Abstract
A long-standing debate in group ontology and group epistemology concerns whether some groups possess mental states and/or epistemic states such as knowledge that do not reduce to the mental states and/or epistemic states of the individuals who comprise such groups (and are also states not possessed by any of the members). Call those who think there are such states inflationists. There has recently been a defense in the literature of a specific type of inflationary knowledge—viz., knowledge of facts about group minds or group self-knowledge (GS-K). In this paper I address whether some groups do possess such knowledge. I argue that we have good reason to think they do not. I do so by exploring the most explicit defense of such knowledge in the literature—Lukas Schwengerer’s (2022) defense—as well as other ways of defending this thesis and arguing that such ways are problematic. In the latter part of the paper, I explain why the two most popular inflationary approaches to group knowledge simpliciter are incompatible with there being GS-K. In doing so I work to show why even inflationists should reject the view that there is inflationary group self-knowledge.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
For the above assertions, see respectively: https://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2021/08/apple-intends-to-bring-back-in-store-classes-in-the-us-and-some-european-retail-stores-by-the-end-of-august.html; accessed September 3rd, 2021; https://www.guardian.com/environment/2011/apr/20/deepwater-horizon-key-questions-answered;accessed September 3rd, 2021; https://thenextweb.com/insider/2019/04/26/the-cia-wants-you-to-believe-it-traded-assassinations-and-espionage-for-likes-and-shares/; accessed February 15th, 2021.
For instance, in “The CIA wants you to Believe it Traded Assassinations and Espionage for Likes and Shares,” journalist Bryan Clark portrays the CIA as a group that (a) wants the general public to see it as a more approachable, jocular agency than the invoking of its name typically elicits, (b) believes that by maintaining social media platforms it can accomplish this goal, and (c) launched and maintained such accounts to meet this objective.
This phrase is borrowed from Pettit (2003). Pettit has been one of the more vocal defenders of the groups-with minds-of-their-own view. For others who embrace the view that some groups possess mental states and/or epistemic states that are irreducible to the mental states and/or epistemic states of the members that comprise such groups, see Gilbert, (1989), Schmitt (1994), Bird (2010 & 2014), List and Pettit (2011), Mathiesen (2011), Hess (2014a & 2014b) and Tollefsen (2015).
List (2016) contends the same noting that “it is by now, relatively widely accepted that suitably organized collectives can be intentional agents in their own right, over and above their individual members” (295).
It strikes me that non-summativism of mental or epistemic states entails the irreducibility of such states. If it really is true that some groups can token such states without any of their members doing so, then it is hard to see how such states could be reducible to the states of their members. It is a more interesting question whether one can embrace the view that some group states are irreducible to the states of the members and yet deny non-summativism. One who embraced this latter view would be committed to the claim that in every instance of a group tokening an irreducible state, there is some group member who tokens such a state. It is hard to see why one would embrace this position. Considerations involving the alleged multiple realizability of such states, for instance, do not seem to justify it. In any case, I want to stress that (a) the philosophers referenced in f.n. 3 who embrace the irreducibility of some group mental states also embrace non-summativism and (b) a number of these philosophers also defend the irreducibility of group mental states by defending the view that there are cases of non-summative group states. See Gilbert (1994) for a prime example of this. Given (a) and (b), I have decided to conjoin the irreducibility and non-summativism theses.
I borrow the term inflationism from Lackey (2020). For the purposes of this paper, I will call those who deny the conjunctive thesis I am calling inflationism, for whatever reason, deflationists. Most who deny this thesis think such states can be reduced to the states of the individuals in these groups, though not all deflationists do. See Quinton (1976), Corlett, (1996), Mokyr (2002), Goldman, (2014), and Lackey (2020) for defenses of various versions of deflationism.
