The Epistemology of Groups 0199656606, 9780199656608

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the epistemology of group JENNIFER LACKEY

The Epistemology of Group

The Epistemology of Groups JENNIFER LACKEY

UNIVERSITY PRESS

UNIVERSITY PRESS

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© Jennifer Lackey 2021

The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2021 Impression: 1

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To Baron, Isabella, and Catherine

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 0.1 On the Very Existence of Group Beliefs 0.2 The Nature of Groups 0.3 Chapter Overviews 0.4 The Bigger Picture

ix

1 4 5 12 15

1. Group Belief: Lessons from Lies and Bullshit 1.1 Summative and Non-Summative Views of Group Belief 1.2 Group Lies and Group Bullshit 1.3 Judgment Fragility 1.4 Base Fragility 1.5 The Group Agent Account 1.6 Conclusion

19 20 30 41 45 48 54

2. What Is Justified Group Belief? 2.1 Divergence Arguments 2.2 The Paradigmatic Inflationary Non-Summativist View: The Joint Acceptance Account 2.3 Problems for the Joint Acceptance Account 2.4 Revisiting Divergence Arguments 2.5 Deflationary Summativism, the Group Justification Paradox, and the Defeater Problem 2.6 The Collective Evidence Problem 2.7 The Group Normative Obligations Problem 2.8 A Condorcet-Inspired Account of Justified Group Belief 2.9 The Group Epistemic Agent Account 2.10 Central Obj ection to the Group Epistemic Agent Account 2.11 Conclusion

55 56

3. Group Knowledge 3.1 Social Knowledge 3.2 Social Knowledge and Action 3.3 Social Knowledgeand Defeaters 3.4 Knowing, Being in a Position to Know, and Should Have Known

59 62 67 71 84 88 91 95 107 109 111 111 115 123

127

Viii

CONTENTS

3.5 Collective Knowledge 3.6 Conclusion

128 137

4. Group Assertion 4.1 Two Kinds of Group Assertion 4.2 Having the Authority to Be a Spokesperson 4.3 The Autonomy of Spokespersons 4.4 Coordinated and Authority-Based Group Assertion 4.5 Two Other Accounts 4.6 Group Assertion Is Not Reducible to Individual Assertion 4.7 Conclusion

138 139 140 148 149 154 158 163

5. Group Lies 5.1 Individual Lies 5.2 Counterexamples to the Traditional View of Lying 5.3 Non-Deception Accounts of Lying 5.4 Back to Deception 5.5 Summativism and Sufficiency 5.6 Summativism and Necessity 5.7 The Joint Acceptance Account of Group Lies 5.8 Group Lies 5.9 Conclusion

165 166 167 169 171 178 181 184 186 188

References Index

189 197

Acknowledgments I have been thinking about issues related to the epistemology of groups for a number of years and so there are many people to thank for playing a role in seeing this project through to the end. For giving me enormously helpful feed­ back on one or more of the chapters in this book, I am grateful to Anne Baril, Jared Bates, Michael Bratman, Jessica Brown, Tom Carson, Fabrizio Cariani, J. Adam Carter, David Christensen, Michael DePaul, Josh Dever, Don Fallis, Sandy Goldberg, Alvin Goldman, John Greco, Allan Hazlett, Marija Jankovic, Nick Leonard, Kirk Ludwig, Eliot Michaelson, Federico Penelas, Jim Pryor, Florencia Rimoldi, John Searle, Andreas Stokke, and Deb Tollefsen. Thanks also go to audience members at the University of Warsaw, the Indiana Philosophical Association meeting at Hanover College, Western Michigan University, the Workshop on the Epistemology of Groups at Northwestern University, the University of Buenos Aires, the University of Warwick, a Social Epistemology Workshop in Helsinki, Finland, the GAP.9 Conference in Osnabriick, Germany, an Invited Symposium at the Eastern Division of the APA in Washington, D.C., the Epistemic Dependence on People and Instruments conference in Madrid, Spain, the 3rd Colombian Conference in Logic, Epistemology, and Philosophy of Science in Bogota, Colombia, the University of Toronto, Mississauga, the University of St. Andrews, the Southwest Epistemology Workshop at the University of New Mexico, the International Workshop on Lying and Deception at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, the Collective Intentionality IX Conference at Indiana University, New York University, the University of Connecticut, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, the University of Georgia, Radboud University, the XVII Congress of the Inter-American Philosophical Society in Salvador, Brazil, the Social Epistemology Workshop in St. Andrews, Scotland, the Midwest Epistemology Workshop at Notre Dame, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Nebraska— Lincoln, and students in my graduate seminars at Northwestern University. I am also grateful to my daughter, Isabella Reed, for her tireless and meticulous work on the index for this book. Just when I thought I might not cross the finish line, Isabella stepped in with her ever generous and thoughtful spirit to provide much-needed assistance with this project.

X

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My greatest debt of all is to my husband, Baron Reed—my most brilliant reader, my fiercest champion, and my most constructive critic. Every sentence in this book has been carefully read by him, often more than once, and every argument has benefited from his incisiveness, powerful mind, and ability to invariably see the best version of what I am saying. I have learned more from Baron than from any other human in my life (except my mother, who literally taught me how to walk and talk!). In keeping with the theme of this book, I often feel that Baron and I make up a distinctive philo­ sophical group with a shared “mind of our own.” I am dedicating this book to Baron and to our daughters, Isabella and Catherine, for enriching my life beyond words: to Baron, for his unwavering support, witty humor, unparalleled love, and the most powerful intellectual connection; to Isabella, for an irrepressible generosity of spirit, for wisdom and courage far beyond her years, and for a deep companionship that con­ tinues to surprise me; and to Catherine, for her utterly unique and captivat­ ing way of looking at the world, for her seemingly endless creativity, and for her adventurous yet completely steady heart.

Introduction In 2005, Volkswagen of America learned that its diesel vehicles could not meet emissions standards in the United States. Rather than lower the actual emissions levels, the auto manufacturer inserted software that reported sub­ stantially lower emissions levels during testing than were possible when the vehicles were on the road. Before a team from West Virginia University uncovered this deception, these “defeat devices” were installed in 11 million diesel cars sold worldwide between 2008 and 2015. The result was that the fraudulent test results met emission requirements, but the vehicles “spewed as much as 40 times more pollution from tailpipes than allowed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.”1 Since then, scientists at MIT have found that the excess emissions will cause 60 premature deaths across the United States and 1200 in Europe, with Germany, Poland, France, and the Czech Republic being hit the hardest.2 Michael Horn, who was the CEO of Volkswagen Group of America at the time, testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s over­ sight and investigations panel in October of 2015 about this emissions-test cheating scandal. In response to challenges from lawmakers, Horn said, “This was a couple of software engineers who put this in for whatever rea­ son. To my understanding, this was not a corporate decision. This was something individuals did.”3 Horn went on to explain that three Volkswagen employees had been suspended as a result of the software that led to the fraudulent test results. In response to Horns testimony, Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.), who is him­ self an engineer, said, “I cannot accept VW’s portrayal of this as something by a couple of rogue software engineers. Suspending three folks—it goes 1 https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-bc-u8--volkswagen-emissions-scheme20150921-story.html, accessed August 8, 2019. 2 http://news.mit.edu/2017/volkswagen-emissions-premature-deaths-europe-0303 , accessed August 8, 2019. 3 https://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-vw-hearing-20151009-story.html , accessed August 7, 2019.

The Epistemology of Groups. Jennifer Lackey, Oxford University Press (2021). © Jennifer Lackey. DOI: 10.1093/OSO/9780199656608.003.0001

2

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF GROUPS

way, way higher than that.”4 Collins continued: “Either your entire organization is incompetent when it comes to trying to come up with intel­ lectual property, and I don’t believe that for a second, or they are complicit at the highest levels in a massive cover-up that continues today.”5 Volkswagens response to this scandal lies at one end of the spectrum regarding collective responsibility: the blame is entirely the result of a few individual employees, with none attaching to the corporation itself. At the other end of the spectrum lies a case like this: on March 6, 1984, the United States Department of Defense charged that between 1978 and 1981, the company National Semiconductor had sold them 26 million com­ puter chips that had not been properly tested and then had falsified their records to conceal the fraud.6 These potentially defective chips had been used in airplane guidance systems, nuclear weapons systems, guided mis­ siles, rocket launchers, and other sensitive military equipment. Highlighting the gravity of the situation, a government official noted that if one of these computer chips malfunctioned, “You could have a missile that would end up in Cleveland instead of the intended target.” Officials at National Semiconductor admitted to both the omission of required tests and the falsification of relevant documentation and agreed to pay $1.75 million in penalties for defrauding the government. However, the company refused to provide the names of any of the individuals who had participated in the decision to omit the tests and falsify the documents, or any who had been involved in carrying out these tasks. The legal counsel for the Department of Defense objected, arguing that “a corporation acts only through its employees and officers” and thus the government would have no assurance that National Semiconductor would not engage in the fraud again. In response, the CEO of National Semiconductor said, “We totally disagree with the Defense Department’s proposal. We have repeatedly stated that we accept responsibility as a company and we steadfastly continue to stand by that statement.” A spokesperson for National Semiconductor later reiterated this position: “We will see [that our individual people] are not harmed. We feel it’s a company responsibility, [and this is] a matter of

4 https://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-vw-hearing-20151009-story.html, accessed August 7,2019. 5 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/10/07/volkswagens-pullingthe-plug-on-its-2016-american-diesel-cars/ , accessed August 7,2019. 6 This case, including all of the quotations, are discussed in Velasquez (2003).

INTRODUCTION

3

ethics.” National Semiconductor prevailed: no individual employee was ever held criminally or civilly liable for the crime. Only the company qua com­ pany was penalized. In contrast to Volkswagens approach, then, National Semiconductor took complete responsibility for defrauding the government at the level of the company and denied that any individual employees were deserving of blame. These two different ways of characterizing collective responsibility are closely connected to a central debate in the literature on the epistemology of groups. On the one hand, deflationary theorists hold that group phenom­ ena, such as group beliefs, can be understood entirely in terms of individual members and their states. According to this approach, the states of collect­ ives are not interestingly different than those of individual knowers, and thus collective epistemology turns out to be largely or completely reducible to individual epistemology. Inflationary theorists, on the other hand, hold that group phenomena are importantly over and above, or otherwise distinct from, individual members and their states. In this way, groups are often said to crucially have “minds of their own.”7 Settling some of the issues in this debate lies at the heart of making sense of attributions of collective respon­ sibility. If National Semiconductor, for instance, is to be treated as an entity over and above its members in bearing responsibility for defrauding the government, then it is essential to determine whether the company believed or knew that required tests were being omitted and relevant documentation falsified and whether it lied to the government about its fraudulent behavior. In the absence of plausible readings of these collective states, it simply wouldn’t make sense to say that National Semiconductor as a corporation bears full responsibility for its actions. A central aim of this book is to make progress in understanding these crucial notions in collective epistemology—group belief, justified group belief, group knowledge, group assertion, and group lies—so as to shed light on whether it is groups, their individual members, or both who ought to be held responsible for collective actions.

7 See Pettit (2003).

4

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF GROUPS

0.1 On the Very Existence of Group Beliefs One fundamental type of objection I have frequently heard to a project on the epistemology of groups goes like this: groups are not the proper bearers of epistemic states. Being a knower, or justifiedly believing a proposition, requires belief. Belief is a mental state, and groups don’t have mental states in any robust sense. To the extent that we attribute states of belief or knowledge to groups, such talk is loose or metaphorical. Anthony Quinton, for instance, writes:

We do, of course, speak freely of the mental properties and acts of a group in the way we do of individual people. Groups are said to have beliefs, emotions, and attitudes and to take decisions and make promises. But these ways of speaking are plainly metaphorical. To ascribe mental predi­ cates to a group is always an indirect way of ascribing such predicates to its members. With such mental states as beliefs and attitudes, the ascriptions are of what I have called a summative kind. To say that the industrial working class is determined to resist anti-trade union laws is to say that all or most industrial workers are so minded. (Quinton 1975/1976, p. 17)

There are two different views of group belief suggested in this passage. On the one hand, there is the eliminativist view, according to which it is literally false that groups believe things and hence group belief attributions are sim­ ply metaphorical. On the other hand, there is the deflationary view men­ tioned above, according to which it is literally true that groups believe things, but such claims are made true entirely by individual members of the groups believing things. On either reading, we might say that a book on the epistemology of groups is misguided. Groups are not epistemic agents in their own right because they don’t have proper beliefs and, thus, they don’t have justified beliefs or knowledge. Talk of group beliefs is either metaphor­ ical or fully reducible to the beliefs of individuals. Since any reader of this book who is sympathetic with this line of thought will most likely see no point in moving forward, let me offer a very brief argument right at the outset for rejecting it. I take as a starting position that groups lie. I will say more about this throughout the book, especially in Chapters 1 and 5, but this does not seem particularly contentious. Google “Facebook lies” and a litany of articles comes up. Corporations have been forced to pay literally billions of dollars for lying. After a 2009 headline in Business Insider that reads “Pfizer to Pay

INTRODUCTION

5

$2.3 Billion in Biggest Fine Ever for Deceitful Drug Marketing” the first line says, “There is not always truth in advertising, but when you really lie, you really pay—especially if you happen to be an enormous drug company.”8 And on a more personal level, imagine that your employer promised to give you research funds while recruiting you, but you then learned after they never materialized that the university said this to you while knowing full well that they did not have the resources to follow through. It seems quite natural for you to say, not at all metaphorically, “My university lied to me.” With this in mind, here is an argument:

1. Groups lie. 2. Group lies cannot be understood without groups having genuine beliefs. 3. Therefore, groups have genuine beliefs. I will discuss group lies in far more detail in Chapters 1 and 5. But very briefly, a lie—whether offered by an individual or a group—just is an asser­ tion that one does not believe oneself that is made with the intention to be deceptive. Indeed, even within debates about the details over how to under­ stand lying, there is consensus that it crucially involves the absence of belief on the part of the liar. Premise (1) is thus widely supported by our social practices, including our notions of moral and criminal responsibility, and (2) follows from every major account of the nature of lying. Finally, all I mean by “genuine” is that such beliefs are neither loose talk nor entirely reducible to the beliefs of individuals. Rather, there is a robust sense in which groups are believers in their own right. Of course, I don’t expect this argument to be fully satisfying at this point. But what I hope it does is get the skeptical reader on board with thinking that a project on the epistemology of groups is worth exploring.

0.2 The Nature of Groups Another initial question that might be raised about a project on the epis­ temology of groups is what kind of collective entities will be at issue. Groups

8 https://www.businessinsider.com/pfizer-to-pay-23-billion-m-biggest-fine-every-fordeceitful-advertising-2009-9, accessed August 7, 2019.

6

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF GROUPS

obviously come in a variety of forms. At one end of the spectrum, there are highly structured groups with policies, procedures, and robust forms of interaction among the members, such as corporations, universities, juries, and boards; at the other end, there are collections of individuals with no formal structure or interaction among group members, such as left-handed Northwestern students and red-haired New Yorkers. And in between these two ends are groups with varying degrees of structure and interaction, such as governments, scientific communities, Americans, and women. Accounts of group phenomena are often directly shaped by which groups are taken to be paradigmatic. For instance, those who are drawn to restrict­ ive views typically focus on highly structured groups with regular inter­ action among the members. A particularly clear example of this can be seen in the work of Frederick F. Schmitt who, following Margaret Gilbert, argues that “a set of individuals forms a group just in case the members of the set each openly expresses his or her willingness to act jointly with the other members of the set” (Schmitt 1994, p. 260). This conception of a group requires a high level of conscious interaction among the members, and thus rules out as groups all but very formalized collections. It is, therefore, not surprising that Schmitt frequently uses a jury as a classic example of a group. Moreover, this starting point directly impacts his view of other col­ lective phenomena, such as justified group belief, where he relies crucially on the notion of joint acceptance. Clearly, there is a sense in which many groups, such as the Democratic Party or even Northwestern University, are not even properly positioned for joint acceptance, as they are large, dis­ persed, and made up of members with varying levels of authority.9

9 Others distinguish between collections of individuals and group agents, with very strong requirements to qualify as the latter. For instance, according to Jesper Kallestrup, “A collective is a group agent only if (i) its individual members intend that the collective act and form atti­ tudes together, i.e. each of these individuals must intend that they together enact the joint per­ formance and come to a group attitude. Moreover, (ii) each must intend to do their part, and (iii) intend to do so because of their belief that others intend to do their bit.... A different but related set of constraints concerns the office of the collective as fixed by its charter. A collective is a group agent only if its (founding) members jointly set up common goals and agree on how to proceed in order to meet them. Both the ends and the means, which are carried out for the purpose of achieving them, are captured by the groups charter, which is sometimes formally enshrined in a system of laws, other times its existence is evidenced by the practice of the group and its members. When these two sets of constraints are met, a collection of individuals unites in forming a rational agent in its own right” (Kallestrup 2016). It should be clear that many collectives that act together will fail these conditions, such as a group of strangers who work together to save a drowning swimmer. In at least some sense, this collection surely might properly be regarded as a group agent, despite failing Kallestrup’s demanding conditions.

