Abstract
I connect two increasingly popular ideas in social epistemology—group knowledge and epistemic extension—both departures from mainstream epistemological tradition. In doing so, I generate a framework for conceptualizing and organizing contemporary epistemology along several core axes. This, in turn, allows me to delineate a largely unexplored frontier in group epistemology. The bulk of extant work in group epistemology can be dubbed intra-group epistemology: the study of epistemically salient happenings within groups. I delineate and attempt to motivate what I dub inter-group epistemology: the study of epistemically salient happenings between groups and other subjects and entities.
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Notes
There are many different conceptions of grouphood. Unless otherwise stated, what I say about groups in this paper can apply, mutatis mutandis, to any type of group that is more than just the mereological sum of its individual members (and perhaps salient artefacts, depending on one’s epistemological and ontological views about the interface between agents and technology). Those who claim groups can have knowledge include Schmitt (1994), Hutchins (1995), Knorr-Cetina (1999), Gilbert (2000, 2004), Kusch (2002), Tollefsen (2002, 2015), Goldman (2004), Bouvier (2004, 2010), Tuomela and Raimo (2004, 2011), List (2005), Mathiesen (2006, 2011), Fallis (2007), Wray (2007), Rolin (2008, 2010), Hakli and Raul (2011), Vaesen (2011a), Dewitt (2012), Palermos and Pritchard (2013, 2017), Bird (2010, 2014), de Ridder (2014), Lackey (2014), Carter (2015), Klausen (2015), Palermos (2015, 2017) and Wagenknecht (2016).
Proponents of epistemic extension (i.e. extensionists) include Thagard (1997, 2010), Giere (2002, 2006, 2007, 2011, 2012), Goldberg (2010, 2011, 2012), Fagan (2011, 2012), Green (2012, 2013, 2014), Shieber (2013), Palermos (2014, 2016), Kelp and Christoph (2013), Kelp (2014), Brogaard (2014), Miller (2015) and Pritchard (2010, 2018a, b). de Ridder (2014) and Klausen (2015) are extensionists in a sense I qualify later. “Epistemic extension” is derived from Goldberg’s (2010) “epistemic extendedness.” It can apply to epistemic states other than knowledge but I talk mostly of knowledge in this paper. But for de Ridder (2014) and Klausen (2015), all extensionists cited above are concerned with knowledge ascribed to individuals, not groups. Some directly endorse the idea, epistemic extension, while others propose views entailing epistemic extension, such as certain epistemological views about extended cognition. I return to the relationship between epistemic extension and extended cognition later. I also clarify the distinction between epistemic externalism and epistemological externalism later. In this paper, I focus mostly on reliance upon epistemic materials possessed by other people. But what I say can apply, mutatis mutandis, to reliance on epistemic materials attributable to artefacts, institutions, social practices, or relations or connections between group members (i.e. systems). The important issue is whether or not those materials extend beyond any individual for a given case of knowledge.
William Alston (1995), for example, understands “proximate” causes of a belief—that is, those located within the individual subejct’s cognitive apparatus—to be the only epistemically salient ones (11–12, 15–16).
There are several subtle distinctions between epistemic extension and other epistemological views that are worth drawing here. I address several in this note in anticipation of the objection that there are (far) more extensionists than I think. Some epistemologists maintain that epistemological appraisal is relative to belief-generating environments. For example, Janet’s perceptual belief that the piano is red is reliably formed relative to normal lighting conditions which, if altered, could make the piano appear a different colour or appear red when it really is not. An aspect of the social turn in epistemology extends this to stress the relevance of belief-generating social environments. Such views do not entail epistemic extension, however, since they need not (and typically do not) take features of the context of appraisal to constitute epistemic materials. Instead, such accounts call for contextual appraisal (e.g. the attributer’s context) of the epistemic materials involved. For example, the epistemic materials involved in generating Janet’s perceptual belief do not include the lighting conditions. But one can nevertheless contend that appraisal of the epistemic materials involved must be relative to those lighting conditions. So, contextual appraisal does not entail epistemic extension. Secondly, normative properties are not epistemic materials. Rather, epistemic materials are subject to normative appraisal. So, for example, epistemic materials can stand in reliability relations, but reliability properties are not epistemic materials. Lastly, epistemic materials do not include reasons themselves but our response to or engagement with reasons, that is, what we take to be reasons. Thus, not even anti-reductionism about reasons entails epistemic extension. I thank two anonymous reviewers at Synthese for prompting me to clarify these issues more carefully.