It might be thought that, given his work on plural self-awareness and plural expressivism, Schmid (2014a & 2014b) is the most ardent defender of inflationary group self-knowledge. But on my reading of Schmid, the latter does not defend inflationary group self-knowledge as I am understanding it. This is in part because Schmid’s position involves the members of groups having the relevant states as well. For instance, Schmid’s (2014b) understanding of plural self-awareness involves collectives being self-aware in virtue of their “members having a sense of some of their attitudes as theirs, collectively” (17).
I should mention that in what follows, I assume that groups exist and that there are important differences between groups and mere sets of individuals. If groups do not exist, then inflationism about group mental states and epistemic states is false. This assumption, then, gives the benefit of the doubt to inflationists.
For discussion of what groups are and what distinguishes groups from mere collections of individuals, see Ritchie (2013).
I stress the qualifier “less” here because my contention is not that if groups lack GS-K, they are unable to be held morally responsible. Collins (2022) has recently argued that being self-aware is a necessary condition for moral responsibility. Perhaps it might be the case that such self-awareness not only fails to amount to self-knowledge, but when coupled with other necessary conditions (that do not include self-knowledge), jointly suffices for a group to be morally responsible. Even if this is the case, though, it seems reasonable to think that possession of GS-K could very well impact the praiseworthiness or blameworthiness of a given action. I will return to this point below.
See his (2022; p. 1167) for these assertions.
Schwengerer also claims that if we think that the group in Bird’s case knows that Q, we should think that the group in REFLECTIVE SCIENCE possesses self-knowledge of r. But the defense of the antecedent of this conditional is markedly different than the way Schwengerer defends the consequent claim. For one, an appeal to authority does not enter the picture with respect to Bird’s case. Moreover, it strikes me that one can reasonably accept that the doctors in Bird’s case know that Q, while also rejecting that the group in REFLECTIVE SCIENCE has self-knowledge that r. I discuss this claim in more detail below.
Earlier in his (2022) work, Schwengerer defends the view that some non-inflationary group self-avowals appear to have the mark of authoritativeness. But such a defense is not a defense of the claim that inflationary group self-avowals are authoritative. I am questioning the latter here.
For instance, Hess (2014a), one of the more radical inflationists, holds the view that groups are in part constituted by their members.
It might be thought that a similar criticism can be advanced with respect to Bird’s thought experiment in defense of knowledge simpliciter. Such a group, it might be held, is merely in a position to know that Q. (Cf. Lackey (2020); p. 127). And this would seem to run up against a claim that I made earlier—viz. that even if Bird’s defense of knowledge simpliciter is to the mark, Schwengerer’s defense might not be. However, there are important differences between the two cases. The main one concerns the fact that the question concerning Bird’s case is whether the group knows that Q. In Schwengerer’s case, there is not only the question of whether the group knows that it has the relevant intention r, but whether it has r at all. I have provided reasons for thinking that the group doesn’t have r, and therefore cannot know that it does. There is a sense, then, in which Schwengerer’s group is even further removed from possessing the knowledge he thinks they have than Bird’s group is.
Readers familiar with the group ontology literature know that there are also a number of divergence arguments designed to demonstrate that some group mental states cannot be reduced to the mental states of members in these groups. Gilbert (1989) advances a number of these types of arguments. I did not include a discussion of these types of arguments above because I think that even if such arguments effectively enable one to arrive at the conclusion that some group mental states do not reduce to the mental states of the individuals in the group, proponents of such arguments would then need to advance claims about why the mental states in question, insofar as they are beliefs, amount to knowledge. And to do so, they would have to advance controversial claims about group knowledge and in particular group self-knowledge. But such claims would then be doing much of the argumentative work, whereas divergence arguments are supposed to enable inflationists to vindicate their thesis without having to advance such contentions.
The account of inflationary group knowledge would, of course, also have to be compatible with groups possessing GS-K as well. More on this below.