INTRODUCTION

7

In contrast, those who are interested in more permissive accounts of collective phenomena typically focus on large, unstructured groups, such as those that have information distributed throughout their members. Alexander Bird, for instance, takes the scientific community to be a para­ digmatic group in his argument on behalf of a phenomenon that he calls “social knowing,” where group states do not even supervene on the mental states of the individual members.10 Similarly, Soren Harnow Klausen recently argued that:

We should allow that the factors which, together with truth (or, in the case of knowing how, some sort of adequacy to the task in question), are neces­ sary and jointly sufficient for group knowledge, can be distributed among the members of the group. A well-known example of genuinely distrib­ uted cognition has been provided by Hutchins (1995), who describes how a navy vessel crew is able to navigate successfully through the concerted efforts of many individuals, each of whom carries out a very specialized task and does not necessarily have any knowledge of the contributions of others, nor of the more general tasks or the ways in which the different contributions are merged. I suggest that this kind of example, rather than that of a jury or a board of directors facing a specific decision, should serve as a paradigm of collective knowledge. (Klausen 2015, p. 823)

Here, Klausen begins with a paradigm of a group that not only fails to engage in any sort of collective deliberation, as a jury does, but is also such that the members are wholly unaware both of the actions of the others and of the collective goals. If this is the starting point, then any account that requires joint awareness or activity of any sort will immediately be ruled out. Attempts have been made in the literature to distinguish these different kinds of groups in ways that have theoretical or practical significance. One common distinction that is drawn here is between established groups and non-established groups, where it is standard to rely on examples of each kind rather than definitions or criteria. Margaret Gilbert, for instance, writes: There are ascriptions of cognitive states to two or more people who are understood to constitute an established group of a specific kind such as a

10 See Bird (2010).

8

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF GROUPS

union, court, discussion group, family, and so on. There are also ascriptions of cognitive states to two or more people without any presumption that they constitute an already established group. (Gilbert 2004, p. 96)11

While there are certainly important differences between, say, a court and a collection of left-handed Northwestern students, it is doubtful that “being established” is the most theoretically or practically relevant feature to focus on. Suppose, for instance, that unbeknownst to the left-handed students at Northwestern, I fill out all of the necessary paper work for them to have official status as a club on campus. Left-handed Northwestern students are now recognized by the university and thus constitute an established group. Surely, however, this official status by itself does not change the group in any deeply significant way. So, the distinction between being established and non-established doesn’t seem to mark a particularly meaningful difference between these two kinds of groups. Christian List and Philip Pettit (2011) have argued that while a corpor­ ation is a group, left-handed Northwestern students are a mere collection, and this difference is grounded in whether the collection in question can survive changes of membership. They write:

Collections of individuals come in many forms. Some change identity with any change of membership. An example is the collection of people in a given room or subway carriage. Other collections have an identity that can survive changes of membership. Examples are the collections of people constituting a nation, a university or a purposive organization. We call the former “mere collections”, the latter “groups”. Our focus here is on groups. (List and Pettit 2011, p. 44) Once again, however, it is not clear that an important distinction has been highlighted. On the one hand, a company may not survive the firing of its CEO, a cult may not survive the death of its leader, and a political group may not survive its dictator being overthrown, but there is nonetheless a clear difference between these groups and left-handed Northwestern stu­ dents. On the other hand, a collection of individuals trying to save a beached whale over the course of 36 hours12 may survive a number of changes

11 See also Lahroodi (2007) and Bird (2010). 12 This is a modified example that List and Pettit (2011) use to illustrate a mere collection.

INTRODUCTION

9

in membership,13 yet there may be significant asymmetries between this type of group and a medical association or academic department. So, it seems as though there can be paradigmatic groups unable to survive changes in membership, and classic instances of mere collections that are able to do so. Thus, the ability to survive changes in membership also fails to track a theoretically substantive difference among collective entities. One distinction that has clear significance along a number of dimen­ sions—such as epistemic, moral, legal, and practical—is the groups ability, or lack thereof, to engage in collective deliberation or reasoning. Such reasoning involves, at a minimum, a sensitivity to evidence, the capacity to engage in belief revision, and being the proper subject of normative evalu­ ation. For instance, school boards often meet to discuss issues relevant to their goals, bouncing ideas off of one another, considering and responding to objections as a group, weighing various pieces of evidence, and revising their collective beliefs as necessary. In contrast, in the absence of unusual circumstances, left-handed Northwestern students simply do not engage in these sorts of activities for several reasons. First, collections of individuals such as left-handed Northwestern students often simply don’t conceive of themselves as a group and so wouldn’t consider engaging in any sort of reasoning with other members. Second, these sorts of collections are some­ times widely dispersed across even larger groups of individuals, rendering it practically impossible to collectively reason, especially when there aren’t any formal meetings or events at which they can do so. Finally, these groups of individuals are frequently united by features, such as left-handedness, that have very little general interest or value. For ease of expression, let us call those groups capable of engaging in collective reasoning deliberative groups and those that are not nondeliberative groups. There are two points about non-deliberative groups that should be emphasized here. First, that this sort of group is incapable of engaging in collective reasoning is simply a contingent feature that arises in the circum­ stances in which it is found, one that can certainly change from one minute to the next. For instance, Northwestern administrators may request that all left-handed students gather in an auditorium to discuss whether the cam­ pus is suitably sensitive to their needs. Prior to this gathering, the group was 13 For instance, a reward that is given in recognition of the efforts of those saving the beached whale would include all of the people who participated in the rescue at any point. This group would, then, be the subject of praise and other kinds of normative assessment in ways that mere collections of individuals are not.

10

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF GROUPS

incapable of engaging in collective reasoning and was therefore nondeliberative. But as soon as they find themselves in an auditorium identified as sharing a certain salient property, they might then reason together as a group and thus become deliberative. For instance, each student may now share with the others evidence about how many classrooms do not have desks for left-handed students, how many times each student has been inconvenienced because of his or her left-handedness, and so on, and they may decide as a group what their position is regarding whether the campus is appropriately set-up for their needs. So, being non-deliberative is not necessarily an enduring property of a group.14 Second, despite the fact that non-deliberative groups cannot engage in collective reasoning, there is a clear sense in which they can nonetheless have group beliefs, albeit ones that are different from those had by their deliberative cousins. For instance, suppose that I am in charge of safety at Northwestern and I wish to determine whether left-handed students regard the campus as properly designed for their needs. To this end, I send out a survey for all left-handed students to fill out and, after receiving the results, I aggregate their judgments via a supermajority procedure. I then report on this basis that left-handed Northwestern students believe that the campus is not suitably sensitive to their particular needs. It is not uncommon to think that there is nothing strained or mistaken about this belief attribution—as a group, left-handed Northwestern students do hold this belief, just not in the same way that a group capable of collective reasoning might do so. While deliberative groups depend for their existence on features such as an appropriate structure, a set of constitutive rules, accepted social integra­ tion, and so on, non-deliberative groups can simply be brought into exist­ ence through internal or external interest. For instance, someone who is either herself left-handed or is simply interested in those who are may be inspired to survey Northwestern students with this feature, aggregate their responses, and reveal their belief as a non-deliberative group. The same can be said for other collections of individuals, such as red-haired New Yorkers. This interest brings the group into existence, and the surveying and aggre­ gating reveals their group belief. Unlike the features discussed earlier—such as whether a group is estab­ lished or can survive changes in membership—the ability to engage in col­ lective reasoning has clear significance. For instance, a collection that is capable of weighing evidence and revising its beliefs as a group can be 14 Of course, being deliberative can also go out of existence.

INTRODUCTION

11

evaluated as rational and irrational in a way that one that is not so capable cannot. Sure, after conducting the survey of left-handed Northwestern stu­ dents, the administration may have evidence that these students have beliefs that collectively conflict with one another, and they may assess them on this basis. But this is an assessment of the beliefs of a collection of individuals rather than of a collective entity. Corresponding to the evaluation of a group being appropriately judged irrational is the responsibility that such an entity might collectively bear for this shortcoming. If a school board is irrational in its belief that the honors program at a local high school ought to be dis­ continued, then it can be held responsible as a group for this epistemic shortcoming. Relatedly, the school board can then act as a collective agent by deciding to discontinue the honors program and, accordingly, can be held morally and legally responsible for some of the effects that this move has on the community. For instance, the school board can be appropriately deemed self-serving or callous if it is discovered that the decision was made simply for political benefits. Or the school board can be sued if parents regard the cessation of the honors program as failing to provide their chil­ dren with the educational opportunities that are required by the state. Thus, there is obvious epistemological, metaphysical, moral, legal, and practical value that comes with the ability to engage in collective reasoning. In addition to deliberative and non-deliberative groups, there are what we may call mere collections, which are sets of individuals that share a com­ mon feature though one for which there is no interest, either internal or external. This is currently the status of left-handed Northwestern students since neither the members of this collection nor those outside of it have any interest in left-handed students qua being left handed. As we have seen, this can certainly change. Left-handed students may organize themselves into a deliberative group by meeting weekly to discuss their plight, formalizing rules for making decisions among themselves, and electing a board to offi­ cially represent their interests on campus. Alternatively, a right-handed member of the community worried about issues of fairness may convert left-handed students into a non-deliberative group through her interest in them. There is, however, a feature that is even more general—one that may even cut across the deliberative/non-deliberative distinction15—that captures the 15 I should note that while I am interested in normative evaluation of both deliberative and non-deliberative groups, as a general rule the normative evaluation of deliberative groups tends to be richer and more significant to our broader understanding of the epistemic, moral, and legal landscape.

12

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF GROUPS

kinds of groups that will be the focus of this book; namely, being subject to normative evaluation. In particular, I will be interested in those groups that are properly subject to normative assessment, such as praise and blame, along both epistemic and moral dimensions, and the corresponding attri­ butions of responsibility, accountability, and so on, Put succinctly, if we can properly hold a group, G, responsible for -ing, then this is sufficient for regarding G as a group in the sense relevant for this project.

0.3 Chapter Overviews This book is divided into five chapters. In Chapter 1,1 take up the question: how should we understand the sense in which groups have beliefs? In stark contrast to the quote from Anthony Quinton earlier, the received view in collective epistemology is that group belief must be understood in nonsummative or inflationary terms. Such views are motivated by cases that purport to show that a group can be said to properly believe that p, despite the fact that none of its individual member believes that p. If this is true, then group belief cannot be understood, even in part, in terms of the beliefs of individual group members. This is the negative claim of the non-summative view. The positive claim is that group belief should be characterized in terms of something that the members do, and this is typically identified as joint acceptance. Very roughly, group belief is the result of the members jointly agreeing to accept a given proposition as the groups, even if no member believes it herself. In this chapter, I challenge this orthodoxy by raising an entirely new objection to this general approach to understanding group belief. I show that joint acceptance accounts crucially lack the resources to be able to explain how groups can lie and bullshit, and, more generally, I argue that group belief cannot be determined by states or processes that are under the direct voluntary control of the members. I also show that such non-summative views countenance as group beliefs states that are riddled with incoherence among the bases of the beliefs of the group members. This leaves group belief without an appropriate mind-to-world direction of fit and renders it unsuitable for proper epistemic evaluation and collective deliberation. In addition, I show that the original cases used to motivate non-summative views can be fully explained without the need to posit group belief. I then go on to develop and defend a new view, which I call the Group Agent Account: group belief is determined in part by relations among the

INTRODUCTION

13

bases of the beliefs of members, where these relations arise only at the collective level, and are crucial especially insofar as the group is able to function as an agent. At the same time, group belief is partly constituted by the individual beliefs of members. In this way, the resulting view is neither strictly summative nor non-summative. In Chapter 2, I turn to the question of justified group belief, which has received surprisingly little attention in the literature. Mirroring the debate regarding group belief, there are those who favor an inflationary approach, where the justificatory status of group belief involves only actions or fea­ tures that take place at the group level, such as the joint acceptance of reasons. On the other hand, there are those who endorse a deflationary approach, where justified group belief is understood as nothing more than the aggregation of the justified beliefs of the groups members. In this chapter, I raise new objections to both of these approaches. Against inflationary views, I show that they face what I call the Illegitimate Manipulation of Evidence Problem, according to which accounts that allow the justification of group beliefs to be achieved through wholly voluntary means also permit the evidence available to the group to be illegitimately manipulated, thereby severing the connection between group epistemic jus­ tification and truth-conduciveness. Against deflationary views, I argue, that they lead to the Group Justification Paradox in which a group ends up counting as justifiedly believing both thatp and that not-p. Finally, I develop and defend a positive view of justified group belief that parallels my account of group belief in Chapter 1 in critical respects, which I call the Group Epistemic Agent Account: groups are understood as epi­ stemic agents in their own right, ones that have evidential and normative constraints that arise only at the group level, such as a sensitivity to the rela­ tions among the evidence possessed by group members and the epistemic obligations that arise via membership in the group. These constraints bear significantly on whether groups have justified belief. At the same time, how­ ever, group justifiedness on the Group Epistemic Agent Account is still largely a matter of member justifiedness, where the latter is understood as involving both beliefs and their bases. The result is a view that neither inflates nor deflates group epistemology, but instead recognizes that a group’s justified beliefs are constrained by, but are not ultimately reducible to, members’ justified beliefs. In Chapter 3, I take up two quite influential kinds of purported group knowledge that are inflationary and non-summative in nature, and that pose direct challenges to the account of justified group belief developed in

14

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF GROUPS

Chapter 2. The first, developed and defended in most detail by Alexander Bird, is often referred to as ‘social knowledge.” A paradigmatic instance of social knowing is taken to be the so-called knowledge possessed by the scientific community, where no single individual knows a given proposition, but the information plays a particular functional role in the community. The second is “collective knowledge,” which occupies an important place in United States law. According to the “collective knowledge doctrine,” knowledge may be imputed to a group by aggregating bits of information had by its individual members. If these are correct, then my view of justified group belief is false, particularly the requirement that some of the members of a group have the relevant justified beliefs themselves. However, I show in this chapter that both social knowledge and collective knowledge sever the crucial connection between knowledge and action, and open the door to serious abuses, not only epistemically, but morally and legally as well. Bits of information that are merely accessible to group members, or individual instances of knowledge that are aggregated with no communication, do not amount to group knowledge in any robust sense. I conclude, then, that neither social knowledge nor collective knowledge is genuinely group knowledge, and thus neither poses a challenge to my Group Epistemic Agent Account. I turn, in Chapter 4, to understanding what it means for a group to assert a proposition. It is especially crucial to get a grip on this notion for being in a position to hold collectives, such as corporations, morally and legally responsible for what they say. I begin by distinguishing between two kinds of group assertion—coordinated and authority-based—and I argue that authority-based group assertion is the core notion. I then show that a defla­ tionary view of group assertion, according to which a groups asserting is understood in terms of individual assertions, is misguided. This is the case because a group can clearly assert a proposition even when no individual does. I then develop a positive inflationary view of group assertion accord­ ing to which it is the group itself that is the asserter, even though this stand­ ardly occurs through a spokesperson(s) or other proxy agent(s) having the authority to speak on behalf of the group. This is supported by the fact that paradigmatic features of assertion apply only at the level of the group. A central virtue of my account is that it provides the framework for distin­ guishing when responsibility for an assertion lies at the collective level and when it should be shouldered by an individual simply speaking for herself. In the final chapter of this book, I take up group lies. Despite the preva­ lence of group lies and their often far-reaching effects, such as those seen in

INTRODUCTION

15

both the Volkswagen and National Semiconductor cases, there has never before been a philosophical treatment of group lies.16 This chapter begins the process of filling this surprising gap in the literature by focusing on the question of what a group lie is. After providing an account of how to under­ stand individual lies, I consider, first, whether group lies can be understood in terms of the lies of the groups members and, second, whether group lies can be characterized in terms of joint agreement by the groups members to lie. After showing both views to be misguided, I offer my own account of group lying, according to which it crucially involves the group offering a statement. In particular, because what a group says can come apart from what its individual members say, I argue that a group might lie when no individual member lies, and a group might fail to lie even though every individual member does. A central virtue of my account is that it captures the often subtle and complex relationship that can exist between most groups and their spokespersons. In this way, my view provides the basis for understanding how groups are responsible for their lies, as well as for deter­ mining when it is appropriate to trace this responsibility to the individual members of the group and the spokespersons who represent them.

