Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-ph5wq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T11:48:52.265Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

GROUP AGENCY AND EPISTEMIC DEPENDENCY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 October 2012

Abstract

Modern epistemic questions have largely been focused around the individual and her ability to acquire knowledge autonomously. More recently epistemologists have begun to look more broadly in providing accounts of knowledge by considering its social context, where the individual depends on others for true beliefs. Hardwig explains the effect of this shift starkly, arguing that to reject epistemic dependency is to deny certain true beliefs widely held throughout society and, more specifically, it is to deny that science and scholarship can provide true belief. Alternatively, Hardwig argues that beliefs could be granted to communities or groups but denied to individuals. This paper approaches these broad assertions using a group agency model from List and Pettit. Through a discussion of the ‘epistemic desideratum’ of group agents, I conclude that List and Pettit give us reason to accept some of Hardwig's concerns, but that attributing beliefs to groups does not require us to deny them to individuals, rather an individual can use a group agent as a source of epistemic dependence.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Dietrich, F. and List, C. 2004. ‘A Model of Jury Decisions Where All Jurors have the Same Evidence.’ Synthese, 142: 175202.Google Scholar
Faulkner, P. 2002. ‘On the Rationality of our Response to Testimony.’ Synthese, 131: 353–70.Google Scholar
Foley, R. 2005. ‘Universal Intellectual Trust.’ Episteme, 2(1): 512.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giere, R. N. 2006. ‘The Role of Agency in Distributed Cognitive Systems.’ Philosophy of Science, 73 (Dec.): 710–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giere, R. N.. 2009. ‘An Agent-Based Conception of Models and Scientific Representation.’ Synthese (online, 1 April).Google Scholar
Goldman, A. I. 2001. ‘Experts: Which Ones Should You Trust?Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 63(1) (July): 85110.Google Scholar
Goldman, A. I.. 2009. ‘Social Epistemology: Theory and Applications.’ Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 84: 118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hardwig, J. 1985. ‘Epistemic Dependence.’ Journal of Philosophy, 82(7) (July): 334–46.Google Scholar
Hardwig, J.. 1991. ‘The Role of Trust in Knowledge.’ Journal of Philosophy, 88(12) (Dec.): 693708.Google Scholar
Knorr Cetina, K. 2007. ‘Culture in Global Knowledge Societies: Knowledge Cultures and Epistemic Cultures.’ Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 32(4): 361–75.Google Scholar
Kusch, M. 2002. Knowledge by Agreement: The Programme of Communitarian Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
List, C. 2005. ‘Group Knowledge and Group Rationality: A Judgment Aggregation Perspective.’ Episteme, 2(1): 2538.Google Scholar
List, C.. 2008. ‘Distributed Cognition: A Perspective from Social Choice Theory.’ In Albert, M., Schmidtchen, D. and Voigt, S. (eds), Scientific Competition: Theory and Policy, Conferences on New Political Economy, vol. 24, Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck.Google Scholar
List, C. and Pettit, P. 2011. Group Agency: The Possibility, Design and Status of Corporate Agents. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oreskes, N. and Conway, E. M. 2010. Merchants of Doubt. New York: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Page, S. E. 2007. The Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Siegel, H. 1988. ‘Rationality and Epistemic Dependence.’ Educational Philosophy and Theory, 20(1): 16.Google Scholar