic society,” and concede that “if we came off sounding as if we think democracy entails respecting all culturally grounded risk perceptions, no matter how empirically misguided they might be, we overstated our position” (Kahan & Slovic, 2006, pp. 170-171).