Nonreductive Group Knowledge Revisited

Abstract

A prominent question in social epistemology concerns the epistemic profile of groups. While inflationists and deflationists agree that groups are fit to constitute knowers, they disagree about whether group knowledge is reducible to knowledge of their individual members. This paper develops and defends a weak inflationist view according to which some, but not all, group knowledge is over and above any knowledge of their members. This view sits between the deflationist view that all group knowledge is reducible to individual knowledge, and the strong inflationist view that some such knowledge even fails to supervene on features of individuals. Thus, some group knowledge is irreducible, but all such knowledge is anchored in, and so doesn't float freely from, individual features.

Permissive Divergence

“…3 Nonetheless, some accounts that are understood to be non-deflationary defend a supervenience relation between memberlevel and group-level attitudes (List & Pettit, 2011, 65-66). For further discussion, see also Bird (2010) and Kallestrup (2022). 4 For the concept of an operative member, see Tuomela (2004, 113).…”