0.4 The Bigger Picture Let’s return to the two cases we discussed at the start of this Introduction. Straightforward deflationary views of collective phenomena have the resources for holding only individual members of groups responsible for their actions. After all, according to such accounts, only individuals believe, know, assert, lie and so on, and so there quite literally are no states or actions of collective entities to bear attributions of praise and blame. Such a frame­ work accords very well with the way the Volkswagen of America CEO tried handling the emissions-test cheating scandal. There were a few rogue soft­ ware engineers on this reading, with no responsibility attaching to the cor­ poration itself, and so the suspension of these employees fully handled the matter. But as Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) and other lawmakers made clear, this response is not only deeply unsatisfying, it is also wildly implausible. Deception of this magnitude undoubtedly involves some degree of culpabil­ ity at the level of the corporation itself. In particular, installing a device

16 Lackey (2018b) is the only exception.

16

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF GROUPS

explicitly designed to produce fraudulent test results in 11 million diesel cars sold worldwide cannot occur without complicity or, at the very least, negligence at the highest levels of leadership and oversight. Thus, purely deflationary views of collective epistemic phenomena lack the resources both for providing the correct diagnosis in a case such as this and for hold­ ing the relevant parties accountable. Purely inflationary views of collective phenomena, on the other hand, have the resources for holding only groups responsible for their actions, allowing individual members to go entirely or largely blameless. For, on such views, activity that takes place at the collective level determines whether groups believe, know, assert, lie and so on, and so there quite liter­ ally are no individual states or actions of this kind that are part of the ana­ lysis to shoulder praise and blame. This framework very nicely captures the way that National Semiconductor approached its omission of required tests and the falsification of relevant documentation. The company took full responsibility for defrauding the government and agreed to pay $1.75 mil­ lion in penalties, but vehemently denied that any blame belonged to indi­ vidual employees. As the legal counsel for the Department of Defense made clear, however, corporations act only through their employees and officers, and so there is no way that this level of illegal activity occurred without knowledge and involvement on the part of individuals. Hence, strictly infla­ tionary views of collective epistemic phenomena lack the resources both for providing a diagnosis that includes culpable activity on the part of individ­ uals and for holding all of the relevant parties accountable. To be sure, group members might be held accountable for jointly accept­ ing the proposition in question on an inflationary view. But there are at least two ways in which this is inadequate. First, this would distribute responsi­ bility equally, as there is no interesting sense in which some might have jointly accepted more than others. In actual cases, however, it is clear that members often have significantly different roles in group actions and, accordingly, bear different degrees of praise and blame. Second, it is import­ ant to have a framework that can account for the responsibility members shoulder in collective action that go beyond joint acceptance. Groups often have complicated structures, where those at the highest levels of leadership may avoid joint acceptance altogether but might nonetheless be involved in collective action through more nuanced and harmful ways. The views that I develop and defend in this book avoid all of these pit­ falls. Because I argue that group belief and group justified belief involve both the beliefs and epistemic statuses of individual members, and also

INTRODUCTION

17

relations and normative requirements that hold only at the level of the collective, my views are neither purely inflationary nor deflationary. Rather, I provide a framework for distributing responsibility across groups and their individual members. I regard this as a central virtue of this book. Neither Volkswagen nor National Semiconductor got things right in the attributions of responsibility, and this led to significant pushback and dissatisfaction among those impacted by their responses. We need a framework for fully understanding accountability in such cases, and my views provide this. Moreover, while my views of group assertion and group lies are robustly inflationary, they also have the resources for the proper distribution of responsibility between collectives and their individual members. For example, spokespersons have the authority to speak on behalf of groups, and when they assert or lie in their official capacity as a representative of the group, it is the group itself that asserts or lies. Similar considerations apply to collective action more broadly that is performed through a proxy agent. It is then, quite straightforward, how responsibility attaches to groups on my view. But this relationship between groups and spokespersons provides the resources for also holding individual members accountable. Spokespersons are often chosen by members of the group who bear respon­ sibility for not only ensuring that what is conveyed on its behalf is accurate and well-supported, but also for keeping the spokespersons properly informed. When things go awry along any of these dimensions, there are often particular individuals clearly deserving of blame. In addition, spokes­ persons are frequently (though crucially not always) members of the groups they represent. The Chair of my Department, for instance, is both a member of our group and our spokesperson when it comes to conversations with the Dean about hiring decisions. We can certainly imagine situations in which my Department is on the hook for a group decision we made but where the Chair, as our spokesperson, deserves greater, or a different sort of, blame. Perhaps she withheld crucial information in our decision-making or inaccurately conveyed our position in conversation with the Dean. On my view, the Department would shoulder the responsibility of its assertion con­ veyed through the spokesperson, but the Chair could still be uniquely blamed for her role in the process. One final issue that is worth addressing at the outset is this: I argue in the first three chapters of this book on behalf of views of collective phenomena, such as group belief and justified group belief, that include as an epistemic anchor, so to speak, the states of individual members. So, for instance, my

18

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF GROUPS

accounts of group belief and of justified group belief both require that at least some of the individual members of the group instantiate the states in question. Yet in the last two chapters, I defend views of both group assertion and group lies that are robustly inflationary. In other words, I show that groups can assert and lie when no member of the groups is even aware of the proposition in question. What explains this asymmetry in a way that is not ad hoc? Robustly inflationary views should be adopted only where a group is capable of granting authority to another agent or agent-like entity to do something on its behalf. So, for instance, a group can grant authority to a lawyer to speak on its behalf, to lie on its behalf, to bullshit on its behalf, and to act on its behalf. In all of these cases, then, it will be possible for the group’s actions to be constituted by the actions of another, even when the group itself is entirely ignorant of the matter. Thus, accounts of all of these phenomena will be robustly inflationary in nature. In contrast, a group can­ not grant authority to another to believe on its behalf, to desire on its behalf, to justifiedly believe on its behalf, or to know on its behalf. Accordingly, accounts of all of these phenomena will require that at least some of the individual members of the group instantiate the states in question.

Group Belief Lessons from Lies and Bullshit

Groups and other sorts of collective entities are frequently said to believe things.1 Sarah Huckabee Sanders, for instance, was asked by reporters at White House press conferences whether the Trump Administration “believes in climate change”2 or “believes that slavery is wrong.”3 Similarly, it is said on the website of the ACLU of Illinois that the organization “firmly believes that rights should not be limited based on a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.”4 And, according to the Presidential Commission on the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, both BP and Halliburton believed that there were flaws with the cement used for the well safety device before the Deepwater Horizon explosion.5 These are just a few examples, but there are countless others. Moreover, the importance of understanding these claims is clear, both theoretically

1 A discussion of what distinguishes a group from a mere collection of individuals lies beyond the scope of this chapter, though I discuss this issue briefly in the Introduction. See also Gilbert (1989 and 2004), Bird (2010), List and Pettit (2011), and Ritchie (2013). I won’t be directly engaging with those who are more skeptical about the existence of group beliefs. For arguments of this sort, see Rupert (2005 and 2011) and Huebner (2014). If what I argue in this chapter is correct, however, then I will have shown that there are compelling reasons to coun­ tenance the existence of group beliefs. 2 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/ll/03/trumpadministration-releases-report-finds-no-convincing-alternative-explanation-for-climatechange/?utm_term=.a8be9a994df0 , accessed January 15, 2017. 3 https://townhall.com/tipsheet/laurettabrown/2017/10/31/april-ryan-aslcs-white-house-iftrump-administration-believes-slavery-is-wrong-n2403031, accessed January 15, 2017. 4 https://www.aclu-il.org/en/issues, accessed January 15, 2017. 5 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/oct/29/bp-oil-spill-bp, accessed January 15, 2017. In response to this, "Halliburton said it did not believe that the foam cement design used on the well caused the incident. ‘Halliburton believes that significant differences between its internal cement tests and the commissions test results may be due to differences in the cement materials tested,’ the company said in a statement issued in response to the letter. ‘The commission tested off-the-shelf cement and additives, whereas Halliburton tested the unique blend of cement and additives that existed on the rig at the time Halliburton’s tests were con­ ducted.’ The company added: ‘Halliburton believes that had BP conducted a cement bond log test, or had BP and others properly interpreted a negative pressure test, these tests would have revealed any problems with Halliburton’s cement.’ ” The Epistemology of Groups. Jennifer Lackey, Oxford University Press (2021). © Jennifer Lackey. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199656608.003.0002

20

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF GROUPS

and practically. If we do not grasp what it is for a group to hold a belief, then we cannot make sense of our widespread attributions to collective entities6 of actions that they perform, or should have performed, and of the corres­ ponding responsibility that they bear. If BP, for instance, believed that there were problems with a well safety device before the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, then the company should have taken actions to repair it and is there­ fore clearly culpable for the massive environmental damage that ensued. Broadly speaking, there are two approaches to understanding the nature of group belief. On the one hand, there is the summative view, according to which group belief is understood as nothing more than the “summation” of the beliefs of the group’s members. On the other hand, there is the nonsummative view, where groups are regarded as entities with “minds of their own” and group belief is conceived of as involving actions that take place at the collective level,7 such as the joint acceptance of a proposition. Despite the initial plausibility of the summative approach, it is now received wisdom in collective epistemology that group belief must be understood in nonsummative terms. In this chapter, however, I challenge this orthodoxy by raising new, and what I regard as decisive, objections to this approach to group belief. I then go on to develop and defend a new view, which I call the Group Agent Account: group belief is determined in part by relations among the bases of the beliefs of members, where these relations arise only at the level of the collective, and are crucial especially insofar as the group is able to function as an agent. At the same time, group belief is also largely a matter of the individual beliefs of members. In this way, the resulting view is neither strictly summative nor non-summative.

1.1 Summative and Non-Summative Views of Group Belief Let’s begin with the traditional summative account, according to which a group’s believing that p can be understood in terms of the individual mem­ bers of the group believing that p. A conservative version of the summative account (CSA) can be formulated in the following way:

6 I will use “group” and “collective,” and “groups” and “collective entities,” interchangeably. 7 This phrase is from Pettit (2003).

GROUP BELIEF

21

CSA: A group G believes that p if and only if all or most of the members of G believe thatp. The CSA correctly subsumes some classic instances of group belief. For instance, it is plausible to characterize the Northwestern community’s belief that its institution is in Illinois in terms of all—or at least most—of its mem­ bers holding this belief. However, other common examples of group belief do not seem to fare as well on such a view. Suppose, for instance, that the President of the university issues a statement saying that Northwestern believes that the quarter system is not beneficial to students’ academic suc­ cess. Suppose further, however, that this belief is held by only a small, yet powerful constituency of the Northwestern community, such as the admin­ istration, or an appointed committee that oversees this matter. It may still be appropriate to attribute the belief that the quarter system is not beneficial to students’ academic success to the Northwestern community, despite the fact that neither all nor most of its members holds this belief. Because of cases such as this, summative accounts are typically formulated more liberally (LSA) as follows: LSA: A group G believes that p if and only if some of the members of G believe that p. On this version of the summative view, it may be appropriate to attribute belief that p to G even if only one of its members believes that p. For instance, perhaps it is sufficient that the President of the university alone believes that the quarter system is not beneficial to students’ academic suc­ cess to properly attribute this belief to Northwestern. This may also be true when a CEO holds a belief within a company, a leader holds a belief within her cult, and a dictator holds a belief within her nation. Even with this modification, however, the summative account of group belief is said to suffer from a debilitating objection. In particular, it is argued that a group can be properly said to believe that p, even when not a single of its members believes that p. A classic example of this sort of case is where a group decides to let a view “stand” as that of the group’s, despite the fact that none of its members actually holds the view in question. For instance, con­ sider the following:

The philosophy department at a leading university is deliberating about the final candidate to whom it will extend philosophy department:

22

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF GROUPS

admission to its graduate program. After hours of discussion, all of the members jointly agree that Jane Smith is the most qualified candidate from the pool of applicants. However, not a single member of the department actually believes this; instead, they all think that Jane Smith is the candidate who is most likely to be approved by the administration.

Here, it is argued that the philosophy department believes that Jane Smith is the most qualified candidate for admission, even though none of the mem­ bers holds this belief. This attribution is supported by the groups actions: the group asserts that Jane Smith is the most qualified candidate, it defends this position, it heavily recruits her to join the department, and so on. This is taken to show that individual belief that p on the part of even one of the group members is not necessary for the groups believing thatp.8 There are different ways in which the sort of scenario found in phil­ osophy department can come about. A standard route is through com­ promise. If, say, half of the members of a group believe that candidate x is the best, and the other half believe candidate y is, they might compromise and put forward candidate z as their top candidate. Or suppose that one member of a company believes that the appropriate minimum age for employment is 18 and another believes it is 16. The group might adopt the position that it is 17. Another common way for a case such as philosophy department to arise is through the following of externally imposed rules. For instance, a jury might come to the conclusion that a defendant is nnocent because it was instructed to exclude all hearsay evidence, but each individual juror might nonetheless believe that he is guilty. Similarly, an evaluating panel might deliver the verdict that a submitted study is unpub­ lishable because it does not rise to the exceedingly high standards of the journal in question, but each member of the group might personally believe that it is. A further way for the scenario in philosophy department to arise is through pragmatic considerations. This is one way to understand the case above, where the members of the philosophy department put forward Jane Smith as the top candidate because they believe she is the most likely to be approved by the administration. Or suppose that a group of political leaders puts forward views, not because any of the individuals believe them,

8 See Gilbert (1989), Schmitt (1994), Tollefsen (2007 and 2009), and Bird (2010) for this sort of argument. Pricker (2010) provides cases of this sort involving group virtues, but also suggests that similar considerations apply in the case of group beliefs (see p. 241).

GROUP BELIEF

23

but because collectively they regard these positions as increasing their chances of being voted back into office. Opponents of the summative account of group belief also hold that a group can be properly said to not believe that p, even when every single one of its members believes that p. Hence, it is argued that individual belief that p on the part of all of the members of a group is not sufficient for the group’s believing that p. Consider the following:

The same philosophy department that is deliberating about the final candidate to whom it will extend admission to its graduate program is also such that every single one of its members believes that the best red pepper hummus in Chicago can be found at Whole Foods. philosophy departmenT2:

Despite the unanimity of individual belief in such a case, it is argued that it is not correct to say that the philosophy department believes that the best red pepper hummus in Chicago can be found at Whole Foods. This is because assessment of red pepper hummus is entirely irrelevant to the goals and purposes of the group.9 9 This sort of argument can be found in Gilbert (1989) and Schmitt (1994). Schmitt, borrowing from Gilbert (1989), puts this point as follows: “Two groups may have the same membership, yet differ in their beliefs. The membership of the Library Committee may be identical with that of the Food Committee. Yet the two committees might have very different purposes and accordingly make judgments about quite different issues based on very different kinds of evidence. Every member of the Library Committee might believe that there are a million volumes in the library, and so might the Library Committee itself. Yet the Food Committee holds no such belief. Thus, the summative condition is too weak” (1994, p. 261). This objection to the sufficiency dimension of summativism focuses on the relevance of goals and purposes of the group, but there is another sort of counterexample. Gilbert (1987), for instance, argues that each member of G might believe that p, but G itself would not be said to believe that p if each member is unwilling or unable to communicate his or her belief thatp. She writes: Suppose an anthropologist were to write “The Zuni Tribe believes that the north is the region of force and destruction.” Now suppose that the writer went on to give his grounds for this statement as follows: Each member of the Zuni tribe believes that the north is the region of force and destruction, but each one is afraid to tell anyone else that he believes this; he is afraid that the others will mock him, believing that they certainly will not believe it. What conclusions can be drawn from this? It surely suggests at least that when we ascribe a belief to a group we are not simply saying that most members of the group have the belief in question. That is, it is surely not logically sufficient for a group belief that p that most members of the group believe that p. (Gilbert 1987, p. 187)

Gilbert may wish to distinguish this sort of case from an implicit belief of a group. For instance, J. Angelo Corlett writes: “...a decision-making group might possess a belief without formally recognizing or accepting it. And it may do so because a certain belief may be implied

24

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF GROUPS

These problems have motivated the now widely accepted non-summative account of group belief, according to which a group’s believing that p is irre­ ducible to some or all of its members believing that p. Such a view holds that in some very important sense, the group itself believes that p, where this is understood as over and above, or otherwise distinct from, any indi­ vidual member believing thatp. There are two central versions of non-summativism. The first and per­ haps most widely accepted is what we may call the joint acceptance account (hereafter, JAA), a prominent expression of which is offered by Margaret Gilbert in the following passage: JAA: A group G believes that p if and only if the members of G jointly accept that p. The members of G jointly accept thatp if and only if it is common knowledge in G that the members of G individually have intentionally and openly... expressed their willingness jointly to accept that p with the other members of G. (Gilbert 1989, p. 306)10 A key aspect of such an account is that joint acceptance does not require belief on the part of a single member of the group in question. She writes:

It should be understood that: (1) 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 thatp. (2) One who participates in joint accept­ ance of p thereby accepts an obligation to do what he can to bring it about that any joint endeavors... among the members of G be conducted on the assumption that p is true. He is entitled to expect others’ support in bring­ ing this about. (3) One does not have to accept an obligation to believe or to try to believe that p. However, (4) if one does believe something that is inconsistent with p, one is required at least not to express that belief baldly. (Gilbert 1989, pp. 306-7)

by one of the beliefs it accepts. For example, it would seem that each group of the requisite sort believes implicitly that it is a group. Otherwise, the group might not qualify as a conglomerate” (Corlett 2007, p. 236). 10 Gilbert (1987, 1993, 1994, 2002, and 2004), Schmitt (1994), Tuomela (1992), and Tollefsen (2007 and 2009) also hold a joint acceptance view of group belief. I will discuss Tuomela’s particular account in some detail later in this chapter.

GROUP BELIEF

25

Thus, according to Gilberts non-summative view, so long as a group jointly accepts that p in the way described above, such a group is said to believe that p.11 On a joint acceptance account of a group’s believing thatp, then, it is nei­ ther necessary nor sufficient that some of its individual members believe that p. It is not necessary because joint acceptance by the group members does not require individual belief on their part, and it is not sufficient because individual belief by the group members does not involve their joint acceptance of the proposition in question.12 According to this account, then, the philosophy department in the first case above believes that Jane Smith is the most qualified candidate for admission, even though none of the members hold this belief, precisely because they jointly agree to let this position stand as the groups. Moreover, the philosophy department in the second case does not believe that the best red pepper hummus in Chicago can be found at Whole Foods, even though every single member of the group possesses this belief, because the members never jointly accepted such a claim. Thus, such an account delivers the correct intuitive result in both instances.13 11 Elsewhere, Gilbert writes, “what is both logically necessary and logically sufficient for the truth of the ascription of group belief... is... that all or most members of the group have expressed willingness to let a certain view stand’ as the view of the group” (Gilbert 1989, p. 289). 12 For our purposes, it is sufficient to note that there is a difference between belief and acceptance—that accepting thatp is not the same as believing thatp, and vice versa. For detailed discussions about this difference, see, for instance, van Fraassen (1980), Stalnaker (1984), Cohen (1989 and 1992), Wray (2001), and Hakli (2007 and 2011). While there is certainly not consensus among these authors about what precisely this distinction amounts to, below are four differences that have been cited between acceptances and beliefs: 1. One can accept propositions that one does not believe, whereas one cannot believe what one does not accept. 2. Acceptance often results from a consideration of ones goals, and this results from adopting a policy to pursue a particular goal. 3. Belief results in a feeling, in particular, a feeling that something is true. 4. Acceptance can be voluntary, whereas belief cannot. (Wray 2001, p. 325)

13 It should be noted that, at best, the joint acceptance account captures the beliefs held only by what I called in the Introduction deliberative groups. These groups are distinguished from non-deliberative groups by their ability to engage in collective reasoning, where this includes deliberation, revision, and a sensitivity to evidence, all understood collectively. What is central for our purposes here is that members of non-deliberative groups are not capable of engaging in joint acceptance in the way required by the view. For instance, if I survey left-handed Northwestern students and aggregate their beliefs via a majority aggregation rule, it may be perfectly appropriate to say via this method that Northwestern students believe that there are not enough desks to suit their needs. But given that the students themselves do not even identify as a group, they will be unable to collectively deliberate about their needs or to jointly accept this proposition. Thus, to the extent that a unified account of the beliefs properly attributed to both deliberative and non-deliberative groups is desirable, the joint acceptance account fails.

