Abstract

Condorcet acknowledged that his Jury Theorem (CJT) builds on earlier conceptions of epistemic majoritarianism. The article will trace the history of these conceptions in the scholastic tradition and focus on opposition to epistemic majoritarianism in the seventeenth-century debate on the use of probable opinions. Many of the respective arguments indicate that the CJT cannot be applied under conditions of reasonable disagreement in which groups of experts differ about the truth of propositions because they accept different background theories, approaches, or world views. Such conditions often exist for judgments about political, economic, social, or ethical issues. The last section of the paper shows that the scholastic objections can be reformulated in a mathematical framework and thus be connected to the ongoing modern discussion on the CJT.