Abstract

This chapter illustrates how philosophy and political science can inform one another by providing an overview of philosophical contributions the authors have made on the topic of political polarization. The authors outline three contributions they have made to understanding political polarization, particularly of the epistemic kind, discussing work that gives clearer terminology for and ways of measuring polarization, precise mechanistic accounts of polarization, and a novel normative view about a possible source of polarization that casts polarization as a possible outcome of rational, but limited, agents interacting. This last contribution illustrates, contra recent work, how dynamics akin to epistemic bubbles and echo chambers can develop without associated epistemic vices. Taken together, these projects can serve as a guide for producing philosophical work which both contributes to a mainstream disciplinary literature as well as informs cross-disciplinary, empirical literatures in the social sciences.