26

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF GROUPS

There is, however, an immediate problem facing the version of the joint acceptance account proposed by Gilbert: groups are often large, with com­ mittees or boards that are appointed to make decisions on behalf of the group as a whole. For instance, consider the following: The Board of Directors of the American Academy of Pediatrics convenes and decides that its official position is that there are significant health benefits to circumcision, which it proceeds to publish in all of its relevant materials.14 Despite this, all of the doctors who are members of the American Academy of Pediatrics recognize that the evidence is inconclusive, and so have some lingering doubts that prevent them from individually holding this belief. medical association:

As it stands, the JAA cannot countenance group belief in medical asso­ ciation since the members of the American Academy of Pediatrics fail to jointly accept that there are significant health benefits to circumcision. In particular, only a very small percentage of the groups members—namely, the Board of Directors—satisfies the requisite joint acceptance condition. This structure of a collective entity is quite commonplace: groups are often vast, rendering it practically difficult if not impossible to have each member engage in any sort of joint activity. Thus, a smaller, more manageable body is either elected or appointed to represent and make decisions for the larger group. Given that medical association is certainly in the spirit of pre­ cisely those sorts of cases that the joint acceptance view of group belief was designed to accommodate, the JAA requires modification. Raimo Tuomela proposes a different version of the joint acceptance account that is formulated to avoid exactly the worries found with the JAA. Specifically, he offers the following:

JAA2: G believes that p in the social and normative circumstances C if and only if in C there are operative members Ap..., Am of G in respective pos­ itions Pr.., Pm such that: (T) the agents Ap..., Am, when they are perform­ ing their social tasks in their positions Pf.., Pm and due to exercising the relevant authority system of G, (intensionally) jointly accept that p, and because of this exercise of authority system, they ought to continue to accept and positionally believe it;

14 This is how “hierarchical groups” in the sense characterized in Goldman (2004) function.

GROUP BELIEF

27

(2’) there is a mutual belief among the operative members Ap..., An to the effect that (1’); (3’) because of (T), the (full-fledged and adequately informed) non­ operative members of G tend tacitly to accept—or at least ought to accept— p, as members of G; and (4’) there is a mutual belief in G to the effect that (3’). (Tuomela 1992, pp. 295-6)

Tuomela’s account of group belief is quite similar to Gilbert’s, though crucially he requires only that “operative members” engage in the joint acceptance of the proposition in question. Operative members, according to Tuomela, are those who are responsible for the group belief having the content that it does which, in turn, is determined by the rules and regula­ tions of the group in question. For instance, in the case of a corporation or a large company, the board of directors may be the operative members while the employees who work on the assembly line or in the housekeeping department may be non-operative members. Given this amendment, the JAA2, unlike the JAA, delivers the verdict that the American Academy of Pediatrics believes that there are significant health benefits to circumcision in medical association since the Board of Directors is obviously comprised of operative members in the relevant sense.15 In what follows,

15 While the JAA2 does much better than the JAA when board- or committee-governed groups are at issue, they both have problems countenancing certain beliefs of groups that are dictatorially based. Consider, for example, the following: catholic church: The Pope in his official capacity solemnly declares that the use of assisted reproductive technologies is immoral according to the Catholic Church. While the Pope himself believes this, this declaration was made without the Pope discussing the issue with any other member of the Church, including the cardinals and bishops with whom he works most closely.

In this sort of case, it may be quite natural to say that the Catholic Church believes that it is immoral to use assisted reproductive technologies. However, while the proponent of the JAA2 may argue that dictatorially governed groups have only one operative member—the dictator— it does not seem correct to say that there is any joint acceptance occurring. There may be acceptance, to be sure, since the Pope may both believe and accept that assisted reproductive technologies are immoral. But the very notion of something being joint presupposes that there is more than one person involved. Given this, the JAA2 seems incapable of accounting for at least many of the beliefs held by dictatorially-governed groups. While I regard this as a genuine problem for any joint acceptance account, my central aim at this particular point is to isolate a paradigmatic non-summative account of group belief that is best able to capture the relevant data. Given that the JAA2 is better able to explain the beliefs found in cases such as medical association than the JAA is, it will be the central target in the discussion that follows.

28

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF GROUPS

then, I will take the JAA2 as the paradigmatic joint acceptance account of group belief.16 The second version of non-summativism commonly accepted in the lit­ erature is what we might call the premise-based aggregation account (here­ after, PBAA), a central proponent of which is Philip Pettit. Like other non-summativists, Pettit grounds his view in the argument that a group can be properly said to believe that p, even when not a single of its members believes thatp. Unlike other views, however, he locates his project within a judgment aggregation framework. “Aggregation procedures are mechanisms a multimember group can use to combine (aggregate’) the individual beliefs or judgments held by the group members into collective beliefs or judg­ ments endorsed by the group as a whole” (List 2005, p. 25).17 For instance, a dictatorial procedure, “whereby the collective judgments are always those of some antecedently fixed group member (the ‘dictator’)” (List 2005, p. 28) understands the belief of a group in terms of the beliefs of a single member— the dictator. A majority procedure, “whereby a group judges a given propos­ ition to be true whenever a majority of group members judges it to be true,” understands the belief of a group in terms of the beliefs of a majority of its individual members (List 2005, p. 27). These are simply two examples of judgment aggregation procedures; as we will soon see, there are cer­ tainly others. With this in mind, Pettit asks us to consider the following case: The employees of a factory are deciding whether to forgo a pay-raise in order to spend the saved money on implementing a set of workplace safety measures. The employees are supposed to make their deci­ sion on the basis of considering three separable issues: “first, how serious the danger is; second, how effective the safety measures that a pay-sacrifice would buy is likely to be; and third, whether the pay-sacrifice is bearable for members individually. If an employee thinks that the danger is sufficiently serious, the safety measure sufficiently effective, and the pay-sacrifice suffi­ ciently bearable, he or she will vote for the sacrifice; otherwise he or she will vote against” (Pettit 2003, p. 171). Imagine now that the factory’s three employees vote in the following way: factory:

16 See also Tuomela (1993 and 1995). 17 For more on the theory of judgment aggregation, see List and Pettit (2002 and 2004), Dietrich (2005), List (2005), and Pauly and van Hees (2006).

GROUP BELIEF

Serious danger? A. Yes B. No C. Yes

Effective measure? No Yes Yes

Bearable loss? Yes Yes No

29

Pay sacrifice? No No No

In factory, all three members of the group believe that the pay sacrifice should not be made since each individual votes “No” in the conclusion col­ umn. However, the group itself might decide to arrive at their collective belief via a premise-based aggregation procedure, whereby the groups belief is determined by the majority of votes found in the premise columns. According to Pettit, if the group belief is determined by how the members vote on the premises, then the group conclusion is to accept the pay sacri­ fice since there are more “Yes’s than “No”s in each of the premise columns. In such a case, “the group will form a judgment on the question of the pay­ sacrifice that is directly in conflict with the unanimous vote of its members. It will form a judgment that is in the starkest possible discontinuity with the corresponding judgments of its members” (Pettit 2003, p. 183). This diver­ gence between the belief of a group and the beliefs of its members has come to be known as the doctrinal paradox or the discursive dilemma and it has motivated Pettit to conclude that groups are intentional subjects that are distinct from, and exist “over and beyond,” their individual members. He writes: “These discontinuities between collective judgments and intentions, on the one hand, and the judgments and intentions of members, on the other, make vivid the sense in which a social integrate is an intentional sub­ ject that is distinct from its members” (Pettit 2003, p. 184). According to Pettit, then, a groups believing that p can be understood in terms of combining the majority of individual beliefs that p held by a groups members via a premise-based aggregation procedure, so long as the collec­ tion of individuals is in fact a group. Moreover, given the considerations raised in the context of discussing the joint acceptance account, we can add that the members in question should be operative ones. Thus, a more pre­ cise formulation of the view is:

PBAA: A group G believes that p if and only if the majority of the opera­ tive members’ votes in the premise columns are that p.18 18 I should emphasize that while there are different aggregation procedures, and thus differ­ ent ways to understand group belief in judgment aggregation terms, the premise-based proced­ ure is the only one of these that results in a non-summativist conception of group belief. This is why I formulated the PBAA as capturing both necessary and sufficient conditions for group

30

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF GROUPS

I now want to turn to two phenomena that have never before been discussed in the collective epistemology literature; namely, group lies and group bullshit.

1.2 Group Lies and Group Bullshit To begin, I take the following to be a paradigmatic group lie: tobacco company:

Philip Morris, one of the largest tobacco companies in the world, is aware of the massive amounts of scientific evidence reveal­ ing not only the addictiveness of smoking, but also the links it has with lung cancer and heart disease. While the members of the board of directors of the company believe this conclusion, they all jointly agree that, because of what is at stake financially, the official position of Philip Morris is that smoking is neither highly addictive nor detrimental to one’s health, which is then published in all of their advertising materials.

Since it is not my purpose in this chapter to provide an account of lying, I will simply use the one that I will argue for in Chapter 5:19

LIE: A lies to B if and only if (1) A states thatp to B, (2) A believes thatp is false, and (3) A intends to be deceptive20 to B with respect to whether p in stating thatp. Hence, in order for a group, G, to lie, I will assume that all three of these conditions need to be satisfied: G must state thatp where G believes thatp is false, and G must have the deliberate intention to be deceptive.21 belief—that is, when group belief is understood non-summatively on a judgment aggregation model, a group believes thatp when and only the majority of the operative members’ votes in the premise columns are that p. This is compatible with there being other, summative conceptions of group belief on a judgment aggregation model, such as those that result from a dictatorial or majority procedure. I will discuss this point in a bit more detail later in this chapter. 19 See also Lackey (2013). I should note that the only condition that will be crucial to the arguments in this chapter is (2), and even among competing views of what it is to lie, a condi­ tion of this sort is accepted. 20 For arguments against the inclusion of a condition involving deception in an account of lying, see Sorensen (2007 and 2010), Fallis (2009), and Carson (2010). For a response, see Lackey (2013) and Chapter 5. 21 I will develop this account in far more detail in Chapter 5, but this will suffice for present purposes.

GROUP BELIEF

31

While there are many questions that can be asked about the nature of group belief, group intention, and so on, that both (1) and (2) are satisfied by Philip Morris in tobacco company is at least plausible. This is prima facie supported by the fact that a cursory internet search of “tobacco com­ pany and lies” brings up a litany of articles and websites defending precisely the verdict that tobacco companies have lied to the public. For instance, in a 2005 article in the Los Angeles Times, it was reported that “Jurors in Los Angeles County Superior Court found that Philip Morris had concealed information about the risks and addictiveness of smoking, with deliberate intent to defraud smokers such as Fredric Reller of Marina del Rey, who died in September 2003 at the age of 64.... In Fredric Reliefs videotaped deposition, ‘he admitted that he was ashamed and embarrassed that he had believed Philip Morris’s lies and deceit that there was no valid scientific proof that their cigarettes caused lung cancer.’”22 I take it, then, that the scenario described in tobacco company, which resembles the actual case of Philip Morris in some crucial respects, is precisely the sort of scen­ ario in which we feel comfortable attributing a lie to a group. Given that it is clear that there are group lies, I now want to propose the following desideratum for any plausible account of group belief: Group Lie Desideratum: An adequate account of group belief should have the resources for distinguishing between, on the one hand, a group’s assert­ ing its belief that p and, on the other hand, paradigmatic instances of a group’s lying regarding thatp. I do not think that the Group Lie Desideratum needs much argument: if an account of group belief cannot discriminate between paradigmatic instances of group belief and clear instances where group belief is absent, the account is fundamentally misguided. But the problem here is not just that a view’s inability to satisfy the Group Lie Desideratum reveals its deep failure to cap­ ture the nature of group belief. There are also important moral and legal reasons for wanting to hold groups, such as corporations, businesses, and governments, responsible both for their lies and for the consequences that follow from them. In a case such as tobacco company, for instance, it is not just an intellectual curiosity whether an account of group belief gets the verdict right—it also matters so that we can properly hold Philip Morris 22 https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-mar-05-fi-smoke5-story.html , accessed July 29, 2020.

32

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF GROUPS

morally and legally responsible for its lies about the health risks involved in smoking and the deaths that resulted from them. With this in mind, I will now show that the two dominant non-summative accounts of group belief in the literature—the JAA2 and the PBAA—are incapable of satisfying the Group Lie Desideratum. Let’s begin with the joint acceptance account. The first point to notice is that, according to the JAA2, Philip Morris believes that smoking is neither highly addictive nor detrimental to one’s health in tobacco company. The operative members of the company—namely, the board of directors— not only jointly accept this proposition, but also do so through the exercise of their authority and with mutual belief. Moreover, given that the power possessed by the board of directors is part of the very structure of the company, the non-operative members of the group tacitly accept this proposition and do so with awareness. Thus, conditions (1’) through (4’) are satisfied by Philip Morris, thereby resulting in the group believing that smoking is neither highly addictive nor detrimental to one’s health. Given that the scenario described in tobacco company is a paradigm of a group lying, yet the JAA2 regards it as a perfectly ordinary instance of a group reporting its belief, the joint acceptance account of group belief is not only incorrect, but fundamentally so. There is a sense in which this conclusion should not come as a surprise: the situation described in tobacco company is nearly identical in struc­ ture to that found in medical association, with the exception that the motivation for the joint acceptance in the former case is financial gain while that in the latter case is the overall health of the nation. Since non-summative accounts of group belief do not place any conditions on the motivation for the joint acceptance in question, this difference is simply silent on whether the state in question is a group lie or the reporting of a group belief. Otherwise put, tobacco company describes a paradigmatic group lie while medical association describes a paradigmatic group belief for the proponent of the joint acceptance account, yet such states are indistin­ guishable on such a view.23 Once we see this, it becomes clear that there are other phenomena in the neighborhood of group lies that the joint acceptance account also fails to distinguish from group belief. For instance, while Harry Frankfurt’s notion of bullshit has, as far as I know, never been discussed in connection with 23 For ease of expression, I shall often compare group lies and group beliefs. However, strictly speaking, this should be read as comparing acts of lying and acts of reporting a belief.

GROUP BELIEF

33

collective entities, it nonetheless seems clear that groups can bullshit just as individuals can. For instance, consider the following: After the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, BP began spraying dispersants in the clean-up process that have been widely criticized by environmental groups for their level of toxicity. In response to this outcry, the executive management team of BP convened and its members jointly accepted that the dispersants being used are safe and pose no threat to the environment, a view that was then made public through all of the major media outlets. It turns out that BP s executive management team arrived at this view with an utter disregard for the truth—it simply served their purpose of financial and reputational preservation. oil company:

The scenario in oil company is a classic instance of what we may call group bullshit, which Frankfurt describes in the individual case as follows:

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his state­ ments to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is nei­ ther on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose. (Frankfurt 2005, pp. 55-6)

Whereas the group in tobacco company believes that smoking is highly addictive and detrimental to one’s health, but then asserts that this is not the case with the deliberate intention to deceive, the group in oil company simply fails to believe that the dispersants they are using are safe and pose no threat to the environment, but then asserts that this is the case solely to serve their purposes. In both the former case of a group lie and the latter instance of group bullshit, however, the relevant group belief seems to be absent. Yet, as was the case in tobacco company, the joint acceptance account regards the group state in oil company as a straightforward instance of group belief. Once again, this is clear not only because the

34

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF GROUPS

operative members of BP—namely, the executive management team—jointly accept that the dispersants they are using in the gulf oil spill are safe and pose no threat to the environment, but also because the other conditions of the JAA2 are plausibly satisfied as well. So, the joint acceptance account delivers the verdict that there is the group belief that p, both in paradigmatic cases where the group believes that not-p and in paradigmatic cases where the group simply fails to believe thatp. This motivates a second desideratum of an adequate account of group belief, which we can characterize as follows:

Group Bullshit Desideratum: An adequate account of group belief should have the resources for distinguishing between, on the one hand, a groups asserting its belief that p and, on the other hand, paradigmatic instances of a groups bullshitting thatp. Since both a lie and bullshit undeniably involve the absence of belief, the satisfaction of both the Group Lie Desideratum and the Group Bullshit Desideratum are non-negotiable for a tenable account of group belief. To my mind, the fact that the joint acceptance account is incapable of meeting these desiderata is a decisive objection to this conception of group belief. It is worth pointing out that these particular objections—involving group lies and group bullshit—have not been previously raised to a joint accept­ ance account of group belief. The standard problem raised against such a view is that paradigmatic instances of group belief function differently in important ways than beliefs in individuals do. For instance, it has been argued by K. Brad Wray, A.W.M. Meijers, and Raul Hakli that group belief is far more directly voluntary than it is in the individual case.24 Consider, again, medical association, which involves the board of directors of the American Academy of Pediatrics jointly agreeing that there are signifi­ cant health benefits to circumcision. When group belief is determined by the official position arrived at by a decision-making body in this way, the members can simply decide that the group believes that p, whereas individ­ uals do not seem capable of just deciding to believe that p in this way.25 Similarly, it has been argued that group belief in this sense is far less gov­ erned by evidence than it is when an individual’s doxastic states are at issue.

24 See Wray (2001 and 2003), Meijers (2002), and Hakli (2007 and 2011). 25 For a classic defense of the view that individuals lack direct voluntary control over their beliefs, see Alston (1988).