There are other ways of defending the view that groups are rational in the relevant sense. One might, for instance, embrace the view that if groups behave as if they are robustly rational, then they are the latter. This claim, in turn, might be defended by embracing the even more controversial thesis known as interpretivism, which in this context, would entail that if we can understand and interpret a system as a rational agent (in the relevant sense), then that system just is a rational agent. Tollefsen (2015) endorses a version of interpretivism. This way of defending irreducible group rationality would face the same worry, however, that I advance below.
I should add that even if group abilities are multiply realizable, it would need to be the case that such abilities are not possessed as well by the group members. Thanks to a reviewer of this journal for discussion about this issue.
Thanks to a reviewer of this journal for helpful comments concerning how to motivate a Shoemaker-inspired defense of GS-K.
Moran further suggests that when we engage in the deliberative stance and come to recognize that our reasons favor P, we in turn avow that P. This avowal—or a declarative statement made in light of one’s reasons—enables us to know that P.
Schwengerer (2020; p. 1169–1700) is sympathetic with the view that extrospective positions like Moran’s can help explain how groups possess inflationary self-knowledge.
If further defense of this claim is needed, consider that a number of philosophers who think individuals do acquire self-knowledge via an introspective process think that they do so by way of brain processes, and in particular processes that involve so-called attention mechanisms. See, for example, Armstrong (1968), Lycan (1996), and Goldman (2006). But even if groups possess minds of their own, there is no unified group brain for there to be such processes. Additionally, those who think the introspective process does not involve such attention mechanisms, but rather involves a non-causal process like acquaintance, typically think that knowledge by acquaintance demands focused attention on the target states in question. And such attention seems to require a type of unified mind or brain that is not comparable to the types of group minds posited by inflationists. Moreover, the states most acquaintance theorists such as Fumerton (1995), Gertler (2001), and Chalmers (2003) think individuals are introspectively acquainted with are phenomenal states that are at the fore-of-consciousness. But most inflationists, including Tollefsen (2015) and List (2016), are skeptical that groups possess phenomenal states.
This interpretation of Moran’s transcendental argument closely follows Gertler’s (2011; p. 189) interpretation.
See Peacocke (1999; p. 276) for a case that supports this claim.
Schmid (2014b) provides another discussion of plural or group self-awareness. On my understanding of Schmid’s view, particular members in the group would have the same type of awareness as the group does.
Note that in what follows, I use the terms “joint acceptance” and “joint commitment” interchangeably. There might be subtle differences in the literature between the way the two terms are used, but for my purposes, I believe I can ignore such subtleties in making my broader point.
See Gilbert (1989; p. 306). Gilbert further notes that, “Joint acceptance of a proposition p by a group whose members are X, Y, and Z does not entail that there is some subset of the set comprising X, Y and Z such that all the members of that subset individually believe that P” (306).
Tuomela (1992) also accepts a joint acceptance account of group belief but analyzes group belief in terms of operative-member-joint-acceptance, where operative members, crudely put, are members who have decision making authority within a group.
Klausen (2015) notes that most extant contributions to collective epistemology share the assumption that group knowledge simpliciter requires group belief and group belief should be analyzed in terms of joint commitment; the latter, according to him, entails joint awareness.
If this were not the case, then (i) the deflationist would be able to accommodate the relevant group beliefs in a deflationary-friendly manner, by reducing the belief to the beliefs of members in the group, and (ii) Gilbert would not need to offer cases in which there is an alleged divergence between what the group accepts and what its members believe to motivate the view that inflationary group belief exists.
Byrne also notes that one can attempt to follow BEL and not succeed in following the rule. Doing so involves merely believing that P where the belief in question fails to amount to knowledge because P is false. But as Byrne notes, one interesting feature of BEL is that even if one does not succeed in following this rule, as long as one tries to follow the latter, one’s second-order belief about what one believes will be true. This is because trying to follow BEL entails believing that the antecedent of BEL obtains. And that will (in almost all cases) ensure that one’s second-order belief is true. Thus, BEL, in Byrne’s terminology, is also strongly self-verifying.
