Under what conditions is a group belief resulting from deliberation constitutive of group knowledge? What kinds of competences must a deliberating group manifest when settling a question so that the resulting collective belief can be considered group knowledge? In this paper, we provide an answer to the second question that helps make progress on the first question. In particular, we explain the epistemic normativity of deliberation-based group belief in terms of a truth norm and an evidential norm, introduce a virtue-reliabilist (...) condition on deliberative group knowledge, and provide an account and a taxonomy of the types of group competences that are necessary for this type of collective knowledge. (shrink)

A platitude in epistemology is that an individual’s belief does not qualify as knowledge if it is true by luck. Individuals, however, are not the only bearers of knowledge. Many epistemologists agree that groups can also possess knowledge in a way that is genuinely collective. If groups can know, it is natural to think that, just as true individual beliefs fall short of knowledge due to individual epistemic luck, true collective beliefs may fall short of knowledge because of collective epistemic (...) luck. This paper argues, first, that the dominant view of epistemic luck in the literature, the modal view, does not yield a satisfactory account of lucky collective beliefs. Second, it argues that collective epistemic luck is better explained in terms of groups lacking forms of control over collective belief formation that are specific to the different procedures for forming collective beliefs. One of the main implications of this, we will argue, is that groups whose beliefs are formed via internal deliberation are more vulnerable to knowledge-undermining collective luck than groups that form their beliefs via non-deliberative methods, such as non-deliberative anonymous voting. The bottom line is that the greater exposure to knowledge-undermining luck that deliberation gives rise to provides a reason for thinking that non-deliberative methods of group belief formation have greater epistemic value. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to expand the theoretical field of discursive injustice by identifying a specific kind of discursive injustice, namely, the kind we are subject to when we are unjustly prevented from exchanging reasons with others. Broadly speaking, discursive injustice is the kind of injustice we suffer when we are unjustly harmed as language users, most notably when we are prevented from using language in ways we are entitled to. The dominant approach to discursive injustice has focused (...) on the corruption of the illocutionary force of a speech act due to the hearer’s improper uptake. I claim that there is a genuinely distinct kind of discursive injustice, which I label as deliberative injustice, that cannot be accounted for by the dominant approach to discursive injustice. In my view, what makes deliberative injustice discursively unjust is that it amounts to denying someone a normative position that she is entitled to as a language user, which I understand in terms of being a source of reasons. Moreover, I explore two ways of trying to illuminate deliberative injustice by appealing to the social level of analysis, namely, by resorting to a structural explanation to explain how it comes about, and by asking what it signifies for the collective life of groups. In this regard, I show that the structural explanation has some explanatory limitations, and that deliberative injustice essentially constitutes a collective failure. (shrink)