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Wiredu’s consensus politics and the epistemology of disagreement: is agreement evidence?

Kwame Asante Fellow
· 5 replies · 213 views
Disagreement & expertiseAfrican & AfricanaAnalyticUbuntu philosophyDesmond TutuKwame Gyekye#akan#consensus#deliberation#wiredu
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Kwasi Wiredu argued that traditional Akan political decision-making aimed at consensus rather than majority rule. Councils of elders would talk, sometimes for a long time, until they reached a decision everyone could accept. He proposed that modern African states might learn from this: a non-party politics of consensus instead of winner-take-all elections.

Some critics, including other African philosophers, think Wiredu idealised the historical record, and that "consensus" could hide pressure on dissenters. I take that seriously.

But what interests me here is an epistemological point. As I read him, Wiredu distinguished agreement about what to do from agreement about what is true. Consensus doesn't require everyone to change their beliefs. It requires that, after full discussion, everyone can accept a course of action, with the dissenters' reasons heard and their concerns accommodated where possible.

That seems to dodge the debate about peer disagreement in an interesting way. The conciliationist asks whether you should change your belief when a peer disagrees. Wiredu's practice says: perhaps not, but you should keep talking until you can act together.

Two questions. Is agreement, when it is reached that way, evidence that the decision is right? Or is it only a way of living with disagreement? And does the difference matter, if the decision has to be made anyway?

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5 replies

  1. Thandeka Mokoena

    Fellow

    South Africa's transition is often discussed in these terms, and Desmond Tutu spoke constantly of ubuntu: a person is a person through other persons. The negotiated settlement and the truth commission were not consensus about the past. People disagreed bitterly about what had happened and why. They were agreements to go on together.

    So I'd answer your first question carefully. That kind of agreement is evidence that a decision can be lived with. It isn't evidence that it's correct, and sometimes the price of consensus was that some truths stayed contested.

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    1. Kwame Asante

      Fellow

      Thandeka, Javier, thank you, and between you I think the answer emerges. Agreement is evidence under two conditions: the participants' judgements were somewhat independent to start with, and the discussion actually shared evidence rather than just social pressure. Wiredu's ideal tries to secure the second. The critics' worry is that real councils failed the first. Gyekye, for what it's worth, defended a more moderate communitarianism that left more room for individual rights, partly because of this kind of worry.

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  2. Javier Morales

    Fellow

    There is a classic result on the evidence side: the Condorcet jury theorem. If each voter is independently more likely than not to be right, the probability that the majority is right rises towards certainty as the group grows. The catch is independence. A long council that talks until it agrees destroys independence: by the end everyone has heard everyone else. So consensus reached through discussion may be good for many things, but it is not the kind of agreement the theorem can certify.

    That said, discussion can also pool information that no one had alone, which voting can't. It's a trade-off, not a verdict.

  3. Akosua Mensah

    Contributor

    My grandmother used to say, ti koro nkɔ agyina: one head does not go into council. You need many heads, because one person sees only one side of the matter.

    But she also said the elders sometimes talked until the person who disagreed got tired, and that was not the same as agreeing. I think that is your critics' point, said by a farmer. In our cooperative we try to write down who disagreed and why before we vote, so tiredness can't erase it.

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  4. Aroha Tipene

    Contributor

    This is very close to how decisions are made on our marae. At a hui people speak in turn, often at length, and the elders listen for when the room can carry a decision. Nobody pretends everyone has the same view at the end. What matters is that every view has been given its time and that the decision is one the people can stand behind together.

    Akosua's point about tiredness is real here too. But I'd add that the long speaking is not only about evidence. It is about mana, the standing of each speaker, and about relationships that will continue after the decision. Philosophy that only asks whether agreement is evidence may be asking a smaller question than the hui is answering.

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