Analyzing Social Knowledge¹

[1] The analysis of social knowledge stated and defended herein traces its origin to its brief statements in Corlett (1991a, 1991b) and to a more substantial statement and defense in Corlett (1996, chapters 4–5). The only alternative social epistemic reliabilist position of which I am aware is that sketched in Schmitt (1994).

Abstract

In the tradition of justified true belief theory, I provide an epistemic responsibility‐based philosophical analysis of collective knowledge which is both coherentist and reliabilist.

Keywords:

• Acceptance
• Belief
• Coherentism
• Collective
• Epistemology
• Externalism
• Foundationalism
• Harry G. Frankfurt
• Alvin Goldman
• Internalism
• Justification
• Knowledge
• Keith Lehrer
• Responsibility
• Social Epistemic Reliabilism
• Truth

Acknowledgements

Gratitude is expressed both to Kay Mathiesen and an anonymous referee for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Notes

[1] The analysis of social knowledge stated and defended herein traces its origin to its brief statements in Corlett (1991a, 1991b) and to a more substantial statement and defense in Corlett (1996, chapters 4–5). The only alternative social epistemic reliabilist position of which I am aware is that sketched in Schmitt (1994).

[2] See J. Angelo Corlett (1996), Steve Fuller (1988), Alvin Goldman (1999), Helen Longino (1990), Frederick Schmitt (1994) and Synthese volume 73 (1) (1987, 1–204), among others.

[3] The notion of a “common goal” or “homogeneity of existing goals” is said to constitute the phenomenon of “entification from the inside” in Michael Bacharach (2006, 73, 75). “Entification” is the construal of something or some collection of persons as an entity, a group.

[4] Bacharach (2006, 80): “… the behaviour of an enduring group as the joint product of two sets of influences, from the group on its members and from the members on the group.”

[5] Bacharach (2006, 74). It is no wonder that it is argued that “Whether or not groups are a fact of life they are certainly a fact of theory,” and that “we cannot do without them” (2006, 72). The causes and effects of group identification are discussed on pp. 76f.

[6] Corlett (1996, chapter 4). The analysis of collective belief that I defend is not that of simple, but of modified, summativism.

[7] Margaret Gilbert (1989). For an assessment of Gilbert’s non‐summativism about group beliefs, see Kay Mathiesen (forthcoming). For an analysis of summativism to which Gilbert (1989) is in part a reply, see Quinton (1975/76).

[8] A similar point can be found in Bacharach (2006, 82): “To say that two agents, P1 and P2, have common interests is deeply ambiguous, because this statement does not tell us in what matters they have common interests, and in particular whether, given their options for action, they have identical interests over all the possible outcomes, or only some; it does not make clear whether they have any interest‐relevant actions at all. The characterization is also ambiguous about he agents’ perceptions and beliefs: does ‘having common interests’ imply that the agents see that they have these interests in common?”

[9] Thus group interests and goals and beliefs that originate from them are matters of degree, based on the strength of the “identifying effect of common interests” present in the group. In other words, group belief is a matter of degree contingent on the extent to which group members construe the group objective as the furtherance of a particular common interest, as argued in Bacharach (2006, 87, 89). Group membership, interests, goals and, I would add, beliefs, are not zero‐sum matters. This is especially true in light of the “unknown remainder problem” and the “strategic remainder problem” (Bacharach 2006, 130–1). Nonetheless, there is the “reasoning effect” in groups where group identity prompts collective reasoning (Bacharach 2006, 135).

[10] Bacharach (2006, xviii). Bacharach’s notion is called “variable frame theory” and is “an analysis of rational play in games which takes account of frames” (Bacharach 2006, 14).

[11] Plato, Theaetetus, in Cooper and Hutchinson (1987).

[12] The following taxonomy of general theories of social epistemic justification differs from that found in Schmitt (1994, 276f).

[13] This idea is borrowed from Keith Lehrer (2000b).

[14] For a helpful alternative account of this notion for individual epistemic agents, see James A. Montmarquet (1993).

[15] Saul Kripke (1979, 248–9). For a critical assessment of Kripke’s belief puzzle, see J. Angelo Corlett (1989). For a broader discussion of the nature of belief, see Bernard Williams (1973).

[16] This notion of epistemic intentionality is borrowed from the notion of intentional action found in Alvin Goldman (1970). This notion of the nature of intentionality is consistent with an important aspect of Harry Frankfurt’s conception of higher‐order volition where this entails that one “really want” to do that for which he or she is morally responsible. Applied to epistemological contexts, one might argue that intentionally held beliefs are those that cognizers accept in the sense that cognizers really want to accept them. And this would seem to hold for both individual and collective cognizers.

[17] Of course, my version of social epistemic voluntarism, based on a metaphysical compatibilism, is not shared by all social epistemologists. Social epistemic involuntarism is discussed in Mathiesen (forthcoming).

[18] Note that my analysis of collective belief, acceptance, justification, responsibility, and knowledge is one that concerns the possibility of collective propositional knowledge. But a group might also be or fail to be epistemically responsible insofar as it engages or fails to engage in certain epistemic practices in deciding how to evaluate beliefs, a point I owe to Mathiesen.

[19] Plato, Cratylus, 428d, in Cooper and Hutchinson (1987).

[20] As Lehrer puts it: “… beliefs arise in us without our willing that they do and sometimes against our will” (Lehrer 2000a, 640).

[21] While Lehrer does not link his notions of individual acceptance, preference, and reasonableness to the concept of epistemic responsibility, I herein endeavor to do so for my purposes of analyzing the nature of collective epistemic responsibility.

[22] Bonjour (1985) argues, in the context of epistemic responsibility, that beliefs presented to a cognizer involuntarily can often be doubted and rejected.

[23] I say “’belief’” here because it is not a proposition to which the cognizer assents sincerely.

[24] See Harry G. Frankfurt (1988). For a rather select list of critical discussions of Frankfurt’s analysis or moral responsibility, and competing analyses, see Ethics (volume 101, 1991, 236–321), John Martin Fischer (1986, 1994), Fischer and Ravizza (1993, 1998), The Journal of Ethics (vol. 1 (1), 1997; vol. 3 (4), 1999; vol. 4 (4), 2000), Ferdinand Schoeman (1987), Peter van Inwagen (1983), R. Jay Wallace (1996), and Susan Wolf (1990).

[25] PAP requires the ability to do otherwise for freedom sufficient for moral responsibility.