There have been many discussions recently from philosophers, cognitive scientists, and psychologists about group polarization, with online and social media environments in particular receiving a lot of attention, both because of people's increasing reliance on such environments for receiving and exchanging information and because such environments often allow individuals to selectively interact with those who are like-minded. My goal here is to argue that the group epistemologist can facilitate understanding the kinds of factors that drive group polarization (...) in a way that has been overlooked by the existing research. Specifically, I argue that polarization can occur in part because of the ways that members of a group treat the group itself (as opposed to an individual member within that group) as a source of information, and in doing so makes their own position, as well as that of the group, more extreme. I refer to this as a structural factor in driving polarization, and argue that such factors can contribute to explanations of polarization that occurs specifically in an important subset of groups, namely online and social media groups in which little is known about other members within the group, what I refer to as anonymous, semi-anonymous and pseudonymous (ASAP) groups. (shrink)

(2013). A Group Epistemology is a Group Necessity: A Reply to Fallis and Mathiesen. Social Epistemology: Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 26-31. doi: 10.1080/02691728.2012.760667.

In this paper, I provide an analysis of the connection between shared emotions and shared epistemic states and undertakings. In so-doing, I aim to answer the following questions: In what sense do shared emotions help or hinder our epistemic enterprises? How do they shape the way that groups engage in these epistemic undertakings? In my analysis, I stress emotions are correlated with far-reaching changes in cognitive processing. I suggest that we should understand emotions within group contexts as ways of (...) thinking that can facilitate cooperation and create a joint epistemic outlook. Overall, my suggestion thus is that shared emotions should be seen as important for epistemic undertakings because they turn groups into unified epistemic subjects. (shrink)

This is an introduction to the volume The Epistemology of Group Disagreement (Routledge, forthcoming), (eds.) F. Broncano-Berrocal and J.A. Carter.

Jennifer Lackey presents a ground-breaking exploration of the epistemology of groups, and its implications for group agency and responsibility. She argues that group belief and knowledge depend on what individual group members do or are capable of doing, while being subject to group-level normative requirements.

Groups engage in epistemic activity all the time--whether it be the active collective inquiry of scientific research groups or crime detection units, or the evidential deliberations of tribunals and juries, or the informational efforts of the voting population in general--and yet in philosophy there is still relatively little epistemology of groups to help explore these epistemic practices and their various dimensions of social and philosophical significance. The aim of this book is to address this lack, by presenting original essays (...) in the field of collective epistemology, exploring these regions of epistemic practice and their significance for Epistemology, Political Philosophy, Ethics, and the Philosophy of Science. (shrink)

Group polarization—roughly, the tendency of groups to incline towards more extreme positions than initially held by their individual members— has been rigorously studied by social psychol- ogists, though in a way that has overlooked important philosophical questions about this phenomenon which remain unexplored. Two such salient questions are metaphysical and epistemological, respectively. From a metaphysical point of view, can group polarization, understood as an epistemic feature of a group, be reduced to epistemic features of its individual members? (...) Relatedly, from an epistemological point of view, is group polarization best understood as a kind of cognitive bias or rather in terms of intellectual vice? This book taxonomizes this possibility space by comparing four models which combine potential answers to the metaphysical and epistemological questions. The models we consider are: group polarization as a collective bias, a summation of individual epistemic vices; a summation of individual biases; and a collective epistemic vice. We defend a collective vice model of group polarization over the competing alternatives. (shrink)

Jennifer Lackey makes the case that non-summativist accounts of group belief cannot adequately account for an important difference between group lies and group belief. Since non-summativist accounts fail to do this, she argues that they ought be rejected and that we should seek an account of group belief which can do better by this standard. I briefly summarize Lackey’s argument, to give a sense of the role I see the central desideratum playing, and outline her arguments (...) for that desideratum. I then critique one of the positive arguments she offers for the desideratum, briefly outlining the notion of explication and why I think it would not license the appeal to the Group Lie Desideratum that Lackey’s argument depends upon. This leads me to reflections on the broader project of analysing notions of group belief, and the role I think such endeavours can or ought to play in social epistemology more broadly. (shrink)

In Group Duties, Stephanie Collins proposes a ‘tripartite’ social ontology of groups as obligation-bearers. Producing a unified theory of group obligations that reflects our messy social reality is challenging and this ‘three-sizes-fit-all’ approach promises clarity but does not always keep that promise. I suggest considering the epistemic level as primary in determining collective obligations, allowing for more fluidity than the proposed tripartite ontology of collectives, coalitions and combinations.

