Abstract
While social epistemologists have recently begun addressing questions about whether groups can possess beliefs or knowledge, little has yet been said about whether groups can properly be said to possess understanding. Here I want to make some progress on this question by considering two possible accounts of group understanding, modeled on accounts of group belief and knowledge: a deflationary account, according to which a group understands just in case most or all of its members understand, and an inflationary account, according to which a group’s understanding does not depend solely on whether its members understand. I argue that both accounts face problems. The deflationary account has two such problems: aggregation problems that are familiar from discussions of group belief, and the problem of different bases, wherein members possess understanding for different but consistent reasons. The inflationary account faces what I call the problem of distributed grasping: while it is widely accepted that understanding requires a kind of “grasping”, it is hard to make sense of how this requirement could be met at the group level while not necessarily being met by any individual member. Despite its problems, I make a case for the inflationary account. This will require addressing the problem of distributed grasping: to do this, I propose a different way of thinking about the grasping relation at the group level, such that it is constituted by a dependency relationship between members.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
References to those working on group belief will show up in various places in what follows, but some of the most prominent work on the topic includes Gilbert (1987), Tuomela (1992), Pettit (2003), Hakli (2006), List and Pettit (2011), Bird (2014), Goldman (2014), Lackey (2016), and Dunn (forthcoming), amongst others. Similarly, references to those arguing for group knowledge will show up in what follows, but again one can look to Goldman (2004), Tuomela (2004), Mathiesen (2006), Hakli (2007), Lackey (2014), amongst others.
The distinction between the deflationary and inflationary views as I present them here are intentionally course-grained in order to avoid delving too much into the debates surrounding the metaphysics of groups. There are potentially many different ways to be either a deflationist or inflationist according to the definitions I provide, but I take the three categories I present here—nihilism, deflationary accounts, and inflationary accounts—to exhaust the logical space at a broad level.
While the general views one can defend with regards to either group belief or knowledge are the same, questions concerning the nature of group knowledge can be more complicated depending on how we think about what it takes to know. One could, for example, hold a deflationary conception of group belief while also holding an inflationary conception of group justification. Indeed, a number of inflationary conceptions of group justification have recently been proposed [see for example Schmitt (1994), Hakli (2011), Goldman (2014), Lackey (2016), Dunn (forthcoming)], along with various inflationary conceptions of related group epistemic states that can allow for a group to meet the required conditions for being a knower, for example that groups can meet the conditions of being a good informant (see Lackey (2016)) or the requirements of being a rational agent (Mathiesen 2006)). Other approaches to group knowledge are also available: one could also simply reject the view that knowledge is analyzable into component parts (in the vein of Williamson (2000)), and thus not need to account for the ways in which a group could meet the above conditions. Or, one could argue that knowledge does not work in the same way at the group level as it does at the individual level: for instance, while it is popular to accept the view that knowledge entails belief, Hakli (2006) has argued that this entailment does not hold at the group level, with groups being able to possess knowledge despite not being able to possess beliefs. I introduce these complications here not to adjudicate among them, but to draw attention to potential complications.
See Zagzebski (2008).
See Bourget (2017).
See Grimm (2006) for discussion.
We might think that understanding-how doesn’t belong on this list, as it might appear to involve skills and abilities that are not obviously propositional. While that may be the case, I still take it that ascriptions of understanding-how still apply to propositions.
Again, we might worry about the distinction here, as we might think that even though understanding an object or phenomenon does not take a proposition as an object, the state of understanding such an object or phenomenon is still represented in a propositional way (see Kelp (2015), for example). Since it is, however, an open question as to how such a form of understanding is represented, I will separate it from the others here.
For more detailed discussion, see Kelp (2015).
That understanding requires truth, in one form or another, is the dominant view; that is not to say that it is the only view (see, for example, Zagzebski (2008)). Here I will assume that one cannot understanding something that is false.
All of these examples were taken from the iWeb corpus (https://www.english-corpora.org/iweb/).
While I think we do seek out groups as sources of understanding, it is not as clear-cut how to conceive of a group as a source of understanding, at least in comparison to a group being a source of knowledge. This is because it is a matter of debate as to whether understanding (and not just the basis for understanding) can be acquired on the basis of testimony. For more on this debate, see Boyd (2017).
One might worry that the situation is actually worse for Celine and Tamika, in that we should not ascribe them even a degree of understanding: this is because they seem to be wrong about the fall of Rome, insofar as they misrepresent the event as one in which there was, in fact, a primary cause. To deny them any degree of understanding on this basis, though, would again set the standards for the possession of understanding too high: just as one can possess a degree of understanding without possessing all possible supporting reasons, it seems that one can possess a degree of understanding despite being wrong about some relevant reasons. For example, we still want to say that novices who start learning about a subject matter can increase their degree of understanding in it despite possessing some false beliefs along the way (I make this as a general observation, and will not here defend a specific view concerning how much one can get wrong before losing all of one’s understanding). Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pushing this worry.
Bird (2010) defends a view that perhaps has the most significant disconnect between group and member states, as he argues that there can exist “socially distributed” knowledge wherein the scientific community as a whole can possess knowledge in such a way that the relevant members neither know nor believe what the entity knows.
There is much that could be said about what it takes for a group to represent p and reasons for it. The current formulation is, however, intentionally schematic, and is neutral on which theory of group representation is the right one.
Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this example.
Thanks to Mikkel Gerken and an anonymous reviewer for raising this worry.
References
Bird, A. (2010). Social knowing: The social sense of ‘scientific knowledge’. Philosophical Perspectives, 24(1), 23–56.
Bird, A. (2014). When is there a group that knows? Distributed cognition, scientific knowledge, and the social epistemic subject. In J. Lackey (Ed.), Essays in collective epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bourget, D. (2017). The role of consciousness in grasping and understanding. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 95(2), 285–318.
Boyd, K. (2017). Testifying understanding. Episteme, 14(1), 103–127.
Bruner, J. S. (1974). From communication to language—A psychological perspective. Cognition, 3(3), 255–287.
Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
de Regt, H. (2017). Understanding scientific understanding. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
de Regt, H., & Dieks, D. (2005). A Contextual Approach to scientific understanding. Synthese, 144(1), 137–170.
Dunn, J. (Forthcoming). “Reliable group belief.” Synthese: 1–25.
Gilbert, M. (1987). Modeling collective belief. Synthese, 73(1), 185–204.
Gilbert, M. (1994). Remarks on collective belief. In F. F. Schmitt (Ed.), Socializing epistemology: the social dimensions of knowledge (pp. 235–256). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Goldman, A. (2014). Social process reliabilism: Solving justification problems in collective epistemology. In J. Lackey (Ed.), Essays in collective epistemology (pp. 11–41). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Goldman, A. I. (2004). Group knowledge versus group rationality: Two approaches to social epistemology. Episteme, 1(1), 11–22.
Grimm, S. (2006). Is understanding a species of knowledge? British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 57(3), 515–535.
Grimm, S. (2012). The value of understanding. Philosophy Compass, 7(2), 103–117.
Hakli, R. (2006). Group beliefs and the distinction between belief and acceptance. Cognitive Systems Research, 7(2–3), 286–297.
Hakli, R. (2007). On the possibility of group knowledge without belief. Social Epistemology, 21(3), 249–266.
Hakli, R. (2011). On dialectical justification of group beliefs. In H. B. Schmid, D. Sirtes, & M. Weber (Eds.), Collective epistemology (pp. 119–153). Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.
Hills, A. (2015). Understanding Why. Noûs, 50(2), 1–28.
Humphreys, P. (2000). Analytic versus synthetic understanding. In J. H. Fetzer (Ed.), Science, explanation and rationality: The philosophy of Carl G. Hempel (pp. 267–286). New York: Oxford University Press.
Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the wild. MIT Press.
iWeb corpus. https://www.english-corpora.org/iweb/.
Johnson, K. (2007). Tacit and accessible understanding of language. Synthese, 156(2), 253–279.
Kelp, C. (2015). Understanding phenomena. Synthese, 192(12), 3799–3816.
Khalifa, K. (2013). Understanding, grasping and luck. Episteme, 10(1), 1–17.
Khalifa, K. (2017). Understanding, explanation, and scientific knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kvanvig, J. L. (2003). The value of knowledge and the pursuit of understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lackey, J. (2014). Socially extended knowledge. Philosophical Issues, 24(1), 282–298.
Lackey, J. (2016). What is justified group belief? The Philosophical Review, 125(3), 341–396.
List, C. (2005). Group knowledge and group rationality: A judgment aggregation perspective. Episteme, 2, 25–38.
List, C., & Pettit, P. (2002). Aggregating sets of judgments: An impossibility result. Economics and Philosophy, 18, 89–110.
List, C., & Pettit, P. (2011). Group agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mathiesen, K. (2006). The epistemic features of group belief. Episteme, 2(3), 161–175.
Meijers, A. (2003). Why accept collective beliefs? Reply to Gilbert. Protosociology, 18(19), 377–388.
Pettit, P. (2003). Groups with minds of their own. In F. F. Schmitt (Ed.), Socializing metaphysics: The nature of social reality (pp. 167–193). Rowman and Littlefield: Lanham, MD.
Pritchard, D., Millar, A., & Haddock, A. (2010). The nature and value of knowledge: Three investigations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Reardon, S. (2019). “Big changes needed to fight harassment, group tells US biomedical agency.” Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01886-0.
Schmitt, F. F. (Ed.). (1994). The justification of group beliefs. In Socializing epistemology: The social dimensions of knowledge (pp. 257–287). Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
Tuomela, R. (1992). Group beliefs. Synthese, 91(3), 285–318.
Tuomela, R. (2004). Group knowledge analyzed. Episteme, 1(2), 109–127.
Wilkenfeld, D. (2013). Understanding as representation manipulability. Synthese, 190(6), 997–1016.
Wilkenfeld, D. A., Plunkett, D., & Lombrozo, T. (2016). Depth and deference: When and why we attribute understanding. Philosophical Studies, 173(2), 373–393.
Williamson, T. (2000). Knowledge and its limits. Oxford University Press.
Zagzebski, L. (2008). On epistemology. Wadsworth: Manchester University Press.
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank Mikkel Gerken, Uwe Peters, and Niklaas Tepelmann for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper, as well as two anonymous reviewers for their very useful suggestions during the review process. Danmarks Frie Forskningsfond (Grant no. 8018-00053B).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Boyd, K. Group understanding. Synthese 198, 6837–6858 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02492-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02492-3