GROUP BELIEF

35

For instance, K. Brad Wray claims that groups, unlike individual agents, can choose to believe based on their goals and Christopher McMahon contends that groups often defend as true positions that they adopt for purely instru­ mental reasons.26 In medical association, the goal of the AAP may be to produce the best health for the greatest number of children, and so the board of directors may choose to downplay their personal doubts in an effort to further this broader aim. This way of belief formation, it is argued, is unavailable in the individual case, where doxastic attitudes are far more directly sensitive to evidence. Of course, responses to these objections can and have been offered on behalf of the joint acceptance account. For instance, while group belief on this view may be more voluntary than individual belief, this may simply be a matter of degree rather than of kind. For individuals surely have voluntary control over methods of belief acquisition, sensitivity to evidence, and so on, all of which directly affect which beliefs are formed. Moreover, it has been questioned whether we should expect features of individual phenom­ ena, such as belief, to always be possessed by their collective counterparts.27 Perhaps because entities at the individual and collective levels are so differ­ ent, it shouldn’t be surprising for them to have radically different properties. Finally, individuals often do have beliefs for purely instrumental reasons. A politician, for instance, may believe that he is doing what is best for the country because it is expedient, better for his image, and so on. My central point here, however, is not to evaluate these objections in any sort of detail but, rather, to point out that the inability of the joint accept­ ance account to satisfy the Group Lie and the Group Bullshit Desiderata has not been noticed in the literature on group belief. Moreover, while responses have been offered to the classic objections to this view, I will now show that there are not plausible responses to be offered to this inability. First, a proponent of the joint acceptance account of group belief may attempt to resist my conclusion by arguing as follows: if the central differ­ ence between tobacco company and oil company, on the one hand, and medical association, on the other hand, lies with the motivation for the joint acceptance in question, why can’t a condition simply be added to the JAA2 requiring a certain kind of motivation needed for group belief? What might such a condition look like? It cannot simply require that the joint acceptance not be motivated by the intention to deceive, for such an 26 See Wray (2003) and McMahon (2003), respectively. 27 See Gilbert and Pilchman (2014).

36

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF GROUPS

intention is lacking in instances of group bullshit and yet there is still the absence of group belief. It also cannot require that the joint acceptance not be motivated by an utter disregard for the truth, for, as Frankfurt says above, the liar is respectful of the truth—it is just that this respect is used to conceal the truth from the liar’s audience. It may be better, then, to add a positive condition: perhaps the joint acceptance needs to be motivated by a sensitivity to the truth, or to the available evidence, or to some other epistemically proper feature. This proposal, however, is doomed to failure for at least two reasons. First, the motivation for the joint acceptance in medical association is the overall health of the nation, not a sensitivity to an epistemically significant property Given that the proponent of the joint acceptance view regards medical association as a classic case of group belief, it would hardly help the view to add a condition to group belief that the American Academy of Pediatrics would fail to satisfy. Second, wishful thinking can certainly produce belief, both at the individual and at the group level, but clearly a positive epistemic requirement would not be satisfied here. In particular, belief that results from wishful thinking is not sensitive to an epistemically proper feature, despite the fact that it is undeniably a belief. A second strategy that the proponent of the joint acceptance account might take for resisting my objection is to flesh out a way of allowing for group lies and group bullshit within the framework of the view. Here is how it might go for the former: suppose that when a given group deliberates about the question whether p, the members jointly accept that p, but then also jointly agree to spread it about that not-p with the deliberate intention to deceive the public. Thus, their joint acceptance of that p amounts to group belief on the JAA2. This, combined with their agreement to convey that not-p with the intention to deceive, results in both conditions of the traditional conception of lying being satisfied. It is, then, possible to distin­ guish between group belief and group lies on the joint acceptance account. Although this scenario as described is certainly possible, so, too, is it pos­ sible for the members of a group to move directly to jointly agreeing that not-p and then spreading this about to the public with the deliberate inten­ tion to deceive, as is done in tobacco company. It may, of course, be obvious that all of the individuals in the group believe that p, but it clearly doesn’t follow from this that the group also believes that p, given the nonsummative nature of the JAA2. Thus, tobacco company still represents a paradigmatic instance of group lying that is not explainable by the joint acceptance account.

GROUP BELIEF

37

The situation is even worse in the case of group bullshit, where there do not seem to be any resources within the joint acceptance account for distin­ guishing it from group belief. For if a group jointly accepts one thing but then agrees to report another, this simply collapses into a group lie. If the group instead jointly accepts a proposition with an utter disregard for the truth, this simply turns out to be a classic case of group belief for the pro­ ponent of the JAA2. There is simply no room in between to account for group bullshit.28 Let us now turn to the premise-based aggregation account of group belief and evaluate how this non-summativist view fares with respect to the Group Lie Desideratum and the Group Bullshit Desideratum. To begin, consider the following case: JUDGMENT AGGREGATION TOBACCO COMPANY (or JA-TOBACCO company) :

The board members of Philip Morris are discussing whether cigarette smoking is safe to the health of smokers. The board members are supposed to make their decision on the basis of considering three separable issues: first, whether the available evidence supports the conclusion that smoking is not connected to lung cancer; second, whether there is reason to think that smoking does not cause emphysema; and third, whether there is data supporting that there is not a link between smoking and heart disease. If a board member thinks that the evidence supports that smoking is not connected to cancer, does not cause emphysema, and is not linked to heart disease, he or she will vote that smoking is safe to the health of smokers; otherwise he or she will vote that it is not. The board members vote in the following way:

A. B. C.

No lung cancer? Yes No Yes

No emphysema? No Yes Yes

No heart disease? Yes Yes No

Safe to health? No No No

After the voting, the board members decide that, because of what is at stake financially, Philip Morris will publish in all of their advertising materials that smoking is safe to the health of smokers.

28 For another argument against the joint acceptance account of belief, one that draws on some of my arguments involving defeaters in Chapter 3, see Carter (2015).

38

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF GROUPS

Following Pettit, one way of determining the group’s belief injA-TOBACCO company is via a premise-based aggregation procedure. On this account, there are more “Yes’s than “No’s in each of the premise columns, so the group believes that cigarette smoking is safe to the health of the smokers. Indeed, Pettit’s very solution to the conflict between the individual beliefs and the group belief in the original case is to conclude that while the group believes that the company should forgo a pay-raise in order to spend the saved money on implementing a set of workplace safety measures, no single individual employee believes this. Similarly, then, the conclusion in jatobacco company should be that while the group believes that cigarette smoking is safe to the health of smokers, no single individual board member of Philip Morris believes this. When the company then reports in their advertising materials that smoking is safe, they are simply reporting the belief of the group. But doesn’t this leave us with the same problem afflicting the joint accept­ ance account: namely, that the situation in ja-tobacco company intui­ tively appears to be a paradigmatic group lie, and yet the view at issue countenances it as a standard instance of reporting a group belief? To make this case even stronger, we can imagine that the individual votes of “Yes” in the premise columns are motivated at least in part by economic consider­ ations, though not ones incompatible with belief. For instance, perhaps the board members were inclined to look for conclusive or definitive evidence linking smoking with lung cancer, emphysema, or heart disease before vot­ ing “No” in one of the premise columns. Were the economic advantages of selling cigarettes not present, we can imagine that their standards for believ­ ing negatively would have been lower. Given this, the very fact that there are more “Yes’s than “No’s in each of the premise columns in ja-tobacco company is in large part the result of the financial gain promised by min­ imizing the health risks of smoking. So, while each board member individually believes that smoking is detrimental to the health of smokers, the collective view of Philip Morris is that it is safe and this group belief is explainable by the company’s desire for economic benefits. When the company then pub­ lishes this view in all of its advertising materials—again for financial gain— this appears to be a classic example of a group lie, and yet the PBAA regards it as a straightforward instance of reporting a group belief. If this is still doubted, imagine the board members sitting in the confer­ ence room at Philip Morris looking at the table showing the results of their votes. Each knows that he or she individually believes that smoking is not safe to the health of smokers and yet each also agrees that Philip Morris should

GROUP BELIEF

39

publish in their advertising materials that smoking is safe. Moreover, assume that it is also clear to each board member that the decision to publish the view that smoking is safe to the health of smokers is made so as to avoid the risk of massive financial loss. That this latter choice is sufficient for satisfying the “intention to deceive” component of lying should be clear if it is noted that the board could have decided to instead report that the data regarding smoking and various diseases is mixed or inconclusive. Thus, I take it as undeniable that in ja-tobacco company, we find a paradigmatic group lie, despite the PBAA’s verdict that a group belief is present. Note that we would hardly regard it as sufficient to combat accusations of Philip Morris’s moral and legal responsibility for the smoking-related deaths of people for the board members to respond that they were using a premise-based aggre­ gation procedure in arriving at their collective view and hence actually believed that smoking is safe. And while attributions of moral and legal responsibility may not always track beliefs, they at least do so frequently, and thus they provide even further reason for concluding that the group is lying in ja-tobacco company. Of course, it may be immediately asked why we wouldn’t simply aggre­ gate the judgments of the board members in ja-tobacco company via a different procedure. For the problem is generated in the first place by rely­ ing on a premise-based aggregation procedure. But in addition to the dicta­ torial and majority procedures mentioned above, there are, among others, a supermajority procedure, whereby a group believes a given proposition to be true whenever a supermajority of group members believes it to be true; a unanimity procedure, “whereby the group makes a judgment on a propos­ ition if and only if the group members unanimously endorse that judg­ ment,” (List 2005, p. 30); and a conclusion-based procedure, whereby the groups belief is determined by the majority of votes found in the conclusion columns. Clearly, if a conclusion-based aggregation procedure is used in ja-tobacco company, then the result is that each board member and the group as a whole believe that smoking is not safe to one’s health. There are, however, at least two problems with this move. First, there is nothing in the judgment aggregation view that rules out using the premise­ based aggregation procedure or dictates the use of a conclusion-based rule in a case such as ja-tobacco company. Thus, it can simply be stipulated in the case that the group’s view will be determined by its votes on the prem­ ises, perhaps because the board members agreed upon this strategy from the outset, or because they decided to aggregate this way after seeing the results of the voting, or because it is written into Philip Morris’s bylaws that

40

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF GROUPS

group beliefs will be grounded in the members’ beliefs about the premises, or because this is the most promising way of achieving the rationality of the group. Second, recall the dialectic of the chapter: I am arguing that nonsummative accounts of group belief lack the resources for accounting for group lies and group bullshit. Out of the relevant aggregation procedures, the only one that supports non-summativism is the premise-based rule. For each of the others understands the belief of the group in terms of the beliefs of some individual or set of members, for example, the dictator, the major­ ity of the members, the supermajority, and so on. If Pettit were to respond to my challenge that non-summativism cannot accommodate group lies by proposing the use of a procedure that supports summativism, this would hardly save the account. Let us now turn to the PBAAs ability, or lack thereof, to adequately explain group bullshit. There are two scenarios to consider here, each with a different outcome. On the one hand, if the proponent of the PBAA counten­ ances group belief in cases where individual members of a collective entity vote positively on an issue despite not personally holding the belief, then problematic instances of group bullshit immediately arise. For we can sim­ ply imagine ja-tobacco company exactly as it is described, except that each of the board members votes with an utter disregard for the truth of the claims. When the judgments are then aggregated via a premise-based pro­ cedure and it is reported to the public that smoking is safe solely for financial gain, the PBAA regards this as a straightforward case of a group asserting its belief when the more plausible verdict is that Philip Morris is simply bullshitting the public. On the other hand, if a proponent of the PBAA countenances group belief only in cases where individual members of a col­ lective entity vote on an issue because they personally hold the belief in question, then we can again understand ja-tobacco company exactly as it is described, except that the decisions to use a premise-based aggrega­ tion procedure and to report the result that smoking is safe are made with­ out any regard for the truth. This appears to be a classic example of group bullshit, and yet the PBAA regards it as a straightforward instance of the report of a group belief. I should emphasize that my claim, as was the case with respect to the joint acceptance account, is not that there aren’t any conceivable scenarios in which the PBAA could plausibly explain an instance of a group lie or of group bullshit. Here is one: suppose that in ja-tobacco company, every member of the board at Philip Morris votes “No” in each of the above premise and conclusion columns. On every way of aggregating the group’s judgments,

GROUP BELIEF

41

then, Philip Morris believes that smoking is not safe. Now suppose further that despite knowing that they individually and collectively believe that smoking is not safe, the board nonetheless decides to report to the public that it is safe, either with the intention to deceive them or with an utter dis­ regard for the truth. This is a case where the PBAA can plausibly explain a group lie and group bullshit, respectively. However, there are two reasons this does not affect the arguments in this chapter. First, my arguments show that there are paradigmatic group lies and bullshit that the PBAA coun­ tenances as straightforward instances of reporting group beliefs. This is certainly compatible with there being some other cases of group lies and bullshit that such an account can adequately accommodate. Second, my arguments are targeting non-summative accounts of group belief. The only judgment aggregation procedure that supports a non-summative account of group belief is a premise-based one in a scenario such as ja-tobacco company. And, as I said above, it does not respond to my objection that non-summativism cannot capture group lies to propose cases in which a summative aggregation procedure can.

1.3 Judgment Fragility While I regard the failure to satisfy the Group Lie and the Group Bullshit Desiderata as decisive objections to the joint acceptance and premise-based aggregation accounts of group belief, there are two further considerations against these views that should be discussed. In this section, I’ll focus on the phenomenon of judgment fragility. Let’s begin with the JAA2. Notice, first, that group members may jointly accept thatp, not with an utter disregard for the truth—as is the case with bullshit—but with little regard for the truth. This can happen especially clearly when a view is adopted by a group for pragmatic reasons. For instance, consider the following: The History Department at a leading university is deliberating about the final candidate to whom it will extend admission to its graduate program. After hours of discussion, there is still widespread disagreement over whether Mary Jones or Thomas Brown is the most quali­ fied applicant remaining in the pool. With three minutes left to the meeting and the Chair announcing that they will need to convene again tomorrow if a decision cannot be reached, one member proposes a different applicant history department:

42

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF GROUPS

from their shortlist for admission, Robert Lee. Despite the fact that not a single member of the department actually believes that Lee is the most qualified candidate for the last spot, they all jointly accept this proposition so as to end the department meeting on time and to avoid having to devote another day to such matters. The History Department then proceeds to report to the Graduate School that its position is that Robert Lee is the most qualified applicant for the last spot of admission.

In history department, the members of the History Department spent hours discussing the applicant pool for their graduate program and com­ piled a short list of candidates through attention to the candidates’ qualifica­ tions, so there is clearly not a complete disregard for the truth in their overall deliberative process. Nevertheless, their jointly accepting and then reporting that Robert Lee is the most qualified candidate for the last spot is entirely motivated by their practical desires to end the meeting on time and to avoid devoting another day to this issue. This results in the group state being riddled with what we might call judgment fragility. Lets say that a groups judgment is fragile in this sense if the following holds: were the members of the group to deliberate about the same body of evidence at T1 and T2 with no relevant difference in the information that emerges via the deliberation, it is very likely that the group’s judgments would diverge between T1 and T2. Group belief, I suggest, is, ceteris paribus,29 incompat­ ible with judgment fragility of this sort. This is because belief, whether it is at the individual or the group level, is a relatively settled state. We wouldn’t say, for instance, that you believe that I’m trustworthy if you change your mind about this question every few minutes without any corresponding change in the relevant evidence. Similarly, we shouldn’t say that the History Department believes that Robert Lee is the best candidate for admission if every time we send the group into a room to deliberate about this ques­ tion, without any difference in evidence, a different answer emerges. Thus, despite the fact that the group’s state in history department counts as a straightforward instance of group belief on the JAA2, its judgment fragil­ ity renders this the wrong verdict. A similar case can be used to illustrate a problem with the PBAA. To see this, consider the following:

29 This clause is intended to capture highly unusual cases where it might be argued that belief can come and go without a change in the evidence, such as through direct brain inter­ vention. I’m grateful to Nathan Lauifer for a comment that led to the addition of this clause.

GROUP BELIEF

43

JUDGMENT AGGREGATION HISTORY DEPARTMENT (or JA-HISTORY

A three-member History Department at a leading university is deliberating about the final candidate to whom it will extend admission to its graduate program. The members are supposed to make their decision on the basis of considering three separable issues: first, whether the applicants writing sample is the most impressive; second, whether the students letters are the strongest; and third, whether the persons previous coursework is the best. If a member thinks that the student s writing sample is the most impressive, the letters are the strongest, and the previous course­ work is the best, he or she will vote that the candidate is the best one; otherwise he or she will vote that the candidate is not. Regarding one of the candidates on the short list, Robert Lee, the votes are as follows: department):

A. B. C.

Best writing sample? Yes No Yes

Best letters? No Yes Yes

Best course work? Yes Yes No

Best candidate? No No No

After the voting, the Chair announces that they will need to convene again tomorrow if a decision cannot be reached and so the members decide to use a premise-based aggregation procedure to arrive at the History Department’s view entirely because they do not wish to meet again. This results in the group’s believing that Robert Lee is the best candidate for admission, which is then reported to the administration.

As was the case with history department, the members of the History Department in this case deliberate about the applicants for their graduate program with attention paid to the candidates’ qualifications, so there is clearly not a complete disregard for the truth. But they also choose to use a premise-based aggregation procedure entirely to avoid an additional departmental meeting, which renders the resulting state subject to judg­ ment fragility. In particular, were the members of the group to deliberate about the same body of evidence at a different time with no relevant change in the information that emerges via the deliberation, it is very likely that the History Department would have a different view. This is because the mem­ bers’ decision to aggregate their beliefs via a premise-based procedure was guided solely by a contingent practical constraint that there is no reason to suppose will emerge in another context. For this reason, the History Department again does not seem to believe that Robert Lee is the best can­ didate for admission, despite the PBAA’s verdict that it does.