I am not claiming that Goldman (1979) had epistemic extension or group knowledge in mind at the time. I am only making use of this passage as expressing a common combination of views. Goldberg (2010, pp. 121–122) employs the same passage for a similar purpose. More recently, Goldman (2004, 2014) has endorsed the claim that there is group knowledge.
E.g. Hardwig (1985), Schmitt (1994), Hutchins (1995), Thagard (1997, 2010), Knorr-Cetina (1999), Gilbert (2000, 2004), Kusch (2002), Giere (2002, 2006, 2007, 2011, 2012), Goldman (2004), Bouvier (2004, 2010), Tuomela and Raimo (2004, 2011), List (2005), Mathiesen (2006, 2011), Fallis (2007), Wray (2007), Rolin (2008, 2010), Hakli and Raul (2011), Tollefsen (2002, 2015), Goldberg (2010, 2011, 2012), Vaesen (2011a), Fagan (2011, 2012), Dewitt (2012), Green (2012, 2013, 2014), Shieber (2013), Kelp and Christoph (2013), Kelp (2014), Palermos (2014, 2016), Palermos and Pritchard (2013, 2016), Bird (2010, 2014), Brogaard (2014), de Ridder (2014), Lackey (2014), Carter (2015), Klausen (2015), Miller (2015) Palermos (2015, 2017) and Wagenknecht (2016).
For the original CMS and ATLAS results, see Chatrchyan et al. (2012) and Aad et al. (2012), respectively. The officially specified authors of these articles are “The CMS Collaboration” and “The ATLAS Collaboration,” respectively, though lists of the 2900 and 2932 individual authors, respectively, are appended. For important results since 2012, see Aad et al. (2015), which is a co-authored report of coordinated CMS and ATLAS measurements. The officially specified authors of this article are “The ATLAS and CMS Collaborations,” though a list of the 5154 individual authors is appended.
Hardwig claimed only that his intuition in favour of an autonomy condition on knowledge was stronger than his intuition in favour of the claim that only individuals can have knowledge (348–9). His more immediate concern was with posing a dilemma about how to analyze EIK. At least two philosophers have more recently forwarded an argument directly from the occurrence of EIK to the claim that groups must possess this knowledge, without addressing the possibility of knowledge via epistemic extension (Vaesen 2011a; de Ridder 2014). This move goes through only if epistemic autonomy is necessary for possessing knowledge. If epistemic extension is a viable principle, it undercuts this move.
Goldberg focuses on process reliabilists, who typically understand the cognitive operations of others as relevant for determining the local reliability of the process generating S′ testimonial belief but not for determining the global reliability of the process.
Goldberg finds an analogue in memorial beliefs. S has a memorial belief that p when p is inferred from (or otherwise saliently dependent upon) S′ memory of her previously acquired belief that q (65–67, 85–86). If S′ belief that q was faulty upon acquisition, so is S′ present belief that p: garbage-in, garbage-out. Most epistemologists agree that the epistemic materials generating memorial beliefs extend across time. Goldberg argues that, for some testimonial beliefs, they (also) extend across agents. If so, S can have knowledge without having all epistemic materials. In all the epistemically relevant ways, a memorial belief can be just like an extended testimonial belief. Often when S derives a memorial belief that p from S′ previously acquired belief that q, the original epistemic materials that generated S′ belief that q are opaque to S. Likewise, for an extended testimonial belief that p, the epistemic materials that generated the testifier’s belief or assertion that p are opaque to the recipient. There is only one difference between these two kinds of cases: in the former, everything of epistemic importance happens in an individual subject’s head, and in the latter it does not. To accept the uncontroversial model for memorial beliefs and, without additional argument, reject epistemic extension in some cases of testimonial belief, is to insist upon epistemic autonomy for its own sake.
E.g. Hardwig (1985), Schmitt (1994), Thagard (1997, 2010), Knorr-Cetina (1999), Giere (2002, 2006, 2007, 2011, 2012), Tuomela and Raimo (2004, 2011), Staley and Kent (2007), Staley (2010), Goldberg (2010, 2011, 2012), Fagan (2011, 2012), Green (2012, 2013, 2014), Palermos (2014), Palermos and Pritchard (2013), Shieber (2013), Kelp and Christoph (2013), Kelp (2014), Briggs et al. (2014), Brogaard (2014), Cheon and Hyundeuk (2014), Goldman (2014), Tossut (2014) and Miller (2015).
