Abstract
I argue that scientific knowledge is collective knowledge, in a sense to be specified and defended. I first consider some existing proposals for construing collective knowledge and argue that they are unsatisfactory, at least for scientific knowledge as we encounter it in actual scientific practice. Then I introduce an alternative conception of collective knowledge, on which knowledge is collective if there is a strong form of mutual epistemic dependence among scientists, which makes it so that satisfaction of the justification condition on knowledge ineliminably requires a collective. Next, I show how features of contemporary science support the conclusion that scientific knowledge is collective knowledge in this sense. Finally, I consider implications of my proposal and defend it against objections.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Consult any introduction to epistemology and one will come across a statement of this idea. According to Pritchard (forthcoming), it is one of two ‘master intuitions’ about knowledge.
Roberts (1989) gives wonderful stories about the role of luck in some scientific discoveries. Thanks to an anonymous referee for pointing me to this source.
In a sense, it is also lucky that we do not live in a demon world or other skeptical scenario. Since most of us aren’t skeptics, however, we are committed that such luck is not (always) knowledge-undermining (cf. Pritchard (2005), Ch. 9).
Note that there are two different ways to think about the reliability of a decision procedure: some procedures are reliable only on the condition that their input is already of high epistemic quality. For instance, a majority vote among reliable experts may be reliable in this sense. Other procedures are reliable in the more robust sense that they not only conserve the epistemic quality of their input, but improve upon it. Even if the input is of bad or mixed epistemic quality, a rational deliberative process in which evidence is filtered and arguments are weighed may reliably produce true outputs.
For this reason, Wray (2007) argues that only research teams can have collective knowledge.
Perhaps proponents of an epistemic conception of truth would argue that satisfaction of the truth condition on knowledge requires a collective. One worry, however, is that all knowledge will come out as collective then, so that there is nothing distinctly collective about scientific knowledge. I leave it to the friends of epistemic conceptions of truth to explore this further.
Cf. note 3 above.
Scientific antirealists, as well as scientific realists of various stripes, will balk at my unqualified talk about truth. While I won’t be able to satisfy antirealists who lean towards relativism, this reliability condition can be amended to accommodate weaker forms of realism, such as referential realism or structural realism, and even constructive empiricism. To do this, reliability must be understood as making it more likely that successfully referring or empirically adequate theories are found.
What I am proposing here is that scientific knowledge requires what Alvin Goldman (1988) calls ‘strong justification’.
This is not to deny that there may be further ways in which scientific knowledge is high-grade. Perhaps scientific knowledge requires higher reliability than knowledge generally. Perhaps it ought to be embedded in a broader network of knowledge which exemplifies internal coherence, explanatory potential, or other theoretical virtues, thus giving rise to what some authors have called ‘understanding’ (Kvanvig 2003; Greco 2010).
A constraint like this is already implicit in the second requirement above that the belief ought to be the intended outcome of a process of inquiry. To satisfy this requirement, scientists must understand how the inquiry is supposed to produce evidence for the belief and thus (assuming that the inquiry is successful and indeed produces knowledge) know that they know.
My analysis of scientific justification is thus explicitly internalist, since this final condition requires cognitive access to the grounds of belief and to how they support the belief. Such conditions are the hallmark of what is often called access internalism (BonJour 2010). Note, however, that this is perfectly compatible with holding that knowledge or justification in general must be analyzed externalistically. As I hinted at above, it might be that scientific knowledge is high-grade exactly because it meets internalist constraints. Ordinary knowledge need not require any such thing.
Post-Gettier epistemology literature contains multitudes of cleverly devised and increasingly outlandish counterexamples to proposed analyses of justification and knowledge. I will not attempt to safeguard (SJ) against such counterexamples here. Moreover, since it is far from clear that outlandish counterexamples would ever materialize in actual scientific practice they don’t pose a very pressing threat to (SJ). See, e.g., Pritchard (forthcoming), Sosa (2007), and Greco (2010) for discussion and recent attempts to offer a satisfactory general analysis of knowledge.
The sense of necessity that I am appealing to here has slightly vague contours. It is conditioned on scientists’ general opportunities and abilities to learn about other scientific subfields, on the development of background and common knowledge among scientists, and on scientists’ individual circumstances, which may or may not permit them to invest additional time and effort into data gathering, processing, learning, etc. Nonetheless, it should be uncontroversial that when someone with a Ph.D. in, say, particle physics cooperates with a molecular biologist on a joint research project, they will typically have to rely on each other’s expertise necessarily.
By writing that ‘the group comes to know’ I don’t mean to beg the question. Those who remain unconvinced up to this point may paraphrase this locution in their preferred way.
When pushed, I might grant that we could stipulate that the partially testimonial justification an individual scientist in the group acquires for p is perhaps an indirect way of satisfying (SJ). Nonetheless, I want to insist that only collectives can satisfy it in a direct way.