44

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF GROUPS

I want to take a step back to discuss a feature that the phenomenon of judgment fragility shares with the problems raised by group lies and group bullshit, and to suggest a deeper diagnosis of what has gone wrong with non-summative accounts of group beliefs. Notice, first, that both joint acceptance and the selection of aggregation procedures are acts that are under the direct voluntary control of the members of a group. In particular, it is this voluntary control that enables the members of Philip Morris to simply decide to jointly accept that smoking is safe, that allows the mem­ bers of the History Department to choose to accept that Robert Lee is the best candidate for admission, and that permits these same members to embrace a premise-based aggregation procedure to achieve a specific out­ come. Because of this, members can also be guided by a range of factors that are utterly disconnected from the way the world is—from the economic concerns of Philip Morris to the fleeting whims and desires of departmental colleagues to end a meeting on time. Herein lies the problem: beliefs have a mind-to-world direction offit. For instance, it has been argued that beliefs aim at the truth and thus aim to fit the world, or that beliefs are satisfied or proper when they fit the world. Regardless of the details, however, they are importantly different from desires, which have a world to-mind direction of it. Desires aim for the world to be a certain way and are satisfied when the world fits them. As Mark Platts says, “beliefs should be changed to fit with the world, not vice versa” while “the world, crudely, should be changed to fit with our desires, not vice versa” (Platts 1979, p. 257).30 But group belief, when understood according to non-summative accounts, can crucially lack this mind-to-world fit. Philip Morris in tobacco company is not aim­ ing to conform its state to the world, or even to be responsive to the way the world is, when its members jointly accept that smoking is safe. Quite the contrary; Philip Morris’s state is responsive to the way it wants the world to be and thus has more in common with a desire than a belief. In particular, the company wants it to be the case that smoking is safe and jointly accepts that it is so in an effort to bring about the consequences that would follow were the world in fact this way. In this sense, Philip Morris’s state has more of a world-to-mind direction of fit.31

30 Platts himself does not endorse this view. 31 I mentioned earlier that a standard objection to non-summativist accounts is that group belief ends up being far more directly voluntary than it is in the individual case. While my argument here also partially relies on the voluntariness of both joint acceptance and the selec­ tion of aggregation procedures, my central concern is that the structure of belief ends up hav­ ing the wrong direction of fit on a non-summativist model.

GROUP BELIEF

45

Given that a mind-to-world fit is one of the identifying features of belief, and the non-summativist is unable to secure this fit for group belief, it is clear that we need to look elsewhere to understand this phenomenon.

1.4 Base Fragility Let us turn to the final problem for non-summativism, what I call base fragility, and begin with how it afflicts the JAA2. Consider, for instance, the following case:

English department: The English Department at a leading univer­ sity is deliberating about the final candidate to whom they will extend admission to their graduate program. All of the members jointly accept that the best candidate for admission is Sarah Peters, but half of them agree to this because they believe that she is a highly qualified applicant and half of them agree to this because they believe that she is a highly unqualified applicant. The latter half of the department is made up of a contingency of disgruntled employees who wish to sabotage their own department and regard “the best candidate for admission” as the applicant who will most likely pull the programs rankings down. Once again, the joint acceptance account regards this as a straightforward instance of group belief. But notice: because the members of the English Department jointly accept the proposition that Sarah Peters is the best can­ didate for admission for different and indeed competing reasons, the result­ ing state has a base fragility to it that is not present in standard cases of belief. Let us say that a group’s state is base fragile if the bases of a significant subset of its members’ beliefs conflict with the bases of another signifi­ cant subset of its members’ beliefs. The English Departments view about Sarah Peters is clearly base fragile in this sense. This can be seen by noticing that any future evidence that the English Department acquires regarding Sarah Peters’s qualifications, whether it is for or against them, will count against the group belief. For instance, evidence on behalf of Peters’s qualifications will sway the disgruntled employees away from continuing to regard her as the best candidate for admission and evidence that undermines her qualifi­ cations will persuade the other half of the department that she is no longer the best candidate for admission. This example can, of course, be even further complicated so that one-quarter of the group’s members believe that p for

46

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF GROUPS

reason q, one-quarter believes that p for reason r, and so on. Hie more heterogeneous the grounding for the joint acceptance is among the group members, the more base fragile the resulting state is. Base fragility of this sort is, I claim, incompatible with group belief for at least two reasons. First, group beliefs have to be the sorts of things that are properly subject to epistemic evaluation, and states that are base fragile are not. In particular, group beliefs have to be evaluable as rational or irrational, justified or unjustified, undefeated or defeated, and so on. When a groups belief is held in the face of such base fragility, however, no single coherent evaluation can be given. If, for instance, the English Department gets fur­ ther evidence against Sarah Peters’s qualifications, does this render its belief that she is the best candidate irrational, unjustified, or defeated? No single answer can be given here. When viewed in light of one set of bases, the evi­ dence counts against the belief, but when viewed in light of another set, it counts in favor of it. This deep lack of unity reveals that the state that is purported to be a single one belonging to a group is in fact a collection of individual beliefs. This is not to say, of course, that all of the members of a group need to hold a belief for the same reasons. Indeed, one of the epistemic virtues of group belief is that a group’s members might all hold a belief for different, mutually supporting reasons. This can render the resulting state better off epistemically than any of the individual states taken alone, The point here is that the group’s belief cannot be base fragile, where this means that the bases of the individually-held beliefs are wildly conflicting. Second, group beliefs have to be the sorts of things that can coherently figure into collective deliberation about future actions of the group, and states that are base fragile cannot. For instance, if the English Department is deliberating about how to act, they should arrive at conclusions typical of a group that believes that Sarah Peters is the best candidate for admissionsuch as nominating her for a university fellowship or writing her an out­ standing letter of support. But this is not in fact how things will turn out, as half of the members will be deliberating in ways that are typical of a group that believes that Sarah Peters is the worst candidate for admission. Thus, there will be widespread disagreement among the members about future actions related to this proposition, ultimately leading either to inertia, inco­ herence, or a change in the bases of some of the members. It is not difficult to see that a problem involving base fragility arises with respect to the PBAA, too. We can simply leave ja-history department

GROUP BELIEF

47

as it is, except we can imagine that the department members’ votes on the premises are riddled with base fragility. For instance, department member A might vote that Robert Lee’s writing sample is the best for reason q—say, that it is the most historical—while member C votes that it is the best for reason that it is not the most historical. This might happen if, for instance, A and C have different interpretations of the role that the histor­ ical elements play in the writing sample—perhaps A regards such elements as the central focus of the paper, while C regards them as merely incidental aspects supporting a non-historical claim. Similarly, department member B might vote that Lee’s letters are the best because of reason r—that they emphasize how professional he is—while member C votes that they are the best for reason ~r—that they focus on how he is not professional. C might be looking for a pure lover of the discipline rather than a highly profession­ alized candidate, and perhaps B and C have competing visions of what pro­ fessional activity involves. Finally, department member A might vote that Lee’s course work is the best because of reason 5—that his courses reveal the most breadth—and member B might vote that his course work is the best because of reason —that his courses reveal the least breadth. Perhaps B values depth over breadth, and A and B disagree over whether Lee’s course work has breadth because only A regards interdisciplinary work as relevant to his evaluation. Thus, the votes are as follows:

A. B. C.

Best writing sample? Best letters? Yes/g No No Yzslr Yes/~g Yes/~r

Best course work? Yes/s Yes/~s No

Best candidate? No No No

As should be clear, the PBAA regards this as a clear instance in which the History Department believes that Robert Lee is the best candidate for admission. But as was the case in English department, the resulting state is base fragile in a way that renders it unfit for proper epistemic evalu­ ation. If, for instance, the History Department gets further evidence about Lee’s writing sample, it is unclear whether it would render its belief that Lee is the best candidate irrational, unjustified, or defeated. When viewed in light of one set of bases, the evidence might count against the belief, but when viewed in light of another set, it might count in favor of it. As we saw above, this sort of base fragility is incompatible with group belief. Thus, the phenomenon of base fragility provides a further reason to reject non-summativism about group belief.

48

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF GROUPS

1.5 The Group Agent Account We have seen that a central problem facing the two classic non-summative accounts of group belief—the JAA2 and the PBAA—is their inability to satisfy the Group Lie and the Group Bullshit desiderata. I take this to be a decisive reason to reject such accounts. But notice: this argument also goes some distance toward resurrecting a broadly summative approach to group belief. Here is why: summativism was traditionally regarded as the intuitive approach to understanding the phenomenon of group belief. What under­ mined this view were precisely cases such as philosophy department and philosophy departments, which purported to show that indi­ vidual belief thatp on the part of a groups members is neither necessary nor sufficient for the group believing thatp. If the scenario described in phil­ osophy department is indistinguishable from paradigmatic group lies and instances of bullshit, however, then surely we should no longer grant that the philosophy department, in jointly accepting that Jane Smith is the most qualified candidate for admission to their graduate program, clearly believes this proposition. So, one of the central reasons for rejecting sum­ mativism in the first place no longer holds. We have also seen, however, that issues about fragility, particularly at the level of the bases, rule out understanding group belief entirely in summative terms. For even if every member of a group believes thatp, they might do so for wildly conflicting reasons, which renders the resulting state unfit for epistemic evaluation and for future deliberation in relation to group action. This, then, prevents the state from being a group belief. Indeed, consider­ ations about judgment and base fragility show that, in a deeply important sense, group belief is crucially connected to our understanding of groups as agents in their own right. When individuals make up a group, there are relations that arise among their beliefs that can only be properly assessed at the level of the collective. Whether these relations are together coherent or incoherent, for instance, is critical in assessing whether a belief state is appropriate for figuring in the groups actions. And the nature of these rela­ tions at the collective level directly impact whether a groups action is rational or justified in light of its belief states. I thus propose the following account of group belief, which avoids all of the problems afflicting rival views:

Group Agent Account: A group, G, believes that p if and only if: (1) there is a significant percentage of G’s operative members who believe that p, and

GROUP BELIEF

49

(2) are such that adding together the bases of their beliefs that p yields a belief set that is not substantively incoherent,32*

There are five features to note about the Group Agent Account. First, the addition of condition (1), which necessitates belief on the part of a signifi­ cant percentage of operative members, enables my view to satisfy the Group Lie and the Group Bullshit Desiderata. This can be seen by noticing that such a condition fails to be satisfied in tobacco company since not a single member of the board of directors of Philip Morris believes that smok­ ing is neither highly addictive nor detrimental to one’s health. It also fails to be fulfilled in oil company, as not a single member of the executive man­ agement team of BP believes that the dispersants they are using are safe. Thus, the Group Agent Account is able to accommodate the verdict that Philip Morris is lying in the former case and BP is bullshitting in the latter, thereby having the resources for distinguishing between a groups asserting its belief, on the one hand, and its lying or bullshitting on the other. Second, the Group Agent Account avoids the problem posed by judg­ ment fragility since group belief is not determined by factors, such as joint acceptance or choices about which aggregation procedure to use, that are under the direct voluntary control of the groups members. Indeed, it is pre­ cisely because of this level of voluntarism that judgment fragility arises. In history department, for instance, the members simply choose to accept Robert Lee as the best candidate for admission, and it is this choice— grounded entirely in pragmatic factors—that renders the groups judgment fragile. Were they to deliberate about the same issue with the same evidence, though without the worry about the meeting ending in five minutes, they very likely would have arrived at a different conclusion. Similarly, the choice about which aggregation procedure to use in ja-history department is taken up directly, simply because the group wishes to arrive at the desired outcome. This leaves group belief on both views subject to the fleeting whims and temporary desires of its members. In contrast, condition (1) of the Group Agent Account ties group belief intimately to individual beliefs, so that the level of voluntary control at the former level is no greater than it is at the latter level. This has the consequence that group belief is no more riddled with judgment fragility than individual belief is.

32 One lesson that is often drawn from the Preface Paradox is that there are some kinds of incoherence that are not irrational. The addition of “substantively” is intended to permit a group to have a belief even when there is this sort of incoherence.

50

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF GROUPS

Third, and related, the Group Agent Account gets the direction of fit right for group belief. In particular, since individual beliefs have a mind-to-world direction of fit, and since individual beliefs provide the building blocks for group belief on my view, group belief also has a mind-to-world direc­ tion of fit. Fourth, because condition (2) of the Group Agent Account requires that the bases of the individual beliefs of the operative members not be incoher­ ent, it avoids the problem posed by base fragility. In particular, in cases such as English department, the wildly conflicting reasons that the mem­ bers have for accepting that Sarah Peters is the best candidate for admission leads to the failure of (2), and thus the resulting state fails to qualify as a group belief. How should we characterize the requirement that the reasons not be incoherent? There are various ways of understanding this. One option is to understand coherence in terms of evidential support and inco­ herence in terms of a lack thereof.33 Alternatively, coherence can be under­ stood in terms of accuracy-dominance avoidance, in the sense that, for a coherent set of beliefs, there is no rival belief set that is never worse and sometimes better than it with respect to overall accuracy, and incoherence could then be fleshed out accordingly.34 Here, I take no stand on how pre­ cisely this concept should be understood. It suffices for my purposes that there is, intuitively, the presence of incoherence among the members’ bases in cases such as English department, and that there are available accounts that can explain this. Fifth, even though the Group Agent Account is not a simple summativist one, it nonetheless faces the relevance objection posed by cases like phil­ osophy department!. Recall that the objection here is that every member of a group may believe that p, but believing that p may be entirely irrelevant to the purpose and goals of the group. So, for instance, every member of the philosophy department may in fact believe that the best red pepper hummus in Chicago is at Whole Foods, but this may be completely disconnected from the focus and objectives of the collective entity. The problem is that, on my view, the philosophy department ends up believing that the best red pepper hummus in Chicago is at Whole Foods—so long as the bases of the individual beliefs aren’t incoherent—even though this is said to be the wrong intuitive verdict.

33 See Kolodny (2007).

34 See Briggs, Cariani, Easwaran, and Fitelson (2014).

GROUP BELIEF

51

By way of response, notice that there is a difference between a group having a belief, on the one hand, and a group having a relevant or important belief, on the other. There is nothing peculiar in itself in saying that the phil­ osophy department believes that the best red pepper hummus in Chicago can be found at Whole Foods. It is just that such a belief is typically of so little interest to us that we wouldn’t overtly make this attribution to the group. But this is true in the individual case as well, and yet we wouldn’t withhold belief here. For instance, you most likely believe that oranges don’t grow on kangaroos and that the Earth is more than 20 years old, but only under highly unusual circumstances would I explicitly attribute these beliefs to you. Why? Because such beliefs are of very little interest to me. It doesn’t follow from this, however, that you don’t hold such beliefs. According to the Group Agent Account, the same is true in the group case. In fact, it is worth pointing out that the non-summativist who appeals to this sort of relevance objection is committed to a very counterintuitive con­ ception of belief, group or otherwise. For instance, suppose that every member of PETA believes that Citizen Kane is the greatest film of all time. On this view, PETA fails to believe this at T1 since it is irrelevant to its goals, but then believes this at T2, when its President announces that PETA will now be extensively evaluating the depiction of animals in films. Nothing has changed about the psychology of any of the group’s members or the propositions they accept, yet they now have a belief simply because of an announcement from the group’s President. This conclusion strikes me as a further reason to doubt the force of this objection from relevance. Sixth, it is worth returning briefly to the cases with which this chapter began, for it may be thought that they still pose a problem for the Group Agent Account. For instance, if the intuitive description of philosophy department is that the group believes that Jane Smith is the most quali­ fied candidate for admission to its graduate program despite not a single of its members believing this, then the mere fact that it is structurally identical to a group lie and group bullshit does not undermine the intuitiveness of this description. In other words, regardless of its similarity to cases where group belief is clearly absent, philosophy department describes a scenario where group belief seems to be present. By way of response, let me say that it is not at all clear to me that the intuitive response here is that the group holds the beliefs in question. In fact, there are many other plausible ways to describe this case that do not involve belief at all. For instance, we can say that the philosophy depart­ ment’s official position is that Jane Smith is the most qualified candidate for

52

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF GROUPS

admission to its graduate program, or that the philosophy department has decided to accept this,35 or that this is its public view, and so on. All of these characterizations make clear without invoking the notion of group belief that the group bears a relationship to the proposition in question that none of the individuals may share, and it does so without being committed to anything such as a group mind that is over and above the minds of any individual members. I would say something similar in the case of a jury, where they come to a conclusion about the guilt or innocence of a defendant because of the rules they are instructed to follow, despite the fact that not a single juror in fact believes it. In such a case, I would say that the group’s verdict is that, say, the defendant is innocent, despite the fact that not a single member believes this to be true. So, the intuitiveness of the group’s having a belief that no individual member does in philosophy department strikes me as merely apparent. Further support for this conclusion derives from considering an individ­ ual analogue of this case. Suppose, for instance, that only a single member of the philosophy department reports to the administration that Jane Smith is the most qualified candidate for admission to its graduate program, despite the fact that she does not believe that this is the case. How would we describe this situation? The standard view is that the member of the phil­ osophy department accepts, but does not believe, the proposition in ques­ tion. But then why wouldn’t we say this in cases that are identical in all respects except that a group is substituted for an individual? Why would the mere fact that a collective entity is involved transform the psychological state of acceptance into belief? Since there does not appear to be a compel­ ling answer to this question, philosophy department does not motiv­ ate the rejection of the Group Agent Account. Finally, let me offer a few general words about group belief, and the very important lessons we have learned about it from reflecting on group lies (and related phenomena, such as group bullshit). My general view will be met with resistance from opponents on two radically different sides.36 On the one side, there will be those who hold that there simply are no group 35 This response has been developed in detail by Wray (2001), Meijers (2002), and Hakli (2007). 36 It might be thought that this distinction simply maps the difference between summativism and non-summativism, but this would not be quite right. For instance, while a summativist might understand group belief in terms of individual beliefs, this need not be understood as a form of group belief eliminativism. I am here interested in contrasting those who think we shouldn’t even be theorizing about group beliefs, since talk of this phenomenon is simply metaphorical.