E.g. Hardwig (1985), Green (2013), Shieber (2013) and de Ridder (2014, pp. 47–48); see especially Miller (2015, pp. 421–422). I take it that epistemic extension is consistent with each of the reductionist, non-reductionist, generation, and transmission views of testimonial justification. See Miller (2015) on this point. Joseph Shieber (2013), like Goldberg, is a process reliabilist extensionist. He calls for a general, extended reliabilist account of knowledge, according to which,
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(1)
Individuals are the primary bearers of knowledge.
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(2)
Some individual S knows that p iff
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a.
p
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b.
S believes that p, and
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c.
S′s belief that p was produced by a process that reliably produces true beliefs, where
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a.
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(3)
Such processes may include the properties and actions of agents other than S as well as properties of the environment (i.e. instruments, etc.). (290)
Shieber requires of process reliabilism “only that the notion of process be broadened to include genuinely social belief-forming processes” (290).
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(1)
Miller also shows that Hyde-like scenarios are not Gettier cases. In short, they are common, not coincidental, and involve blameworthy error, not luck (427–428). He also cites data showing that mathematical journals have higher than expected rates of substantial errors that survive the peer-review process. Grcar (2010) and Nathanson (2008) separately argue that this problem has troubling epistemic consequences for the field. Frans and Kosolosky (2014) and Geist et al. (2010) argue for more stringent conditions for mathematical knowledge acquired through testimony.
Goldberg (2010) offers a good deal of positive motivation too.
Two collections of essays concerned with the epistemology of cognitive externalism are Philosophical Explorations 15(2) (2012) and Philosophical Issues 24(1) (2014). For the relationship between epistemic internalism/externalism and cognitive internalism/externalism, see Carter et al. (2014). Clark and Chalmers (1998) prompted discussion of cognitive externalism in the philosophy of mind.
Goldberg (2010, pp. 127–132) rightly points out that epistemic extension, being a strictly epistemological claim, does not entail extended cognition. So, to be clear, I am not attributing commitment to cognitive externalism to Goldberg, Miller, or any extensionist besides certain epistemologists of cognitive externalism. Beside Green (2012, 2014), proponents of cognitive externalism cited in this paper endorse epistemic extension only indirectly. They contend that an individual can know that p via extending her cognition over the cognitive efforts of others.
In correspondence, Miller suggested a similar condition on S. Pritchard (2010), like Brogaard, argues that a version of virtue epistemology beside credit theory is compatible with cognitive externalism.
Brogaard (2014) places a responsibilist condition on S. Green (2012, 2014) places a creditworthiness condition on S. Palermos (2014), Clarke (2015), and Wray (2018) compare, on the one hand, S extending her cognition over the cognitive efforts of other agents, and on the other hand, S competently employing or integrating herself with technology. Palermos argues that these scenarios can be epistemically analogous: in both cases, S can competently extend her cognition without having to double-check epistemic materials possessed by others. That is, how technology works need not be transparent to S in order for S to be able to acquire knowledge by using it. Analogously, the cognitive operations of others need not be transparent to S in order for S to benefit epistemically from them. Wray disagrees to some extent. He contends that S must take responsibility for all epistemic materials and that this is complicated in important ways when other agents, as opposed to technological artifacts, are involved.
Ronald Giere (2002, 2006, 2007, 2011, 2012) argues that some knowledge-how is knowledge via epistemic extension. He appeals to distributed cognition rather than extended cognition. Both theses involve the idea that cognitive labour extends beyond any one individual. But in cases of distributed cognition, there is no central individual. Giere relies on Ed Hutchins’ (1995) famous study of navigation. Giere agrees with Hutchins that the cognitive labour involved in many naval operations, such as a ship entering port, is necessarily distributed across large, complex, organized systems that cannot be internalized by any individual. Yet, Giere resists the claim that knowledge of how to enter port ought to be ascribed to the crew as a whole or, as Knorr-Cetina (1999) and Vaesen (2011a) claim, to the ship as a whole: crew plus artifacts. Giere insists that it is the navigator (and maybe her assistant) who knows. He aims to avoid what he deems unnecessary, inflated social ontology, or “extended epistemic agency,” which he targets more pointedly elsewhere (Giere 2007). I argue elsewhere (Dragos 2019) that there cannot be knowledge-how via epistemic extension, yet I also argue that groups can possess knowledge-how.
