- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Action, Social Ontology, Social Epistemology, Philosophy of Agency, and 14 moreEpistemology, Normative Ethics, Trust, Collective Intentionality, Epistemology of Testimony, Testimony, Collective Epistemology, Collective Responsibility, Normativity, Meta-Ethics, Moral Psychology, Collective Action, Feminist Epistemology, and Epistemic Injusticeedit
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... more
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.
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In this paper I critically discuss Miranda Fricker's 'trust-based' view of collective testimony - that is, testimony that comes from a group speaker. At the heart of Fricker's account is the idea that testimony involves an 'interpersonal... more
In this paper I critically discuss Miranda Fricker's 'trust-based' view of collective testimony - that is, testimony that comes from a group speaker. At the heart of Fricker's account is the idea that testimony involves an 'interpersonal deal of trust', to which the speaker contributes a commitment to 'second-personal epistemic trustworthiness'. Appropriating Margaret Gilbert's concept of joint commitment, Fricker suggests that groups too can make such commitments, and hence that they, like individuals, can 'enter into the second-personal relations of trust that characterise testimony' (Fricker 2012: 272). I argue that this choice to appropriate Gilbert's concept of joint commitment betrays a deep problem in Fricker's account - a misconstrual of both the object and the subject(s) of the commitment a speaker makes in testifying. After developing this criticism, I outline an alternative way of construing the speaker's commitment, which can be applied to both collective and individual testimony.
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Jennifer Lackey (2018) has developed an account of the primary form of group assertion, according to which groups assert when a suitably authorized spokesperson speaks for the group. In this paper I pose a challenge for Lackey's account,... more
Jennifer Lackey (2018) has developed an account of the primary form of group assertion, according to which groups assert when a suitably authorized spokesperson speaks for the group. In this paper I pose a challenge for Lackey's account, arguing that her account obscures the phenomenon of group silencing. This is because, in contrast to alternative approaches that view assertions (and speech acts generally) as social acts, Lackey's account implies that speakers can successfully assert regardless of how their utterances are taken up by their audiences. What reflection on group silencing shows us, I argue, is that an adequate account of group assertion needs to find a place for audience uptake.
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According Philip Pettit, suitably organised groups not only possess ‘minds of their own’ but can also ‘make up their minds’ and 'speak for themselves'--where these two capacities enable them to perform as conversable subjects or... more
According Philip Pettit, suitably organised groups not only possess ‘minds of their own’ but can also ‘make up their minds’ and 'speak for themselves'--where these two capacities enable them to perform as conversable subjects or 'persons'. In this paper I critically examine Pettit's case for group personhood. My first step is to reconstruct his account, explaining first how he understands the two capacities he considers central to personhood – the capacity to ‘make up one’s mind’, and the capacity to ‘speak for oneself’ – before showing how he thinks these can be manifested in groups. With Pettit’s account duly reconstructed, I then turn to criticism, arguing that Pettit’s construal of making up one’s mind does not do proper justice to our first-personal self-understanding, nor to our characteristic interpersonal forms of engagement. This leads me, finally, to consider an alternative construal of ‘making up one’s mind’ and ‘speaking for oneself’ that is associated with the work of Richard Moran and which, I argue, could usefully be extended to groups.
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In this paper I explore the possibility and rationality of interpersonal mechanisms of doxastic self-control, that is, ways in which individuals can make use of other people in order to get themselves to stick to their beliefs. I look, in... more
In this paper I explore the possibility and rationality of interpersonal mechanisms of doxastic self-control, that is, ways in which individuals can make use of other people in order to get themselves to stick to their beliefs. I look, in particular, at two ways in which people can make interpersonal epistemic commitments, and thereby willingly undertake accountability to others, in order to get themselves to maintain their beliefs in the face of anticipated 'epistemic temptations'. The first way is through the avowal of belief, and the second is through the establishment of collective belief. I argue that both of these forms of interpersonal epistemic commitment can function as effective tools for doxastic self-control, and, moreover, that the control they facilitate should not be dismissed as irrational from an epistemic perspective.
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According to Margaret Gilbert, two or more people collectively believe that p if and only if they are jointly committed to believe that p as a body. But the way she construes joint commitment in her account – as a commitment of and by the... more
According to Margaret Gilbert, two or more people collectively believe that p if and only if they are jointly committed to believe that p as a body. But the way she construes joint commitment in her account – as a commitment of and by the several parties to ‘doing something as a body’ – encourages the thought that the phenomenon accounted for is not that of genuine belief. I explain why this concern arises and explore a different way of construing joint commitment, in order to avoid the concern. This leads me to propose a revised Gilbertian account of collective belief, according to which two or more people collectively believe that p if and only if they are jointly committed to p as true.
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This paper explores a bootstrapping puzzle which appears to afflict Philip Pettit’s theory of group agency. Pettit claims that the corporate persons recognised by his theory come about when a set of individuals ‘gets its act together’ by... more
This paper explores a bootstrapping puzzle which appears to afflict Philip Pettit’s theory of group agency. Pettit claims that the corporate persons recognised by his theory come about when a set of individuals ‘gets its act together’ by undertaking to reason at the collective level. But this is puzzling, because it is hard to see how the step such a collective must take to become a group agent – the collectivisation of reason – can be taken without
them already being an agent. I explore this puzzle by recounting Pettit’s account of the emergence of group agents. According to Pettit this process has two stages: a first stage in which a collective incurs the distinctive pressure exemplified by the Doctrinal Paradox, and a second in which the collective responds to that pressure by instituting decision-making mechanisms designed to secure collective rationality. After arguing that this second, response stage in Pettit’s account is not coherent, I conclude with the tentative suggestion that the personhood of groups should be seen as depending not only on the efforts of group members but also on the recognitive attitudes of other persons in a wider discursive community
them already being an agent. I explore this puzzle by recounting Pettit’s account of the emergence of group agents. According to Pettit this process has two stages: a first stage in which a collective incurs the distinctive pressure exemplified by the Doctrinal Paradox, and a second in which the collective responds to that pressure by instituting decision-making mechanisms designed to secure collective rationality. After arguing that this second, response stage in Pettit’s account is not coherent, I conclude with the tentative suggestion that the personhood of groups should be seen as depending not only on the efforts of group members but also on the recognitive attitudes of other persons in a wider discursive community
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The essays contained in this dissertation are about collective epistemic agency. That is, they are concerned with the question of whether (and if so, how) social groups might qualify as ‘epistemic agents’ — agents capable of exerting a... more
The essays contained in this dissertation are about collective epistemic agency. That is, they are concerned with the question of whether (and if so, how) social groups might qualify as ‘epistemic agents’ — agents capable of exerting a rational influence over epistemic states, such as beliefs, in the pursuit of epistemic goals. After a short introduction, I explore two dimensions of this overarching theme. The first is the subjective or doxastic dimension, which relates to groups’ ability to believe. Here I examine, in particular, the nature of collective belief (Essay 1), control over collective belief (Essay 2), and responsibility for collective belief (Essay 3). The second dimension of collective epistemic agency that I explore is the intersubjective or discursive dimension, which relates to groups’ believability, as it were. Here I attend specifically to the phenomenon of collective testimony — both to its epistemology (Essay 4) and to its metaphysics (Essay 5). Taken together, the essays articulate the broad contours of a novel, commitment-based account of collective epistemic agency. A collective belief that p, on this account, involves the group’s first-personal commitment to p’s being true, while collective testimony involves the group’s second-personal commitment to p’s being true.