This is one reason why I think it is possible for Byrne to explain how we can know we token a belief that P without also having to know that we judge that P.
Note that while Gilbert and others who embrace a joint acceptance approach to group belief and group knowledge reject the view that members of the group in question token the relevant belief (something that makes them inflationists), they do not reject the view that group knowledge supervenes on the mental states of the agents in the group.
See Bird (2010). Klausen, in his (2015), also defends this type of knowledge.
Alternatively, if I truly know that I have a particular belief, then that suffices, I contend, for that belief being access conscious in Block’s (2008) sense of the term.
See Burge (1996) for a similar position.
Rosenthal, in his (1986) work, offers an alternative higher-order account of awareness-consciousness—known in the literature as the higher-order thought view (or HOT). A similar moral, I think, can be drawn from this account.
See Gilbert and Pilchman (2014) for a similar response to the charge that what they think inflationary group belief is, is too dissimilar to individualist belief.
It is a challenging question what conditions need to be met for groups to be morally responsible for their actions. Most inflationists, as implied above, think that group moral responsibility for actions requires some control over such actions. Hess (2014b) motivates the view that particular groups have free will in arguing that they can be morally responsible. Additional conditions that might need to be met for baseline moral responsibility include the ability to care about morality, as Tollefsen (2008) thinks, or phenomenal consciousness, as Baddorf (2017) maintains.
References
Armstrong, D. M. (1968). A Materialist Theory of the Mind. Routledge P.
Baddorf, M. (2017). Phenomenal Consciousness, Collective Mentality, and Collective Moral Responsibility. Philosophical Studies, 174, 2768–2786.
Bird, A. (2010). Social Knowing: The Social Sense of ‘Scientific Knowledge.’ Philosophical Perspectives, 24, 42–63.
Bird, A. (2014). When is there a Group that Knows? Essays in Collective Epistemology. Ed. Jennifer Lackey (pp. 11–41). Oxford UP.
Block, N. (2008). Consciousness & Cognitive Access. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 108, 289–317.
Bonjour, L. (2003). Back to Foundationalism. Epistemic Justification: Internalism vs. Externalism, Foundations vs. Virtues. Eds. Laurence Bonjour and Ernest Sosa (pp. 60–76). Blackwell.
Burge, T. (1996). Our Entitlement to Self-Knowledge. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 96, 91–116.
Byrne, A. (2018). Transparency & Self-Knowledge. Oxford UP.
Chalmers, D. (2003). The Content and Epistemology of Phenomenal Belief. In Quentin Smith and Aleksander Jokic (Eds), Consciousness: New Philosophical Perspectives. (pp. 220–272). Oxford UP.
Collins, S. (2022). I, Volkswagen. Philosophical Quarterly, 72(2), 283–304.
Corlett, A. J. (1996). Analyzing Social Knowledge. Rowman and Littlefield P.
Evans, G. (1982). The Varieties of Reference. Oxford UP.
Fumerton, R. (1995). Metaepistemology and Skepticism. Rowman and Littlefield P.
Gertler, B. (2001). Introspecting Phenomenal States. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 63, 305–338.
Gertler, B. (2011). Self-Knowledge. Routledge P.
Gilbert, M. (1989). On Social Facts. Routledge P.
Gilbert, M. (1994). Remarks on Collective Belief. In F. Frederick, & Schmitt (Eds.), Socializing Epistemology: The Social Dimensions of Knowledge (pp. 111–134). Rowman & Littlefield P.
Gilbert, M., & Daniel Pilchman. (2014). Belief, Acceptance, & What Happens in Groups: Some Methodological Considerations. In Jennifer Lackey (Ed.) Essays in Collective Epistemology (pp. 189–214). Oxford UP.
Goldman, A. (2006). Simulating Minds. Oxford UP.
Goldman, A. (2014). Social Process Reliabilism. In J. Lackey (Ed.), Essays in Collective Epistemology (pp. 11–41). Oxford UP.