According to Sosa, knowledge is apt belief, where a belief is apt when accurate because adroit. Sosa :465–475, 2010; Judgment and agency, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2015) adds to his triple-A analysis of knowledge, a triple-S analysis of competence, where a complete competence combines its seat, shape and situation. Much of Sosa’s influential work assumes that epistemic agents are individuals who acquire knowledge when they hit the truth through exercising their own individual skills in appropriate shapes and situations. This paper (...) explores an extension of Sosa’s framework to a social setting in which groups constitute epistemic agents over and above their individual members. The claim is that groups can be ascribed knowledge in virtue of hitting the truth through exercising their competences in appropriate shapes and situations. While knowledge at the collective level may diverge from knowledge at the individual level, the competences of groups are nothing over and above the combined competences of their members. The ensuing view thus has implications for the debate over reduction and supervenience in collective epistemology. (shrink)

This book investigates how collaborative scientific practice yields scientific knowledge. At a time when most of today’s scientific knowledge is created in research groups, the author reconsiders the social character of science to address the question of whether collaboratively created knowledge should be considered as collective achievement, and if so, in which sense. Combining philosophical analysis with qualitative empirical inquiry, this book provides a comparative case study of mono- and interdisciplinary research groups, offering insight into the day-to-day practice of scientists. (...) The book includes field observations and interviews with scientists to present an empirically-grounded perspective on much-debated questions concerning research groups’ division of labor, relations of epistemic dependence and trust. (shrink)

In The Epistemology of Groups, Jennifer Lackey investigates the conditions for the possibility of groups telling lies. Central to this project is the goal of holding groups, and individuals within groups, accountable for their actions. I show that Lackey’s total account of group phenomena, however, may open up a means by which groups can evade accusations of having lied, thus allowing them to evade responsibility in precisely the way Lackey set out to avoid. Along the way, I also (...) take note of some interesting implications of Lackey’s view: that it makes groups uniquely susceptible to a lack of self-knowledge and that it creates an interesting mechanism by which groups can lie to themselves. (shrink)

Social epistemology is a many-splendored subject. Different theorists adopt different approaches and the options are quite diverse, often orthogonal to one another. The approach I favor is to examine social practices in terms of their impact on knowledge acquisition . This has at least two virtues: it displays continuity with traditional epistemology, which historically focuses on knowledge, and it intersects with the concerns of practical life, which are pervasively affected by what people know or don't know. In making (...) this choice, I am not blind to the allure of alternative approaches. In this paper I explain and motivate the knowledge-centered approach by contrasting it with a newly emerging alternative that has a definite appeal of its own. According to this alternative, the chief dimension of social epistemological interest would be rationality rather than knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper we formalize an approach to knowledge that we call Interrogative Epistemology, in the spirit of Hintikka’s “interrogative model” of knowledge. According to our approach, an agent’s knowledge is shaped and limited by her interrogative agenda. The dynamic correlate of this postulate is our Selective Learning principle: the agent’s agenda limits her potential for knowledge-acquisition. Only meaningful information, that is relevant to one’s issues, can really be learnt. We use this approach to propose a new perspective on (...) group knowledge, understood in terms of the epistemic potential of a group of agents: the knowledge that the group may come to possess in common after all members share their individual information. We argue that the standard notions of group knowledge studied in the literature, ranging from distributed knowledge to common knowledge, do not give us a good measure of a group’s epistemic potential. Common knowledge is too weak and too “static”, focusing on what the agents can coordinate upon only based on their actual, current knowledge, thus disregarding testimonial knowledge. In contrast, the concept of distributed knowledge is too strong, being based on the assumption that agents can completely internalize all the testimonial evidence received from others, irrespective of the limitations posed by their own interrogative agendas. We show that a group’s true epistemic potential typically lies in between common knowledge and distributed knowledge. We propose a logical formalization of these concepts, which comes together with a complete axiomatization, and we use this setting to explain both the triumphs and the failures of collective knowledge, treating examples that range from “collective scientific knowledge” [14, 35, 43] to the so-called “curse of the committee”. (shrink)

(2013). Veritistic Epistemology and the Epistemic Goals of Groups: A Reply to Vähämaa. Social Epistemology: Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 21-25. doi: 10.1080/02691728.2012.760666.

