Collective distraction: questions and the public sphere

Abstract Consider a society with vast income and wealth inequality—a society that has an overclass that enjoys tremendous riches and an underclass that suffers from abject conditions. On a visit there, you gather that the public’s attention is consumed by the question, Should the government fund space tourism? . Despite your belief in free speech in the public sphere, you might think something is wrong with this particular issue consuming so much attention in such a society. Should members of the public not be calling attention to their failure to distribute resources fairly? Many would share this intuition. Yet, it is hard to specify what is wrong with putting the question Should the government fund space tourism? up for public debate. I attribute this hardship to political epistemologists’ undue focus on the doxastic realm and their subsequent blindness to the zetetic realm. Epistemically speaking, the standard view of political speech classifies questions as requests for information. I argue against this account of questions and present a way in which we can effectively undermine the idea that questions are epistemically innocent by appealing to an epistemic norm of relevance. While my account unmasks the epistemic defect of questions raised in the public sphere, it also shows the limitations of epistemic critique and occasions further theorizing on a moral theory of public relevance.