Other than perhaps Fagan (2012, 829), I am not aware of any extensionists who deny the possibility of group knowledge.
So-called “believers” claim that groups have beliefs, while so-called “rejectionists” claim that groups have acceptances. How exactly we ought to conceive of the relevant group states is immaterial for the purposes of this paper. For more on these issues in relation to group epistemology, see Gilbert (1989, 1994, 2000, 2004), Tuomela (1992, 2004), Mathiesen (2006), Wray (2001, 2003, 2007, 2014), Mathiesen (2006, 2011), Staley and Kent (2007), Staley (2010), Hakli (2007, 2011), Rolin (2008, 2010), Andersen (2010), Beatty and Moore (2010), Bird (2010, 2014), Bouvier (2010), Baumann and Caroline (2011), Fagan (2011, 2012), Briggs et al. (2014), Cheon (2014), de Ridder (2014), Gilbert and Pilchman (2014), Tollefsen (2015, chs. 1, 2) and Weatherall and Gilbert (2016). On group agency, see List and Pettit (2006, 2011, 2012), Mathiesen and Kay (2011), Briggs (2012), Cariani (2012), Pettit (2014), Tollefsen (2015, ch. 3) and List (2016). On group personhood, see Kusch (2014) and Smith (2018).
Gilbert (1989, 1994, 2000, 2004), Tuomela (1992, 2004), Rolin (2008, 2010) and Gilbert and Pilchman (2014). Bird (2010, 2014) and Klausen (2015) reject a group-doxastic-state condition on group knowledge. Their work is relevant in the following section. Until then, I am not directly concerned with differences between accounts of grouphood or group knowledge.
Andersen and Wagenknecht (2013) is another example.
If an extensionist is committed to the traditional tenet that only individuals can possess knowledge, she can (in principle) analyze all cases of EIK, including all cases of EIK-D, as individual knowledge via epistemic extension. This is why I argue in this section that if there is group knowledge, as many contend, then some of it is knowledge via epistemic extension.
As noted earlier, there is disagreement about what counts as a doxastic state or whether certain quasi-doxastic states can satisfy the doxastic-state condition on knowledge. But my argument does not require me to wade into these debates.
I thank a reviewer at Synthese for prompting me to clarify that option (2) of Hardwig’s dilemma for cases of EIK-D need not pick out plural subjects. What kind of group is picked out will depend on the groups in involved in a particular case.
In note 10, I cite philosophers who forward an argument directly from the mere occurrence of EIK to the claim that groups must possess this knowledge, without addressing the possibility that individual knowledge via epistemic extension obtains (Vaesen 2011a; de Ridder 2014). This move goes through only if epistemic autonomy is necessary for possessing knowledge. The same is true of the inference drawn by Bird (2014) and Klausen (2015) from the occurrence of EIK-D to the attribution of knowledge to collections across which epistemic materials are diffusely distributed.