A long-standing debate in group ontology and group epistemology concerns whether some groups possess mental states and/or epistemic states such as knowledge that do not reduce to the mental states and/or epistemic states of the individuals who comprise such groups (and are also states not possessed by any of the members). Call those who think there are such states inflationists. There has recently been a defense in the literature of a specific type of inflationary knowledge—viz., knowledge of (...) facts about group minds or group self-knowledge (GS-K). In this paper I address whether some groups do possess such knowledge. I argue that we have good reason to think they do not. I do so by exploring the most explicit defense of such knowledge in the literature—Lukas Schwengerer’s (2022) defense—as well as other ways of defending this thesis and arguing that such ways are problematic. In the latter part of the paper, I explain why the two most popular inflationary approaches to group knowledge simpliciter are incompatible with there being GS-K. In doing so I work to show why even inflationists should reject the view that there is inflationary group self-knowledge. (shrink)

Jennifer Lackey’s manuscript covers a wide range of issues related to the epistemology of groups in a concise, unified, and persuasive manner. She provides novel accounts of group belief, justifica...

On January 4th 1954, six major American tobacco companies ran a full-page advertisement in more than 400 newspapers titled A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smoker.

List and Pettit's Group Agency is an extremely important book, spearheading a new wave of work on the metaphysics, epistemology and ethics of group agents. In this article, I focus on the epistemological thread in their discussion. After introducing the apparatus they use in analyzing the epistemic performance of groups, I criticize some elements and point to some ways in which the very same apparatus could be redirected to address them.Send article to KindleTo send this article to (...) your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.EPISTEMOLOGY IN GROUP AGENCY: SIX OBJECTIONS IN SEARCH OF THE TRUTHVolume 9, Issue 3Fabrizio CarianiDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.15Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. EPISTEMOLOGY IN GROUP AGENCY: SIX OBJECTIONS IN SEARCH OF THE TRUTHVolume 9, Issue 3Fabrizio CarianiDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.15Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. EPISTEMOLOGY IN GROUP AGENCY: SIX OBJECTIONS IN SEARCH OF THE TRUTHVolume 9, Issue 3Fabrizio CarianiDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.15Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

Poe's Law is roughly that online parodies of religious extremism are indistinguishable from instances of sincere extremism. Poe's Law may be expressed in a variety of ways, each highlighting either a facet of indirect discourse generally, attitudes of online audiences, or the quality of online religious material. As a consequence of the polarization of online discussions, invocations of Poe's Law have relevance in wider circles than religion. Further, regular invocations of Poe's Law in critical discussions have the threat of further (...) entrenching and polarizing views. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

A obra The Epistemology of Groups de Jennifer Lackey apresenta uma posição singular, não tão comumente defendida, no campo da Epistemologia Coletiva. Característico da posição da autora em outros temas (onde o aspecto crítico, a argumentação negativa, é sempre muito saliente), a posição defendida se estrutura a partir de um meio-termo entre as posições consolidadas na literatura. O campo da Epistemologia Coletiva é dividido por abordagens individualistas e coletivistas. Individualistas argumentam que uma análise restrita às propriedades dos indivíduos que (...) compõem a realidade social é suficiente para a explicação de quaisquer fenômenos. Aplicando essa ideia à Epistemologia Coletiva, teríamos a tese individualista de que crença, justificação e conhecimento de grupo devem ser entendidos a partir das crenças, justificação e conhecimento dos indivíduos que os integram. Coletivistas defendem que algumas propriedades epistêmicas de grupos não são redutíveis às propriedades epistêmicas de seus membros. Eles argumentam que há casos de divergência entre níveis, onde o grupo pode crer que p, estar justificado em crer que p, ou saber que p, enquanto nenhum membro crê, está justificado ou sabe. A abordagem de Lackey se posiciona significativamente no lado individualista do debate, concedendo uma posição coletivista apenas para a asserção de grupo, mas se mantendo individualista nas questões centrais da Epistemologia Coletiva: crença, justificação e conhecimento. (shrink)

J Harvey; Stereotypes and Group-claims: epistemological and moral issues, and their implications for multi-culturalism in education, Journal of Philosophy of Ed.

J Harvey; Stereotypes and Group-claims: epistemological and moral issues, and their implications for multi-culturalism in education, Journal of Philosophy of Ed.

