Call for Papers

Special Volume of Social Epistemology on 

Collective Knowledge and Collective Knowers


We invite submissions for a special issue of the journal Social Epistemology on collective knowledge.  Submissions should address the question of whether and how a group of persons can be the subject of epistemic states. In other words, are there collective knowers, and if so, what and how can they know?

Background:

The standing assumption of (analytic) epistemology has been that knowledge is some sort of justified true belief (plus Gettier conditions) and that the epistemic subject (“the knower”) is an individual.  To the extent that philosophers have acknowledged social aspects of knowledge, the focus has been on social factors that influence or determine what the individual subject knows.  Those who have referred to cultures or societies “knowing” typically mean something like commonly held or culturally endorsed beliefs (see e.g., Berger and Luckman 1966), leaving out the traditional justification and truth criteria of knowledge.  Others have characterized the “knowledge” of the society in terms of its collected discoveries as recorded in books and other cultural objects (see e.g., Popper 1973), leaving out the belief criterion.  More infrequently has the focus been on the question of whether social groups themselves may be “knowers” in the traditional sense of subjects with justified true beliefs.  Groundwork has now been laid by those working on collective intentionality (see e.g., Searle 1995, Tuomela 1995, Gilbert 1989, Bratman 1999, etc.), collective belief (see e.g., Gilbert 1987, Tuomela 1995, Schmitt 1994, Pettit 2003, and Tollefsen 2002) group rationality (see e.g., Sugden 1993 and Graham 2002), and distributed cognition (see e.g., Giere (2002)).  This work provides us with valuable tools we can use to address the question of whether we can maintain the traditional conception of knowledge as essentially involving belief, truth, and justification, while admitting corporations, collectives, and other social groups as knowers.  The purpose of this special issue is to evaluate the progress made so far and to push forward the philosophical exploration of collective knowledge.

Suggested Topics:

Suggested topics and issues to be addressed include (but are not limited to):
 

  • What sort of account, analysis, or definition of collective knowledge can be given?
  • Are current accounts of collective belief adequate for epistemic considerations?
  • Is there room within the traditional conception of epistemology for the idea of a collective knower?  Or, does acceptance of collective knowledge require a revision of our traditional conceptions of knowledge or belief?
  • What is the relationship between individual knowledge and collective knowledge? Can the group know things none of the individual members know? 
  • Does collective knowledge require second order knowledge (i.e., must the group ‘know that it knows’)?
  • What sorts of groups can be ‘knowers’?  Must collective knowers be limited to certain types of groups or those groups with an explicitly epistemic goal (e.g., scientists, etc.)?

Papers should show engagement (either critical or continuous) with epistemology in the analytic tradition.  Those whose abstracts fit most closely with the focus of this special volume and who show the most scholarly promise will be asked to submit a complete paper. 

Deadlines:

Extended abstract (750-1500 words) due: March 1, 2006. Complete paper due: August 15, 2006.  For further information please contact Kay Mathiesen by mail at 1515 East 1st Street, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85719 or by e-mail at kmathiesen@gmail.com.

Selected Bibliography

Berger, Peter L. and Thomas Luckmann. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality. New York: Doubleday.
Bratman, Michael. 1999. "Shared Intention." Pp. 109-29 in Faces of Intention: Selected Essays on Intention and Agency, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Corlett, Angelo Analyzing Social Knowledge. Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996. 
Gilbert, Margaret. 2002. "Belief and Acceptance as Features of Groups." Protosociology 16:35-69.
            2000. "Collective Belief and Scientific Change." Sociality and Responsibility: New Essays in Plural Subject Theory, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield.
            1996. "Modelling Collective Belief." Pp. 195-214 in Living Together: Rationality, Sociality, and Obligation, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield.
            1996. "More on Collective Belief." Pp. 339-60 in Living Together: Rationality, Sociality, and Obligation, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield.
            1989. Social Facts. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Graham, Keith. 2002. Practical Reasoning in a Social World:  How We Act Together. Cambridge, United Kindgdom: Cambridge University Press.
Giere, Ronald. 2002. "Scientific Cognition as Distributed Cognition." in The Cognitive Basis of Science. Eds. Peter Carruthers, Stephen Stitch, and Michael Siegal.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.   
Hardwig, John. 1985. "Epistemic Dependence." Journal of Philosophy 82(7):335-49.
Jones, Todd. 2001. "What CBS Wants: How Groups Can Have (Difficult to Uncover) Beliefs." The Philosophical Forum 32(3):221-51.
Meijers, Anthonie. 2002 "Collective Agents and Cognitive Attitudes." Protosociology 16:86-117.
Pettit, Philip. "Groups With Minds of Their Own." Pp. 167-93 in Socializing Metaphysics:  The Nature of Social Reality, Frederick F. Schmitt.
Schmitt, Frederick F. 1994. "The Justification of Group Beliefs." Pp. 257-88 in Socializing Epistemology:  The Social Dimensions of Knowledge. Ed, Frederick F. Schmitt, ed. Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield.
Searle, John R. 1995. The Construction of Social Reality. New York: The Free Press.
Tollefsen, Deborah. 2002. "Challenging Epistemic Individualism." Protosociology 16:86-117.
            2002. "Organizations as True Believers." Journal of Social Philosophy 33(3):395-410.
Tuomela, Raimo. 1995. The Importance of Us: A Philsophical Study of Basic Social Notions. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Wray, K. B. 2001. "Collective Belief and Acceptance." Synthese 129:319-33.
            2002. "The Epistemic Signigicance of Collaborative Research." Philosophy of Science 69:150-168.