Klausen argues that we should be open to dropping the doxastic-state condition on knowledge. But in the process he also considers a drastically weakened condition such that a group G knows that p only if at least one member of G believes (or is disposed to believe) that p (827-9). Suppose G knows that p and just one member M of G believes that p. Klausen calls M an epistemic executive: “(t)he person forming the ‘target’ or ‘output’ belief… [S]he brings the epistemic task to its fulfillment” (827). Epistemic assistants are those who contribute in epistemically salient ways without themselves believing the “output.” Neither executives nor assistants are fully aware of all the epistemic labour occurring and how it all works to generate knowledge. Klausen contends that while the epistemic executive might believe the “output,” she might not possess knowledge, “since she might not possess the relevant evidence” (ibid). She may, in such cases, nevertheless possess a lesser sense of knowledge via testimony without possessing all the epistemic materials generating that knowledge. With respect to scientific knowledge, Jeroen de Ridder (2014) argues similarly that one can possess “derivative” or “secondary” knowledge that p when “she doesn’t have access to all of that non-testimonial evidence herself, because it is partly beyond her cognitive reach… [when] she doesn’t fully understand all the evidence for p and how it supports p…” (48–49). It seems, then, that both Klausen and de Ridder are extensionists: EIK can be possessed (in a sense) by individuals. However, both deem it necessary in cases of EIK to also attribute knowledge to the wider subject: assistants plus executives (plus, perhaps, the wider system in which they are imbedded), to put it in Klausen’s terms. The reason that the wider, primary knowledge bearer is needed is that epistemic materials extend beyond any epistemic executive. But extensionists need not treat the possession of knowledge and the possession of the epistemic materials generating it symmetrically. There does not need to be a “primary” knowledge bearer in addition to a dependent or “secondary” or “derivative” knowledge bearer. Along these lines, de Ridder considers whether he has “only shown that the production of scientific knowledge often irreducibly involves collectives, not that knowledge can properly be attributed to or had by collectives” (51). But he thinks this objection “assumes that collectivity in the production of knowledge is somehow eliminable once the knowledge is produced and attributed to a subject… Since having scientific knowledge requires satisfying [the epistemic normativity required for knowledge], the collective primarily has scientific knowledge.” (ibid). Contrary to de Ridder’s contention, extensionists need not assume “that collectivity in the production of knowledge is somehow eliminable” once knowledge via epistemic extension is attributed. de Ridder’s contention works only if knowledge possession entails the possession of all epistemic materials, that is, only if epistemic autonomy is necessary for knowledge. Likewise for Klausen’s contention that the wider collective (i.e. executives, assistants, system, etc.) possesses knowledge in the primary sense.
In an earlier draft of this paper, I took it to be uncontroversial that groups can receive testimony. I thank a reviewer at Synthese for pointing out that some would deny that a group qua group can be a recipient of testimony. Perhaps a group receives testimony only though its individual members. I do not have the space to offer an account of group reception of testimony. However, I flag this issue and acknowledge that my argument to extensionists is conditional upon a successful account of group reception of testimony.
I claim that if groups can be recipients of testimony, Goldberg’s argument is just as compelling when reformulated at the group-level. However, part of what makes Goldberg’s argument compelling is the analogy he draws between testimonial knowledge and memorial knowledge. A memorial belief that p is a belief that is inferred from (or is otherwise saliently dependent upon) a previously acquired belief that q. This is also true of many group beliefs (or acceptances). For example, important coordinated measurements were undertaken in 2015 by the CMS and ATLAS Collaborations. The data are co-published by the collaborations in Aad et al. (2015). This work builds upon important measurements taken independently in 2012 by the CMS and ATLAS Collaborations. The data are published in Chatrchyan et al. (2012) and Aad et al. (2012), respectively. Presumably, the coordinated 2015 results depend on the 2012 independent results, such that were a fundamental problem with the 2012 results, this would negate or undercut the 2015 results. So, I think the memory analogue can be drawn at the group level.
This claim, or the claim that groups face unique or more difficult epistemic hurdles, is proposed by Briggs et al. (2014), Wray (2014), Lackey (2016) and Weatherall and Gilbert (2016). Margaret Gilbert’s (2000, 2004) well known joint commitment account of group belief has been both criticized (Wray 2001; Mathiesen 2006; Bouvier 2010) and defended (Beatty and Moore 2010) for making group knowledge, especially group scientific knowledge, more difficult to attain than individual knowledge. Some argue to the contrary that group knowledge should not be held to a higher standard (e.g. Klausen 2015).
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Acknowledgements
I thank Sandy Goldberg, Brad Wray, Boaz Miller, Jeroen de Ridder, Haixin Dang, Georgi Gardiner, Mike Ashfield, and two anonymous referees at Synthese for helpful comments on various ancestors of this paper. I also thank organizers and participants at the 2016 University of Tartu Graduate Conference in Social Epistemology, the 2016 University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Melon Graduate Philosophy Conference, the Social Epistemology colloquium of the 2017 Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association, the Social Epistemology colloquium of the 2017 meeting of the Canadian Philosophical Association, the 2017 Social Epistemology Research Group (SERG) and Network on Epistemology and Society (EpiSoc) Summer School in Social Epistemology, and two work-in-progress talks at the University of Toronto’s Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology.
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Dragos, C. Epistemic autonomy and group knowledge. Synthese 198, 6259–6279 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02461-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02461-w