Upshot: Richard Michod is professor and head of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. He met Ernst von Glasersfeld at the University of Georgia and was a member of the Thursday evening epistemology seminar group. In his essay he recalls the discussions he had with Ernst on the nature of evolution and adaptation.

Suppose an inquiring group wants to let a certain view stand as the group's view. But there’s a problem: the individuals in that group do not initially all agree with one another about what the correct view is. What should the group do, given that it wants to settle on a single answer, in the face of this kind of intragroup disagreement? Should the group members deliberate and exchange evidence and then take a vote? Or, (...) given the well-known ways that evidence exchange can go wrong, e.g., by exacerbating pre-existing biases, compromising the independence of individual judgments, etc., should the group simply take a vote without deliberating at all? While this question has multiple dimensions to it—including ethical and political dimensions—we approach the question through an epistemological lens. In particular, we investigate to what extent it is epistemically advantageous and disadvantageous that groups whose members disagree over some issue use deliberation in comparison to voting as a way to reach collective agreements. Extant approaches in the literature to this ‘deliberation versus voting’ comparison typically assume there is some univocal answer as to which group strategy is best, epistemically. We think this assumption is mistaken. We approach the deliberation versus voting question from a pluralist perspective, in that we hold that a group’s collective endeavor to solve an internal dispute can be aimed at different, albeit not necessarily incompatible, epistemic goals, namely the goals of truth, evidence, understanding, and epistemic justice. Different answers to our guiding question, we show, correspond with different epistemic goals. We conclude by exploring several ways to mitigate the potential epistemic disadvantages of solving intragroup disagreement by means of deliberation in relation to each epistemic goal. (shrink)

This article argues that philosophers and laypeople commonly conceptualize moral truths or justified moral beliefs as discoverable through intuition, argument, or some other purely cognitive or affective process. It then contends that three empirically well-supported theories all predict that this ‘Discovery Model’ of morality plays a substantial role in causing social polarization. The same three theories are then used to argue that an alternative ‘Negotiation Model’ of morality—according to which moral truths are not discovered but instead created by actively negotiating (...) compromises—promises to reduce polarization by fostering a progressive willingness to ‘work across the aisle’ to settle moral issues cooperatively. This article then examines potential methods for normatively evaluating polarization, arguing there are prima facie reasons to favor the Negotiation Model over the Discovery Model based on their hypothesized effects on polarization. Finally, I outline avenues for further empirical and philosophical research. (shrink)

Bishop and Trout here present a unique and provocative new approach to epistemology. Their approach aims to liberate epistemology from the scholastic debates of standard analytic epistemology, and treat it as a branch of the philosophy of science. The approach is novel in its use of cost-benefit analysis to guide people facing real reasoning problems and in its framework for resolving normative disputes in psychology. Based on empirical data, Bishop and Trout show how people can improve their (...) reasoning by relying on Statistical Prediction Rules. They then develop and articulate the positive core of the book. Their view, Strategic Reliabilism, claims that epistemic excellence consists in the efficient allocation of cognitive resources to reliable reasoning strategies, applied to significant problems. The last third of the book develops the implications of this view for standard analytic epistemology; for resolving normative disputes in psychology; and for offering practical, concrete advice on how this theory can improve real people's reasoning. This is a truly distinctive and controversial work that spans many disciplines and will speak to an unusually diverse group, including people in epistemology, philosophy of science, decision theory, cognitive and clinical psychology, and ethics and public policy. (shrink)

This book explores the epistemic side of racial and sexual oppression. It elucidates how social insensitivities and imposed silences prevent members of different groups from listening to each other.

Hostile epistemology is the study of how environmental features exploit our cognitive vulnerabilities. I am particularly interested in those vulnerabilities arise from the basic character of our epistemic lives. We are finite beings with limited cognitive resources, perpetually forced to reasoning a rush. I focus on two sources of unavoidable vulnerability. First, we need to use cognitive shortcuts and heuristics to manage our limited time and attention. But hostile forces can always game the gap between the heuristic and the (...) ideal. Second, we need to trust others, and trust makes us vulnerable. In particular, we need to trust experts whose expertise lies beyond our individual ability to vet. So we must rely on various imperfect signals and proxies, like institutional affiliation, to manage our trust. We are forced to use these imperfect and exploitable forms of reasoning, in order to cope with a cognitively overwhelming world. I present the hostile epistemology framework as a counterbalance to vice epistemology, which tends to locate responsibility for bad beliefs in the character of the believer. I draw two conclusions from my analysis. First: suppose we accept that that only communities and institutions can know about the world. This deeply social approach doesn’t solve the problem of expert identification. The individual still faces a problem: given their incomplete understanding, how should the individual pick which group to trust? Second: we might have hoped to get some kind of static picture of the right principles of reasoning — but hostile epistemology presents a different picture. We have to use risky heuristics and shortcuts, which hostile forces can game and exploit. We can respond by shifting to a different set of heuristics, but this simply shifts the location of our vulnerabilities. These new heuristics are also exploitable. There is no end to this, only a constant struggle to adapt. Limited beings in a hostile epistemic environment are locked in an unending epistemic arms race. (shrink)

