Respectful Debiasing in Democratic Deliberation

Democratic deliberation about health policy requires, as one of its inputs, ethical judgments from members of the public. These judgments may, however, be biased and unreliable-they may be systematically distorted by framing and emotion effects, by the effects of self-interest, and by a whole host of other cognitive and affective biases. Supposing we find evidence of biased ethical judgments, can we deal with these judgments in ways that promote reliability while approximating, as far as possible, the moral and political ideals of deliberation? In this paper, I explore this question by outlining and evaluating three respectful debiasing methods, which aim to mitigate bias but in a morally and politically respectful way. In brief, the methods are: (1) Improving the conditions of elicitation but accepting whatever judgments that result, (2) Suggesting to specific members of the public that they may be biased and leaving them to decide whether to debias, and (3) Surveying the public's standards for bias and applying these standards to their ethical judgments.