Group Knowledge, Questions, and the Division of Epistemic Labour

Abstract

Discussions of group knowledge typically focus on whether a group's knowledge that p reduces to group members' knowledge that p. Drawing on the cumulative reading of collective knowledge ascriptions and considerations about the importance of the division of epistemic labour, I argue for what I call the Fragmented Knowledge account, which allows for more complex relations between individual and collective knowledge. According to this account, a group can know an answer to a question in virtue of members of the group knowing parts of that answer, when the whole answer is available to group-level action. I argue that this account explains a swathe of central cases of group knowledge, as well as explaining some central features of group knowledge.

Collective practical knowledge is a fragmented interrogative capacity

“…Collective knowledge‐how sits at the intersection of two debates: the debate about the nature of collective knowledge (Bird, 2010; de Ridder, 2014; Habgood‐Coote, 2019a; List, 2005; Palermos, 2020; Wray, 2007), and the debate about the nature of knowledge‐how (Bengson & Moffett, 2011; Cath, 2019, forthcoming; Pavese, 2016a, 2016b). In lieu of a thorough overview of these debates, I will present five constraints they place on an account of collective knowledge‐how.…”

“…Philosophers overwhelmingly focus on the collective and distributive readings of collective predicates, but the kind of collective practical knowledge in our target examples seems to involve the cumulative reading (Habgood‐Coote, 2019a). 24 Consider sentence 1) as a description of the NASA case: 1) NASA knows how to make a space shuttle …”

“…In Habgood‐Coote (2019a), I defended what I called the Fragmented Knowledge account of collective knowledge, which provides an account of the epistemic structure underlying the cumulative reading of knowledge‐wh ascriptions. Drawing on ideas from Lahiri (2002), this view understands the parts of a piece of knowledge‐wh in terms of knowledge about the parts of the embedded question 25 .…”

“…Whereas Birch and P&T opt for metaphysical explanations for DIVERGENCE and CON-NECTION that appeal to features of knowledge-how, the fragmented view of knowledge-how can appeal to ideas that are already established in linguistics to make sense of these facts (see Habgood-Coote, 2019a). DIVERGENCE and CONNECTION are not special features of collective practical knowledge; they are a consequence of the way cumulative predication works.…”

“…2828In Habgood‐Coote (2019a) I motivated a general version of the availability condition in a slightly different way, appealing to general knowledge‐action links.…”