This monograph investigates the collaborative creation of scientific knowledge in research groups. To do so, I combine philosophical analysis with a first-hand comparative case study of two research groups in experimental science. Qualitative data are gained through observation and interviews, and I combine empirical insights with existing approaches to knowledge creation in philosophy of science and social epistemology. -/- On the basis of my empirically-grounded analysis I make several conceptual contributions. I study scientific collaboration as the interaction of scientists (...) within research groups. Thereby, I argue that research groups and their role in scientific practice deserve more philosophical attention than they have hitherto received. In contemporary natural science, research groups are key to the formulation and corroboration of scientific knowledge claims prior to their publication. Specifically, I suggest epistemic difference and the porosity of social structure as two conceptual leitmotifs in the study of group collaboration. With epistemic difference, I emphasize the value of socio-cognitive heterogeneity in group collaboration. With porosity, I underline the fact that a research group as social structure does not entirely contain the inter-individual efforts necessary to formulate and corroborate knowledge claims. -/- In my analysis of research groups, I focus on the division of epistemic labor among group members. Through their complementary collaborative efforts single scientists engage in relations of mutual epistemic dependence. To deepen philosophy’s understanding of scientific practice in its diversity, a distinction should be made between opaque and translucent epistemic dependence. While opaque epistemic dependence involves asymmetries in expertise, translucent epistemic dependence does not. As epistemic dependence is facilitated by trust, I investigate the dynamics of epistemic trust in group collaboration. Trust among collaborating scientists is inherently incomplete, and I show that scientists make use of diverse strategies to increase and to supplement personal trust. Based on my reflections on trust and dependence, I give an account of the relation between individual knowing and collaboratively created knowledge in research groups. Together these investigations contribute to the discussion of philosophical methodology in the study of scientific practice and promote the use of empirical methods. (shrink)

Feminist epistemology and philosophy of science studies the ways in which gender does and ought to influence our conceptions of knowledge, the knowing subject, and practices of inquiry and justification. It identifies ways in which dominant conceptions and practices of knowledge attribution, acquisition, and justification systematically disadvantage women and other subordinated groups, and strives to reform these conceptions and practices so that they serve the interests of these groups. Various practitioners of feminist epistemology and philosophy of science argue (...) that dominant knowledge practices disadvantage women by (1) excluding them from inquiry, (2) denying them epistemic authority, (3) denigrating their “feminine” cognitive styles and modes of knowledge, (4) producing theories of women that represent them as inferior, deviant, or significant only in the ways they serve male interests, (5) producing theories of social phenomena that render women's activities and interests, or gendered power relations, invisible, and (6) producing knowledge (science and technology) that is not useful for people in subordinate positions, or that reinforces gender and other social hierarchies. Feminist epistemologists trace these failures to flawed conceptions of knowledge, knowers, objectivity, and scientific methodology. They offer diverse accounts of how to overcome these failures. They also aim to (1) explain why the entry of women and feminist scholars into different academic disciplines, especially in biology and the social sciences, has generated new questions, theories, and methods, (2) show how gender has played a.. (shrink)