Note that this is a direct consequence of the fact that the cognitive necessity of epistemic dependence is premised on various changeable factors. Cf. note 17 above.
This example potentially does introduce another form of cognitively necessary epistemic dependence, namely on the developers of hardware or software.
References
Alston, W. P. (1988). The deontological conception of epistemic justification. Philosophical Perspectives, 2, 257–299.
Bird, A. (2010). Social knowing: The social sense of ‘scientific knowledge’. Philosophical Perspectives, 24, 23–56.
BonJour, L. (2010). Externalism/internalism. In J. Dancy, E. Sosa, & M. Steup (Eds.), A companion to epistemology (pp. 364–368). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Cohen, J. (1989). Belief and acceptance. Mind, 98(391), 367–389.
Corlett, J. A. (1996). Analyzing social knowledge. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Fagan, M. B. (2011). Is there collective scientific knowledge? Arguments from explanation. The Philosophical Quarterly, 61(243), 247–269.
Faulkner, P. (2011). Knowledge on trust. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Giere, R. (2006). Scientific perspectivism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Giere, R. (2007). Distributed cognition without distributed knowing. Social Epistemology, 21(3), 313–320.
Gilbert, M. (1987). Modelling collective belief. Synthese, 73(1), 185–204.
Gilbert, M. (1989). On social facts. London: Routledge.
Gilbert, M. (1994). Remarks on collective belief. In Schmitt 1994a (pp. 235–256).
Gilbert, M. (2000). Collective belief and scientific change. In Sociality and responsibility: New essays in plural subject theory (pp. 37–49). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Gilbert, M. (2004). Collective Epistemology. Episteme, 1(2), 95–107.
Goldberg, S. (2010). Relying on others: An essay in epistemology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Goldman, A. (1988). Strong and weak justification. Philosophical Perspectives, 2, 51–69.
Goldman, A. (1999). Knowledge in a social world. New York: Oxford University Press.
Greco, J. (2010). Achieving knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hardwig, J. (1985). Epistemic dependence. Journal of Philosophy, 82(7), 335–349.
Hardwig, J. (1991). The role of trust in knowledge. Journal of Philosophy, 88(12), 693–708.
Kitcher, P. (1994). Contrasting conceptions of social epistemology. In Schmitt 1994a (pp. 111–134).
Kvanvig, J. (2003). The value of knowledge and the Pursuit of understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
List, C., & Pettit, P. (2011). Group agency: The possibility, design, and status of corporate agents. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nickles, T. (1992). Good science as bad history: From order of knowing to order of being. In E. McMullin (Ed.), The social dimensions of science (pp. 85–129). Notre Dame, ID: University of Notre Dame Press.
Pritchard, D. (2005). Epistemic luck. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pritchard, D. (2012). Anti-luck virtue epistemology. Journal of Philosophy, 109(3), 247–279.
Quinton, A. (1976). Social objects. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 75, 1–27.
Roberts, B. (1989). Serendipity: Accidental discoveries in science. New York: Wiley.
Rolin, K. (2008). Science as collective knowledge. Cognitive Systems Research, 9(1–2), 115–124.
Rolin, K. (2010). Group justification in science. Episteme, 7(3), 215–231.
Schmitt, Frederick (Ed.). (1994a). Socializing epistemology: The social dimensions of knowledge. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Schmitt, F. (1994b). The justification of group beliefs. In Schmitt 1994a (pp. 257–287).
Sosa, E. (2007). A vrtue epistemology: Apt belief and reflective knowledge (Vol. I). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Sosa, E. (2009). Reflective knowledge: Apt belief and reflective knowledge (Vol. II). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Thagard, P. (1997). Collaborative knowledge. Noûs, 31(2), 242–261.
Thagard, P. (2010). Explaining economic crises: Are there collective representations? Episteme, 7(3), 66–83.
Tuomela, R. (1992). Group beliefs. Synthese, 91(3), 285–318.
Tuomela, R. (2004). Group knowledge analyzed. Episteme, 1(2), 109–127.
Unger, P. (1968). An analysis of factual knowledge. Journal of Philosophy, 65, 157–170.
Wray, K. B. (2001). Collective belief and acceptance. Synthese, 129, 319–333.
Wray, K. B. (2007). Who has scientific knowledge? Social Epistemology, 21(3), 337–347.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the following people: the organizers of the Collective Dimensions of Science conference in Nancy in December 2011 for giving me an opportunity to present an early version of this paper; audience members at that conference, members of the Theoretical Philosophy research group at VU University Amsterdam, and three anonymous referees for this journal for incisive comments on several earlier versions of this paper. Research for this paper was made possible by an Veni grant (275-20-023) from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
de Ridder, J. Epistemic dependence and collective scientific knowledge. Synthese 191, 37–53 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-013-0283-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-013-0283-3