From Aristotle to algorithms: the evolving landscape of deliberation

What is deliberation?

What is deliberation? How is it different from a conversation or a discussion? Does a deliberation have to arrive at agreed decisions?

The word deliberation stems from the Latin verb deliberō, which literally means: to weigh well. For an individual, it is the process of careful consideration. In a group context, deliberation often refers to a form of communication where participants thoughtfully weigh and reflect their views and preferences, with mutual respect.

Philosophical foundations

The concept of deliberation can be traced back to Aristotle, who described it as a process for individuals to find means for achieving good ends, or eudaimonia¹ (wellbeing). Other philosophers see it from a group perspective. John Stuart Mill² , a thinker from the 19th-century, understood deliberation as a way for groups to pursue the greatest happiness for the greatest number. John Dewey³, a 20th-century philosopher, respected Mill’s ideas on reason but shifted focus to transformation. For Dewey, deliberation was less about calculating for maximised outcomes and more about growth and learning⁴. He saw it as a transformative process that supports continuous learning among participants. This perspective has inspired many of us today when it comes to thinking about deliberation.

Modern reflections

Modern researchers and practitioners often view deliberation as a process for building consensus that informs decision making. It is often discussed with public discourse and the potential to influence the formation of public policies. This gives an impression that deliberation should produce a clear outcome, which can then be used to evaluate whether the process was “good” enough.

The evaluation of what was good enough has however shifted. In recent years, scholars have highlighted the distinction between the “aggregative” dimension of deliberation, which focuses on counting preferences to determine majority-agreed views, and the “transformative” dimension of deliberation, which focuses on encouraging the revision of opinions for reaching shared understanding⁵⁶. This distinction is important, shifting the evaluation of “good deliberation” beyond its capacity of finalising decisions but further sees the importance of the intrinsic value of deliberation: the value of participants taking part, learning and transforming.

The rise of digital deliberation

In this evolving context, digital deliberation emerged. It is about the process that is taken partially or entirely online, facilitated through various forms of mediated communication, such as mass media, digital tools or online platforms. Over the past decade, advances in technology and growing adoption of digital platforms have led to waves of experiments integrating technology into deliberation. These efforts aim to enhance public discourse and inform decision making with the help of technologies.

Some well-known examples include:

• Opinion collection and analysis platforms such as Polis, which creatively use collected opinions as the content to survey for public reaction. They have shown success in finding opinions that can be agreed across diverse groups and present those as potential solutions for policy issues, even divisive ones;

• Structured dialogue tools such as Stanford’s Online Deliberation Platform, which is designed for video-based focused small-group discussion facilitated with timed chances to speak in turns and have run deliberation at scale, even national-wide conversations;

• and many participatory platforms such as Your Priorities, which focus on encouraging interactive online discussion, suggesting users to engage with each other's comments and enabling idea generation, refinement and prioritisation;

Looking ahead: AI and the future of deliberation

Most recently, the rapid advancements of AI and machine learning have pushed these endeavours even further, opening up a new chapter of AI deliberation. This new horizon considers the use of AI to scale deliberation⁷ by expanding its reach, size, and frequency, as well as exploring AI’s role in facilitating deeper understanding.

A notable example is DeepMind’s “Habermas Machine”⁸, an AI that iteratively generates better “common ground” in deliberation, pushing the boundary of how consensus could be achieved. While such applications bring hopes for scaling deliberation, they also raise concerns particularly about the steerability of deliberative outputs and the role and agency of humans⁹ in shaping the future of deliberative democracy.

The landscape of deliberation is evolving, and accelerating at an unprecedented pace. What future will we create? What role do we want to play?

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In CrownShy, we run community calls and bring people interested in the overall landscape of ever-changing deliberation together. Whether you are working on a research topic, designing a cutting-edge process, building the most innovative deliberative tools and platforms, and more, we’d love to hear from you.

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