Hakli, R. (2011) On Dialectical Justification of Group Beliefs. In Hans Bernhard Schmid, Daniel Sirtes & Marcel Weber (Eds). Collective Epistemology (119–153). Ontos.
Hess, K. (2014a). Because They Can: The Basis of the Moral Obligations of (Certain) Collectives. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 38(1), 203–221.
Hess, K. (2014b). The Free Will of Corporations (and Other Collectives). Philosophical Studies, 168, 241–260.
Kind, A. (2003). Shoemaker, Self-Blindness & Moore’s Paradox. Philosophical Quarterly, 53, 39–48.
Klausen, S. (2015). Group Knowledge: A Real-World Approach. Synthese, 192, 813–839.
Lackey, J. (2020). The Epistemology of Groups. Oxford UP.
List, C. (2016). What is it Like to be a Group Agent? Nous, 52(2), 295–319.
List, C., & Philip Pettit. (2011). Group Agency. Oxford UP.
Lycan, W. (1996). Consciousness and Experience. MIT P.
Mathiesen, K. (2011). Can Groups Be Epistemic Agents? In Hans Bernhard Schmid, Daniel Sirtes, and Marcel Weber (Eds) Collective Epistemology (pp. 23–45). Ontos Verlag P.
Moran, R. (2001). Authority and Estrangement. Princeton UP.
Mokyr, J. (2002). The Gifts of Athena. Princeton UP.
O’Brien, L. (2003). Moran on Agency and Self-Knowledge. European Journal of Philosophy, 11, 375–390.
Quinton, A. (1976). Social Objects. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 76, 1–27.
Peacocke, C. (1999). Being Known. Oxford UP.
Pettit, P. (2003). Groups with Minds of their Own. In F. Schmitt (Ed.) Socializing Metaphysics (pp. 167–193). Rowman & Littlefield.
Pettit, P. (2007). Rationality, Reasoning, and Group Agency. Dialectica, 61(4), 495–519.
Ritchie, K. (2013). What are Groups? Philosophical Studies, 166(2), 257–272.
Rosenthal, D. (1986). Two Concepts of Consciousness. Philosophical Studies, 49, 329–359.
Schmid, H. B. (2014a). Expressing Group Attitudes. Erkenntnis, 79, 1685–1701.
Schmid, H. B. (2014b). Plural Self-Awareness. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 13, 1.
Schmitt, F. (1994). The Justification of Group Beliefs. In F. Frederick, & Schmitt (Eds.), Socializing Epistemology: The Social Dimensions of Knowledge (pp. 257–287). Rowman & Littlefield P.
Schwengerer, L. (2022). Towards Collective Self-Knowledge. Erkenntnis, 87(3), 1153–1173.
Shoemaker, S. (2003). Moran on Self-Knowledge. European Journal of Philosophy, 11, 391–401.
Shoemaker, S. (1994). Self-Knowledge & Inner Sense. Philosophy & Phenomenological Research, 54, 249–315.
Tollefsen, D. (2008). Affectivity, Moral Agency, and Corporate-Human Relations. APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Law, 7(2), 9–13.
Tollefsen, D. (2015). Groups as Agents. Polity P.
Tuomela, R. (1992). Group Beliefs. Synthese, 91(3), 285–318.
Wright, C. (1998). Self-Knowledge: The Wittgensteinian Legacy. In Crispin Wright, Barry Smith, & Cynthia Macdonald (Eds), Knowing our Own Minds (13-45). Oxford UP.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Jennifer Lackey and Kendy Hess for their feedback on an earlier version of this paper, as well as to audience members at the 2021 Central American Philosophical Association conference for their valuable comments on this project.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Statements and declarations
There are no financial or non-financial interests that are directly or indirectly related to this work. I have received no funding for this work. This research also involved no research on humans or non-human animals.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Peterson, J. Groups that fly blind. Synthese 200, 503 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03973-8
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03973-8