審議民主的支持者認為，審議民主一方面可以通過公民們集思廣益的辯難來避免專家政治的知識獨斷（民主原則），另一方面又能夠經由公民們追求「共善」的理性論證來提升民主決策的品質（知識原則），審議民主因此是通過「多元」與「審議」來兼顧公共決策中的民主參與與專業理性。本文首先從審議民主的文獻爭論中指出，知識原則與民主原則其實存在著矛盾，主要是因為審議民主的理論爭議中，對何謂「理性審議」欠缺一個知識論的說明。第二部分本文論證，專業知識之所以被認為比常識優越，是因為傳統上認為它是邏輯有效與經驗客觀的，但是「客觀的」經驗事實其實是滿載理論意義的（theory-laden），而理論的邏輯有效性是跟其它配套理論形成一種網絡式的互相解釋。因此知識真值的成立存在一種內在的不確定性。這種不確定性使得各種可能的理性觀點平等地浮現。因此，一個共識或公共決策得以做成，必須依靠某種超越這些同等理性的觀點之決斷，這個決斷本質上就是一種權力的支配。因此，審議民主一方面雖然可以解釋為決策權力的民主化，但是同時也是倚賴知識為工具來進行的權力支配活動。在第三部分中，本文則以高雄跨港纜車公民共識會議為例，說明它的舉辦、爭議過程與最後的共識是如何在各種知識與權力的歷史條件中互動產生。

In the process of making policy, technocracy can easily result in elitism;
appealing to people’s preferences can lack essential deliberation. Deliberative democracy proponents argue that this approach avoids the dogma of technocracy through citizen participation (the main principle of democracy),and at the same time promote the quality of democracy by employing citizen deliberations for pursuing the common good (a primary principle of knowledge). Deliberative democracy is therefore said to be capable of combining democratic participation and professionalism in public decisionmaking.In this article I first argue that knowledge has inherent uncertainty.Theoretically, various deliberative viewpoints can find different auxiliary conditions to support their own equally rational arguments. Consequently,promoting a certain viewpoint as a consensus requires power to suppress other equally rational arguments. Deliberative democracy is one way to democratize decision-making power, but it is also an activity of domination through the knowledge of presenting arguments. In the case of the Kaohsiung cable car citizen consensus conference, we can learn how deliberative actions interact with evolving historical contingencies. Any final consensus is therefore a consequence of a knowledge-power complex that includes both rationalspan deliberation and various “irrational” factors.