GROUP BELIEF

53

beliefs, and any talk to the contrary is metaphorical. According to this position, treating group belief as a phenomenon worthy of philosophical treatment in its own right is deeply mistaken. On the other side, there will be those who maintain that groups have “minds of their own,”37 and that their mental states are over and above, or distinct from, any mental states of their individual members. Group belief, on this view, does not even par­ tially depend on individual belief, so the two phenomena are importantly different. What I hope to have shown in this chapter is that paying close attention to group lies reveals that both of these sides are wrong. If we take as our starting point what I regard as an undeniable fact—namely, that groups lie—then it becomes clear both that groups genuinely have beliefs, and that they need to be anchored by individual beliefs. To see this, notice first that when we talk about groups lying, this is not simply metaphorical. When Fredric Reller said in his videotaped deposition that he believed Philip Morris’s lies that there is no valid scientific evidence that cigarettes cause lung cancer,38 he wasn’t speaking loosely—he was attributing a full-blown lie to Philip Morris, just as he would to you or me. Groups can lie, and when they do, the consequences can be catastrophic. But notice: in order to understand what it is for a group to lie, we need to have a robust conception of what it is for a group to have a belief. For, on every plausible conception of lying, even those that are in deep disagree­ ment, a necessary condition is that the liar either believes that what is said is false, or fails to believe that it is true.39 Given this, the very notion of group belief is at the heart of understanding group lies. Since I take it as undeni­ able that groups lie, I also take it to be clear that they have beliefs, too.40 As we have seen in this chapter, however, the notion of group belief that is needed when theorizing about group lies cannot be understood in terms of the non-summative proposals in the offing, as they deliver the wrong results in cases of paradigmatic lies. This is why group belief needs to be anchored by individual beliefs. Otherwise, it turns out that features such as economic motivations can wholly determine whether a group holds a belief and, thereby, whether they’ve told a lie. If, for instance, it is in Philip Morris’s financial interests to believe that smoking is safe, then all that needs to be

37 See, for instance, Pettit (2003). 38 See the earlier discussion of this in section 1.2 of this chapter. 39 See, for instance, the references in note 20. 40 This is compatible with granting that many phenomena that are called “group beliefs” in fact are not. As I said earlier, I would regard many of these states as the group’s official position, acceptance, verdict, and so on.

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done to deny culpability for deceiving smokers on most non-summative accounts is to get the operative members of the group in a room and have them agree that smoking is safe. Voila: Philip Morris now believes that smoking is safe, and thus there is no lying when this is reported to the public, even in a court of law. If this conclusion strikes you as deeply wrong, as it does me, then you should consider taking on board the view of group belief defended in this chapter.

1.6 Conclusion We have seen that non-summative accounts fail to satisfy the Group Lie and the Group Bullshit Desiderata, and thus that group belief cannot be deter­ mined by states or processes that are under the direct voluntary control of the members. We have also seen that non-summative accounts incorrectly countenance as group beliefs states that are riddled with judgment and base fragility. This leaves group belief without a mind-to-world direction of fit and renders it unsuitable for proper epistemic evaluation and collective deliberation. Thus, the current orthodoxy in epistemology according to which non-summativism is the only game in town is deeply mistaken. In place of non-summativism, I defended the Group Agent Account. On my view, group belief is largely a matter of the beliefs of individual members, yet it is also importantly constrained by relations that arise only at the level of the group, especially as it is an agent. The result is a view that not only renders group belief incompatible with judgment and base fragility, it also satisfies the Group Lie and Group Bullshit Desiderata, thereby providing the resources for holding groups responsible for their lies and bullshit.

What Is Justified Group Belief? As we saw in Chapter 1, groups are often said to believe things. Some of these beliefs amount to knowledge while others do not, with epistemic justi­ fication being one of the central features distinguishing these two categories. But how should we understand a groups justifiedly believing that p?1 The importance of this question is clear, both theoretically and practic­ ally. If we do not understand the justification of group beliefs, then we cannot make sense of our widespread epistemic attributions to collective entities—of evidence that they have, or should have, and of propositions that they know, or should have known. Moreover, the justificatory status of such beliefs matters a great deal to whether groups are morally and legally responsible for certain actions and, accordingly, the extent to which they ought to be held accountable. For instance, if the Bush Administration justi­ fiedly believed that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, then not only did the Administration lie to the public in saying that it did, but it is also fully culpable for the hundreds of thousands of lives needlessly lost in the Iraq war. Despite this, the topic of group justification has received surprisingly little attention in the literature, with the few who have addressed it falling into one of two camps. On the one hand, there are those who favor an infla­ tionary approach, where groups are treated as entities that can float freely from the epistemic status of their members’ beliefs. For these theorists, the justificatory status of group belief involves only actions or features that take place at the group level, such as the joint acceptance of reasons. On the other hand, there are those who endorse a deflationary approach, where justified group belief is understood as nothing more than the aggregation of the justified beliefs of the groups members. In this chapter, I raise new objections to both of these approaches. If I am right, we need to look in an altogether different place for an adequate

1 I will frequently speak simply of a “group justifiedly believing” a proposition, “group justification,” or “group justifiedness.” All of these locutions should be understood as involving group epistemic justification. The Epistemology of Groups. Jennifer Lackey, Oxford University Press (2021). © Jennifer Lackey. DOI: 10.1093/OSO/9780199656608.003.0003

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account of justified group belief. From these objections emerges the skeleton of the positive view that I go on to develop and defend, which parallels my account of group belief in the previous chapter in critical respects and which I call the Group Epistemic Agent Account: groups are epistemic agents in their own right, with justified beliefs that respond to both evidence and normative requirements that arise only at the group level, but which are nonetheless importantly constrained by the epistemic status of the beliefs of their individual members.

2.1 Divergence Arguments Before turning to particular approaches to group justification, two points of clarification about the topic of this chapter are in order. First, the analysandum of all of the views under consideration is doxastic, rather than propositional, justification. Thus, the question to be answered is when a group has a justified belief—that is, justifiedly believes that p— rather than has justification for believing a proposition without necessar­ ily believing it—that is, is justified in believing thatp. Second, the views at issue are exclusively concerned with epistemic justification, which is the kind of justification that is integral to converting true belief into knowledge.2 Practical and moral justification will not figure into the discussion. With these points in mind, let us begin with the inflationary approach to the justification of group beliefs. The primary support for this view comes from divergence arguments, which purport to show that there can be a divergence between the justificatory status of a group’s beliefs and the status of the beliefs of the group’s members. In particular, it is claimed that a group can justifiedly believe that p, even though not a single one of its members justifiedly believes that p. There are two central kinds of cases that purport to establish these conclusions. Let’s call them different evidence cases and different epistemic risk settings cases. An instance of the first kind can be seen in the following:

2 Of course, this is not to say that knowledge is nothing more than justified true belief (see, for instance, Gettier (1963)), but that epistemic justification is key to distinguishing between mere true belief and knowledge.

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evidence:

A jury is deliberating about whether the defendant in a murder trial is innocent or guilty. Each member of the jury is privy to evidence that the defendant was seen fleeing the scene of the crime with blood spatter on his clothes, but it is grounded in hearsay that, though reliable, was ruled as inadmissible by the judge. Given only the admissible evidence, the jury as a group justifiedly believes that the defendant is innocent, but not a single juror justifiedly believes this proposition because it is defeated for each of them as individuals by the relevant reliable hearsay evidence. different

Cases of this sort are prevalent in the collective epistemology literature, but Frederick F. Schmitt provides the most developed and detailed version. According to Schmitt (1994), different evidence cases successfully function as divergence arguments only when they involve chartered groups, where “[a] chartered group is one founded to perform a particular action or actions of a certain kind,” and “has no life apart from its office” (1994, pp. 272-3). In other words, chartered groups must function only in their offices or risk ceasing to exist. The U.S. Congress, the Sierra Club, and juries are all groups of this sort. Moreover, given the particular charter of a group, it may be governed by special epistemic standards, such as the exclusion of hearsay in a court of law. Because of this, ...a nonlegal group may fail to be justified in a belief because a member possesses countervailing hearsay. A court, on the other hand, would not lose its justification merely because a member possesses countervailing hearsay. And this is because in its legal capacity, the court rightly excludes hearsay, and its legal capacity is the only capacity in which it operates. (Schmitt 1994, p. 274) Since the jury in different evidence is a chartered group, Schmitt argues that its charter prohibits it from considering the hearsay evidence about the defendant fleeing the scene of the crime with blood spatter on his clothes. Without this crucial testimony, the jury justifiedly believes that the defendant is innocent of the murder in question. But since the jurors qua individuals are not governed by these special standards of available reasons, they each have a defeater provided by the hearsay evidence for believing in the defendant’s innocence. Thus, the jury justifiedly believes that the defendant is innocent despite the fact that not a single individual member justifiedly holds this belief.

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An instance of the second kind of case is as follows:

A philosophy department has been given permission to hire an assistant professor and appoints a sub-committee of three persons for this task. After considering the application of Fred Jones, the individual members and the committee have different epistemic risk settings with regard to accepting the proposition that Jones is a qualified candidate. “These risk settings determine how much evidence is necessary for acceptance. So, while both the individuals and the group as a whole consider precisely the same evidence and they assign the same weight to the evidence, the group reaches its threshold for acceptance while no individual member has reached her threshold for acceptance. And, since there is no epistemically preferred threshold, both the group and the members are equally epistemically rational.” (Mathiesen 2011, p. 41) different risk settings:

This case, due to Kay Mathiesen, relies on differences in tolerance for epi­ stemic risk that agents may have. For instance, it has been argued that if one agent is an epistemic risk-taker, while another is epistemically cautious, it is possible for them to have access to the same evidence and yet the former rationally believes thatp while the latter rationally suspends belief regarding the question whether p.3 Moreover, these differences in epistemic risk set­ tings can be determined by pragmatic factors. Mathiesen writes: A practical agent has certain goals or interests. In the case of the hiring committee, its practical goals have been determined by the charge from the departmental committee to determine a set of “qualified” candidates for the position. The practical goals of the members may be quite different from those of the group. For instance, the individuals may “personally” prefer to be very skeptical that anyone is truly qualified. But, given that as a group they need to present a set of names to the department, such skepticism would be out of place in group reasoning. (Mathiesen 2011, p. 40) Because of the practical interests of the hiring committee in different risk settings, the group is more of an epistemic risk-taker than any of the individual members. According to Mathiesen, this has the result that even though the amount of evidence available to both the group and the 3 See Levi (1962), Fallis (2006), Riggs (2008), and Mathiesen (2011).

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members is sufficient for justified belief, only the formers risk settings permit belief. Thus, the hiring committee justifiedly believes that Jones is a qualified candidate, despite the fact that not a single individual member justifiedly holds this belief. Divergence arguments involving different evidence and different risk set­ tings are said to support two conclusions—a negative and a positive one. The former is:

Non-Summativism: A group, G, justifiedly believing that p cannot be understood only in terms of some or all of G’s members justifiedly believ­ ing that p. The positive conclusion is: Inflationism: A group, G, justifiedly believing that p is understood in terms of the group itself justifiedly believing that p, where this is over and above, or otherwise distinct from, the individual members of G justifiedly believing that p. According to inflationary non-summativism, then, a group justifiedly believ­ ing that p is irreducible to all or some of its members justifiedly believing that p; instead, the group itself is the epistemic subject of such justified belief.4 In what follows, we will take a closer look at the paradigmatic version of inflationary non-summativism: the joint acceptance account.

2.2 The Paradigmatic Inflationary Non-Summativist View: The Joint Acceptance Account The most widely accepted inflationary view of group justification is what we may call the joint acceptance account (hereafter, the JAA5). One version

4 It might be asked whether it is the groups belief, or its justification, that is over and above, or otherwise distinct from, the individual members of the group justifiedly believing thatp. To the extent that justification and belief can be considered entirely separately when doxastic justification is in question, the issues in this chapter will concern justification. But most theorists who are inflationary about justification are also inflationary about belief, that is, they argue that both epistemic justification and belief are fundamentally a matter of joint accept­ ance. See, for instance, Schmitt (1994). 5 This is obviously to be distinguished from the joint acceptance account of group belief discussed in Chapter 1.

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of the JAA is developed and defended by Schmitt in his (1994), where he argues:

JAA-S: A group G justifiedly believes that p if and only if G has good reason to believe that p, and believes thatp for this reason6 where

G has a reason r to believe that p if and only if all members of G would properly express openly a willingness to accept r jointly as the group’s reason to believe that p. (Schmitt 1994, p. 265)7 On this view, then, whether a reason counts as possessed by a group is determined entirely via its joint acceptance by the group’s members, and the epistemic goodness or badness of this reason can then, in turn, be fleshed out in terms of traditional justification-conferring features, such as being produced by a reliable process, being grounded in adequate evidence, and so on. Schmitts preferred explanation of the epistemic goodness of a groups reason is reliabilist, and though there are interesting questions about the reliability of group belief, the aspect of his view that is a substantive contribution to collective epistemology is his joint acceptance account of group reasons. According to Schmitt, while joint acceptance determines group reasons, “[t]he reference to what members would properly do is needed because the reasons possessed by the group include those that are available within and to the group, not merely those the members actually jointly accept as reasons” (Schmitt 1994, p. 266, original emphasis). For instance, suppose that the members of the Humane Society of the United States do not expli­ citly jointly accept, that the moral wrongness of animal cruelty gives them a reason to believe that dog fighting should be opposed; nevertheless, this reason might be available to the group via all of their other commitments. Moreover, though Schmitt does not mention these virtues of his view, the inclusion of what members would do is also necessary to account for cases where r seems to be possessed by a group, despite the fact that not all

6 I added “and believes that p for this reason” to Schmitt’s account; otherwise, group beliefs and group reasons will be entirely disconnected from one another. 7 Because Schmitt talks about groups having reasons, I will adopt this locution in the dis­ cussion that follows. But where relevant, this should be understood as groups not only having these reasons, but basing the beliefs in question on these reasons.

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members of the group actually jointly accept r. This can happen when, for instance, a group member is out of town or ill and is therefore not present when the relevant deliberation takes place, or when the group is so large that actual joint acceptance is practically impossible. In such cases, so long as all of the group members would jointly accept r, it counts as a reason that the group has.8 Another version of the JAA is defended by Raul Hakli. According to Hakli:

JAA-H: A group G justifiedly believes9 that p collectively “if and only if the group can successfully defend p against reasonable challenges by pro­ viding reasons or evidence that are collectively acceptable to the group and that support p according to the epistemic principles collectively accepted in the epistemic community of the group. The epistemic community deter­ mines what counts as a successful defence and as a reasonable challenge.” (Hakli 2011, p. 150) Just as Schmitt provides a joint acceptance account of group reasons, and then defends a reliabilist account of what makes these reasons epistemically good ones, Hakli endorses a joint acceptance account of group reasons and then develops a dialectical view of what makes these reasons epistemically good ones. In particular, a group has only “reasons or evidence that are col­ lectively acceptable to the group.” What makes these reasons or evidence good is if they can be used to successfully defend p against reasonable challenges, which, in turn, is determined by what the epistemic community collectively accepts. For proponents of divergence arguments, the central virtue of the JAA is its ability to account for how groups can justifiedly hold beliefs that no sin­ gle member justifiedly believes, thereby supporting inflationism about group justification. For instance, in different evidence, that the jury justifiedly believes that the defendant is innocent without a single individual

8 Beyond this, Schmitt says that he will not offer an account of what proper acceptance is. The key point for my purposes, however, is that “proper” is not an epistemic notion. As Schmitt says, “proper joint acceptance of a reason is not the same as the reasons being good. Joint acceptance of r as a reason may be proper even if the reason is bad” (1994, p. 266). Instead, “proper joint acceptance” will often be determined by the structure or procedural requirements of the group in question. 9 It should be noted that Hakli provides an account of the justification of group acceptances rather than of group beliefs. None of the arguments in this chapter, however, turn on this distinction.

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member justifiedly holding this belief can presumably be explained according to both versions of the JAA: the members of the jury would jointly express openly a willingness to accept the admissible evidence as their reason to believe that the defendant is innocent. Since we can assume that this admissible evidence is both reliably produced10 and capable of providing a successful defense against reasonable challenges, the jury justifiedly believes this proposition. However, the individual members not only don’t believe that the defendant is innocent, they also don’t have justification for believ­ ing it, as the hearsay evidence provides them with a defeater. Similar considerations apply in different risk settings: the mem­ bers of the hiring committee would jointly express openly a willingness to accept the available evidence as their reason to believe that Jones is a quali­ fied candidate. Since we can again assume that this evidence is reliably produced and capable of providing a successful defense against reasonable challenges, the hiring committee justifiedly believes this proposition. But because the members qua individuals are more epistemically cautious, they do not believe Jones is a qualified candidate, and thus they don’t believe this justifiedly either. This results in the hiring committee justifiedly believing that Jones is a qualified candidate, despite the fact that not a single individ­ ual member justifiedly holds this belief. Thus, the JAA handles classic diver­ gence arguments with ease.

2.3 Problems for the Joint Acceptance Account Objections may be raised to both the reliabilist and dialectical components of the JAA-S and JAA-H, respectively Regarding the former, for instance, it is not at all clear that reliability will appropriately track the inflationist’s intuitions about epistemic justification. If the jury in the above case forms a belief that the defendant is innocent purely on the basis of admissible evi­ dence, is this produced by a reliable process? Clearly, no. Forming beliefs by ignoring relevant evidence is a paradigm of an unreliable process, so how will the joint acceptance theorist who is also a reliabilist achieve the desired verdict in different evidence? With respect to the latter, there are well-known objections to dialectical accounts of individual epistemic justi­ fication that can be raised here, too. For instance, how is such a view going

10 I actually challenge this assumption below.

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to handle really persuasive speakers who nonetheless offer bad epistemic reasons, or highly gullible epistemic communities who very readily accept poor defenses as successful ones? But what I want to do here is challenge the core tenet of the JAA—namely, the grounding of group reasons in joint acceptance. This will cut across every existing inflationary, non-summative account of group justification in the literature. To begin, it will be helpful to clarify two features of the JAA. First, in order for a group to be said to possess a reason, it cannot be required that all members of the group be such that they would express openly11 a willing­ ness to jointly accept r as the groups reason to believe that p. This would make group justification too hard to come by. For instance, suppose that a philosophy department is deliberating about whether to offer a position in their graduate program to a highly qualified female applicant. All of the members of the department would properly express a willingness to jointly accept that the excellence of this womans writing sample is a reason to believe that she should be admitted, except for one, whose sexism would invariably prevent such agreement. The philosophy department here clearly has a reason to believe that she should be admitted to the graduate program, regardless of how we understand the nature of reasons. In particular, that a sexist member of the department would never accept the excellence of this womans writing sample as a reason to admit her affects neither whether the group believes that her writing sample is excellent nor whether the writing sample is in fact excellent. Given this, regardless of whether one thinks that reasons are psychological states, factive states, or both, a single biased member of a group steadfastly refusing to accept a given reason under any circum­ stances is not sufficient for the group to lack that reason. Thus, the JAA needs to be understood as requiring that only some of the members are such that they would engage in the relevant joint acceptance. Of course, it is not enough that this is true of just any members of the group in question. Groups have members with vastly different roles, only some of whom have the authority or power to determine certain outcomes for the group as a whole. As we saw in the previous chapter, those who have the relevant decision-making authority are often called operative members.12 For instance, the custodians of a law firm might have the authority to deter­ mine whether the hallway traffic gives the firm a reason to install hardwood 11 For the sake of ease of expression, I will often drop the “openly.” 12 See, for instance, Tuomela (2004).