When thinking about collective responsibility, we face a dilemma: on the one hand, we want to hold individuals, such as the responsible—or representative members accountable; on the other hand, we want to blame the entire corporation, as an independent entity over and above its composite parts. Such questions are taken up by Jennifer Lackey in her short but rich monograph. She points out that the two described ways of approaching collective responsibility are linked to the central divide between deflationist and (...) inflationist approaches to social philosophy. While deflationists understand collective attitudes as being entirely grasped by analysing “individual members and their states”, inflationists hold that “group phenomena are importantly over and above, or otherwise distinct from, individual members and their states” (p. 3). Amidst several thought-provoking and insightful philosophical ideas introduced and discussed by Lackey, there is one that stretches throughout the entire book: the will to overcome this traditional division between inflationism and deflationism. As such, the book can be understood as having two interrelated projects, one being negative and the second being positive. The critical project is an extensive critical analysis of both inflationary/non-summativist, as well as deflationary/summativist approaches to socio-epistemological phenomena. In five chapters, each devoted to one phenomenon, Lackey discusses group belief (chapter 1), group justified belief (chapter 2), group knowledge (chapter 3), group assertions (chapter 4), and group lies (chapter 5). (shrink)

In this paper, we offer an analysis of ‘group intentions.’ On our proposal, group intentions should be understood as a state of equilibrium among the beliefs of the members of a group. Although the discussion in this paper is non-technical, the equilibrium concept is drawn from the formal theory of interactive epistemology due to Robert Aumann. The goal of this paper is to provide an analysis of group intentions that is informed by important work in (...) economics and formal epistemology. (shrink)

Virtue Epistemology Virtue epistemology is a collection of recent approaches to epistemology that give epistemic or intellectual virtue concepts an important and fundamental role. Virtue epistemologists can be divided into two groups, each accepting a different conception of what an intellectual virtue is. Virtue reliabilists conceive of intellectual virtues as stable, reliable and truth-conducive cognitive … Continue reading Virtue Epistemology →.

In this paper we apply social epistemology to mathematical proofs and their role in mathematical knowledge. The most famous modern collaborative mathematical proof effort is the Classification of Finite Simple Groups. The history and sociology of this proof have been well-documented by Alma Steingart (2012), who highlights a number of surprising and unusual features of this collaborative endeavour that set it apart from smaller-scale pieces of mathematics. These features raise a number of interesting philosophical issues, but have received very (...) little attention. In this paper, we will consider the philosophical tensions that Steingart uncovers, and use them to argue that the best account of the epistemic status of the Classification Theorem will be essentially and ineliminably social. This forms part of the broader argument that in order to understand mathematical proofs, we must appreciate their social aspects. (shrink)

If individual knowledge and justification can be vanquished by epistemic defeaters, then the same should go for group knowledge. Lackey (2014) has recently argued that one especially strong conception of group knowledge defended by Bird (2010) is incapable of preserving how it is that (group) knowledge is ever subject to ordinary mechanisms of epistemic defeat. Lackey takes it that her objections do not also apply to a more moderate articulation of group knowledge--one that is embraced widely (...) in collective epistemology--and which she does not challenge. This paper argues that given certain background premises that are embraced by orthodox thinking in collectivist epistemology, the more moderate account of group knowledge cannot make sense of either psychological or normative epistemic defeaters. I conclude by offering some suggestions for how the more moderate proposal might avoid this result. (shrink)

In this paper, I introduce the emerging theory of judgment aggregation as a framework for studying institutional design in social epistemology. When a group or collective organization is given an epistemic task, its performance may depend on its ‘aggregation procedure’, i.e. its mechanism for aggregating the group members’ individual beliefs or judgments into corresponding collective beliefs or judgments endorsed by the group as a whole. I argue that a group’s aggregation procedure plays an important role (...) in determining whether the group can meet two challenges: the ‘rationality challenge’ and the ‘knowledge challenge’. The rationality challenge arises when a group is required to endorse consistent beliefs or judgments; the knowledge challenge arises when the group’s beliefs or judgments are required to track certain truths. My discussion seeks to identify those properties of an aggregation procedure that affect a group’s success at meeting each of the two challenges. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore what gives collective testimony its epistemic credentials, through a critical discussion of three competing accounts of the epistemology of collective testimony. According to the first view, collective testimony inherits its epistemic credentials from the beliefs the testimony expresses— where this can be seen either as the beliefs of all or some of the group’s members, or as the beliefs of group itself. The second view denies any necessary connection to belief, claiming instead (...) that the epistemic credentials of collective testimony derive from the reliability or truth-conduciveness of the statement that expresses the testimony. Finally, the third view claims that the epistemic credentials of collective testimony derive from the fact that it involves undertaking a collective commitment to trustworthiness, which makes the group susceptible to rebuke and blame if its testimony is not trustworthy. I argue that this last account holds the most promise for preserving what is distinctive about testimonial knowledge while still underwriting a robust epistemology of collective testimony. (shrink)