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floors rather than carpeting, but not whether the details of a case provide a reason to file a motion to dismiss on behalf of a client. The JAA should, then, be understood as requiring not only that some members are such that they would properly express a willingness to jointly accept r as the groups reason to believe thatp, but also that these members are operative ones,13 With these points in mind, I now want to turn to what I take to be a decisive objection to all versions of the joint acceptance account, one that shows that the JAA makes group justification far too easy to come by. Consider the following: Philip Morris is one of the largest tobacco com­ panies in the world, and each of its operative members is individually aware of the massive amounts of scientific evidence revealing not only the addic­ tiveness of smoking, but also the links it has with lung cancer and heart disease. Moreover, each individual member believes that the dangers of smoking give the company a reason to believe that warning labels should be placed on cigarette boxes. However, because of what is at stake financially and legally, none of these members would properly express a willingness to accept that the dangers of smoking give Philip Morris a reason to believe that it should put warning labels on cigarette boxes. ignoring evidence:

Does Philip Morris have a reason to believe that it should put warning labels on cigarette boxes? Clearly, yes. Every member of this group is aware of the scientific evidence showing the dangers of smoking and, accordingly, believes that warning labels should be put on cigarette boxes. The mere fact that the company is illegitimately ignoring relevant evidence through dog­ matically and steadfastly refusing to jointly accept facts that are not to its liking should not result in its not having this reason, too. This conclusion is supported by the fact that we would surely hold Philip Morris responsible for the ill effects caused by smoking precisely because we take it to have a good reason to warn people about the dangers of cigarettes. Yet, according to the JAA, Philip Morris does not have a reason to put warning labels on cigarette boxes. Indeed, were the company to do so, it would be acting with­ out a reason.

13 Thus, one of the conditions of Raimo Tuomelas inflationary account of group justifica­ tion is that ‘'There is a special social justificatory dimension in that at least the operative group members... must share a justifying joint reason for.. .p” (Tuomela 2004,113).

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Consider, now, another case:

Philip Morris is one of the largest tobacco companies in the world, and each of its operative members is individually aware of the massive amounts of scientific evidence revealing not only the addictiveness of smoking, but also the links it has with lung cancer and heart disease. Entirely because of what is at stake financially and legally, however, each of these members decides to jointly accept that all of the sci­ entists working on the relationship between smoking and health problems are liars. Given this, they also jointly accept that the duplicity of the scien­ tists gives Philip Morris a reason to believe that the results of the studies showing a connection between smoking and lung cancer and heart disease are unreliable. fabricating evidence:

It is obvious that Philip Morris does not have a good reason to believe that the results of studies showing a connection between smoking and health problems are unreliable, but I think it is also clear that it doesn’t even have a bad reason. To see this, notice that the members completely fabricate, for purely financial and legal motives, that the scientists working on these issues are liars, and thereby jointly accept that this provides the company with a reason to reject the studies as unreliable. But surely this is not suffi­ cient for a group to have a reason. One way to see this is that reasons, even bad ones, are often taken to provide excuses for actions grounded in them. Suppose that my student says that the reason she didn’t cite the sources on which she relied is that she believed it wasn’t necessary to acknowledge material assigned for our class. This reason might not justify her plagiarism, but it does provide an excuse for her failure to cite the relevant sources. I may, for instance, be able to understand her behavior, explain why such an excellent student ended up engaging in academic dishonesty, and ultimately hold her less responsible for the act than if she had knowingly failed to pro­ vide the necessary citations. In fabricating evidence, however, there is no sense whatsoever in which the members’ joint acceptance of a madeup claim provides Philip Morris with an excuse for regarding the scientific studies as unreliable. Indeed, rather than lessening responsibility, as a bad reason might do, the company seems more guilty of the actions grounded in the acceptance of the unreliability of the scientific evidence, since the fabri­ cation of evidence was knowingly and willfully done. According to the JAA, however, Philip Morris has a reason to believe that the results of the studies

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showing a connection between smoking and lung cancer and heart disease are unreliable. It is just a small step from here to show that the JAA also leads to problem­ atic results regarding the epistemic justification of group beliefs. Consider ignoring evidence: given that all of the evidence showing that smoking is dangerous is not available to the group because of the members’ refusal to jointly accept it, none of it is part of the justificatory basis of the group’s belief. It is, then, not at all difficult to imagine scenarios in which the remaining evidence leaves the group justifiedly believing that smoking does not pose any health hazards. For instance, the group might have access to some studies that, though reliably conducted, had a very limited sample of subjects, none of whom happened to develop lung cancer or heart disease despite years of smoking. In this case, Philip Morris’s “belief” that smoking is not unhealthy would be reliably formed, capable of successful defense, and, given the total evidence available, well-grounded, thereby being epistemically justified. But this result is absurd. This is the sense in which the JAA makes the justification of group beliefs far too easy to come by. Any group can manipulate the available evidence through what it chooses to accept or reject, and thereby wind up with beliefs that count as epistemically justified even when they clearly are not. The upshot of these considerations is that joint acceptance cannot ground the justification of group beliefs. On the one hand, ignoring evidence shows that the relevant kind of joint acceptance by the members of a given group is not necessary for a group to possess a reason, since Philip Morris has a reason to believe that warning labels should be placed on cigarette boxes even in the absence of joint acceptance of that claim by its members. On the other hand, fabricating evidence reveals that the relevant kind of joint acceptance by the members of a given group is not sufficient for a group to possess a reason, since Philip Morris does not have a reason to believe that the results of the studies showing a connection between smok­ ing and health problems are unreliable, despite there being joint acceptance of that claim by its members. What both of these cases make clear is that group justification cannot be wholly determined by factors over which the members of the group have direct voluntary control. For it is this voluntary control that enables the members of Philip Morris to simply decide to not jointly accept what they should, and to jointly accept what they should not. Because of this, it is possible for joint acceptance to be guided by factors that are utterly disconnected from the truth, such as the economic and legal goals of a company. Thus, any account of group justification that relies entirely on

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joint acceptance succumbs to what I shall call the Illegitimate Manipulation of Evidence Problem (IMEP): IMEP: If the justification of group beliefs can be achieved through wholly voluntary means, then the evidence available to the group can be illegitimately manipulated, thereby severing the connection between group epistemic justification and truth-conduciveness. Given that the JAA clearly faces the IMEP, we need to look elsewhere for an account of the justification of group beliefs. Of course, the proponent of the JAA might substantially revise the view so that there are epistemic constraints on both a groups having a reason and the reason being a good one. For instance, perhaps a group has a reason, r, to believe thatp if and only if its operative members would properly express a willingness to jointly accept r as the group’s reason to believe thatp, where “properly” is understood in distinctively epistemic terms. On this view, the joint acceptance in question would have to be determined, not by the will of the operative members, but by the evidence available to them. Otherwise, there would be no way to ensure that Philip Morris has the relevant reason in IGNORING EVIDENCE, but lacks it in FABRICATING EVIDENCE. The problem with this approach, however, is that it ceases to be an infla­ tionary non-summative account of group justification. To see this, consider how this revised version of the JAA would handle ignoring evidence: despite the fact that the operative members would not jointly accept that the dangers of smoking give Philip Morris a reason to believe that it should put warning labels on cigarette boxes, the group nonetheless has this reason because of the evidence available to its members. But in what way is this a joint acceptance account when all of the work is done by the available evidence and joint acceptance is utterly irrelevant to whether the group has a reason? This point can be put in the form of a dilemma: either group reasons are determined by joint acceptance or they are not. If they are, the view suc­ cumbs to the Illegitimate Manipulation of Evidence Problem. If they are not, the view is not a joint acceptance account. Either way, inflationary nonsummativism is left wanting.

2.4 Revisiting Divergence Arguments Divergence arguments provide the central grounding for an inflationary approach to group justification. We have seen that the paradigmatic version

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of such an approach—the joint acceptance account—has serious problems that motivate its rejection. But where does that leave us vis-^-vis divergence arguments? My goal in this section of the chapter is to argue that the two main divergence arguments independently fail. This should just about close the door to inflationism about group justification. Let’s begin with different evidence. Recall that the standard inter­ pretation of this sort of case is that, while the jury as a group justifiedly believes that the defendant is innocent, none of the jurors justifiedly believe this proposition because their justification is defeated by the relevant reli­ able hearsay evidence. But why should we think that the notion of justifica­ tion is epistemic in both evaluations? The reason that there might be the inclination to say that the jury justifiedly believes that the defendant is innocent is because hearsay evidence is deemed inadmissible by the court. However, being inadmissible is clearly not the same as being unreliable or otherwise non-truth-conducive. Consider, for instance, that hearsay evidence is generally inadmissible because a witness needs to be “brought to testify in court on the stand, where he may be probed and cross-examined as to the grounds of his assertion and of his qualifications to make it” (Wigmore 1904, p. 437). The problem with hearsay evidence mentioned here is not that it is more likely to be unreliable or lacking in evidential value, but rather that the opposing side is denied the possibility of confronting the source of the information. This is a practical or procedural concern, but not necessarily an epistemic one. This is made clear by the fact that we can imagine a piece of hearsay evidence that has been produced by a far more reliable process and is better grounded in evidence than a piece of firsthand evidence. Nevertheless, the former would be inadmissible in a court of law, while the latter would not be. Given this, the mere fact that something is ruled inadmissible does not necessarily reveal anything about its epistemic status. Applying these considerations to different evidence, the reliable hearsay evidence that the defendant was seen fleeing the scene of the crime with blood spatter on his clothes is highly epistemically relevant to the jury’s beliefs, even if the rules of the court prohibit it from being factored into their verdict. This shows that while both the jury and the individual jurors justifiedly believe that the defendant is guilty in an epistemic sense, the jury is legally justified in believing that the defendant is innocent. This is because, as was mentioned above, the law’s exclusion of hearsay evidence can be radically disconnected from truth-conduciveness, which is precisely what we find in different evidence. Thus, this case fails to establish what diver­ gence arguments purport to show: namely, that the epistemic justification of

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a group’s beliefs can diverge from the epistemic justification of the beliefs of its individual members.14 Now Schmitt may respond to this argument by reminding us that a jury is a chartered group and must therefore function according to its charter. As he says, “the court rightly excludes hearsay, and its legal capacity is the only capacity in which it operates” (Schmitt 1994, p. 274). Given this, insofar as the jury considers the hearsay evidence in question and forms a belief in the defendants guilt on this basis, it has ceased to be a jury. Thus, it is not the case that the jury justifiedly believes that the defendant is guilty.15 But this response will not do. Surely, juries can make mistakes or break the rules and still remain a jury. This happens with groups all the time. A basketball team might break the rules by its players repeatedly double­ dribbling the ball, and yet it still remains a basketball team playing basket­ ball. It is just a bad basketball team playing a very poor game of basketball. Similarly, a jury might consider hearsay evidence when forming its belief about a defendant’s innocence or guilt and nonetheless remain a jury engaged in deliberation. It is just a jury that has broken the rules. Moreover, unlike the basketball team, so long as its verdict is grounded only in admis­ sible evidence, it is not even clear that the jury is overall a bad one. Of course, if a group breaks enough of the rules, or the right kind of rules, such as those that are constitutive, it might cease to be the group in question. If the players carry the ball across the court and never dribble it or attempt to make a basket, then perhaps they no longer make up a basketball team. The central point I wish to emphasize here, however, is that the mere fact that a chartered group breaks a rule of its charter does not lead to the group no longer existing. Given this, combined with the fact that the jury in differ­ ent evidence is considering hearsay evidence only in the formation of

14 In response to this move, Kallestrup (2016) writes: “the key here is that the relevant standards that govern different juries are epistemic in the sense that they fix the types and strengths of evidence which can be brought to bear when juries reach a decision (or form a belief). So, while a jury decision is strictly a legal act, its justification is an epistemic property of that group. For such justification is a matter of the jury basing their decision on permissible and strong enough evidence, which in turn is constrained by those standards. And because the standards may differ from jury to jury, so will the epistemic properties of arriving at justified decisions.” This response misses the point that the legal standard excluding hearsay is not always truth-conducive, and so the justification in question is legal, not epistemic in nature. The mere fact that the legal standards govern evidence is clearly not sufficient for rendering beliefs that meet these standards epistemically justified. A corporation could adopt standards of evidence that rule out considering scientific studies that challenge the safety of their prod­ ucts. Surely, the beliefs that follow these standards would not thereby be epistemically justified. 15 lam grateful to Mark Thomson for raising this point.

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its belief and not in issuing its verdict, there is no reason to conclude that it is not the jury that believes that the defendant is guilty. A further objection to Schmitts strategy for defending his reading of different Evidence is that linking epistemic justification with the charter of a group succumbs to a version of the Illegitimate Manipulation of Evidence Problem. Schmitt considers the example of the charter of a court or jury to exclude hearsay evidence as admissible, but there are no constraints on the charters of groups. Given this, what prevents a group from being formed whose primary charter is, for instance, to exclude any evidence that conflicts with its belief that aliens have visited Roswell, New Mexico? In such a case, the group could end up justifiedly believing that aliens have visited Roswell simply because it is illegitimately restricting the available evidence. Clearly, this is unacceptable. Let’s now turn to different risk settings. Recall that Mathiesens interpretation of this case is that while the hiring committee justifiedly believes that Jones is a qualified candidate, not a single member justifiedly holds this belief because none believe this proposition. This is due to the fact that the members of the group are more epistemically cautious than the group is as a whole. I want to challenge the claim that the diverging doxastic states are both justified, but I want to do this by questioning the role of epistemic risk settings. According to Mathiesen, such risk settings can be determined by pragmatic factors. This is crucial to different risk set­ tings, as the reason the hiring committee is less epistemically cautious is because it has been given a charge by the department to present a set of qualified candidates for the job. Given this, skepticism would be “out of place” in the reasoning of the group. But this opens the door to a version of the Illegitimate Manipulation of Evidence Problem: if epistemic risk set­ tings can be determined by practical interests, and such settings can justify different doxastic states, what prevents groups from manipulating their risk settings precisely to suit their unwarranted practical purposes? For instance, given the financial interests of Philip Morris, it certainly makes sense from a practical point of view for it to be extraordinarily cautious when it comes to accepting the testimony of scientists about the health hazards of smoking. Given this, we can end up with Philip Morris being epistemically justified in withholding belief about the dangers of smoking because of its extraordin­ arily high standards for evidence, even when belief is clearly called for. This shows that it is highly questionable whether risk settings can do the work that Mathiesen needs them to. Thus, we have compelling reasons to reject both the best examples of the inflationary approach and the divergence arguments meant to support

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them. This goes a long way toward closing the door on inflationary group epistemology. In particular, the joint acceptance account is not only the dominant version of inflationary non-summativism, but divergence argu­ ments grounded in cases such as different evidence and different risk settings are the primary defense offered for such an approach. If this account and these arguments fail, then so does the central case for inflationary non-summativism.

2.5 Deflationary Summativism, the Group Justification Paradox, and the Defeater Problem Given the serious problems facing an inflationary approach to understand­ ing the justification of group beliefs that were developed in the previous chapter, a natural response is to move toward a deflationary one. The most widely accepted deflationary view is summativism, according to which the justification of a group’s belief is understood simply in terms of the justifica­ tion of the individual members’ beliefs. More precisely, there are two aspects to such a view, corresponding to those found with respect to inflationary non-summativism. The negative thesis is:

Deflationism: A group, G, justifiedly believing that p does not involve the group itself justifiedly believing thatp, where this is over and above, or other­ wise distinct from, the individual members of G justifiedly believing thatp. The positive thesis is:

Summativism: A group, G, justifiedly believing that p is understood only in terms of some or all of G’s members justifiedly believing thatp. Deflationary summativism draws inspiration from a judgment aggregation framework.16 As may be recalled from Chapter 1, “Aggregation procedures are mechanisms a multimember group can use to combine (‘aggregate’) the individual beliefs or judgments held by the group members into collective

16 While one can appeal to the resources of the judgment aggregation framework to support a deflationary summativist view of justified group belief (as Alvin Goldman does below), it is important to note that not all aggregation procedures support this approach. For instance, the premise-based aggregation procedure discussed in Chapter 1 could be reframed in terms of justified belief, rather than merely belief, and result in a case where the group holds a justified belief that no member of the group does.

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beliefs or judgments endorsed by the group as a whole” (List 2005, p. 25).17 For instance, a dictatorial procedure, “whereby the collective judgments are always those of some antecedently fixed group member (the ‘dictator’)” (List 2005, p. 28), understands the judgment of the group in terms of the judgment of a single member—the dictator. A majority procedure, “whereby a group judges a given proposition to be true whenever a majority of group members judges it to be true,” understands the judgment of the group in terms of the judgments of a majority of its individual members (List 2005, p. 27). A supermajority procedure, whereby a group judges a given propos­ ition to be true whenever a supermajority of group members judges it to be true, understands the judgment of the group in terms of the judgments of a supermajority of its individual members. And a unanimity procedure, “whereby the group makes a judgment on a proposition if and only if the group members unanimously endorse that judgment,” (List 2005, p. 30) understands the judgment of the group in terms of the unanimous agree­ ment of all of its members. Though there are obvious differences between these views, they all characterize the judgment of a group in terms of the judgments of the individual members. This framework for aggregating member judgments into collective ones can easily be extended to justified beliefs. Indeed, Alvin Goldman does just this18 and, in so doing, provides the most detailed deflationary summativist view to date.19 One of the first questions to address in developing such an aggregative view of justified belief is how to understand the relationship between group belief and group justifiedness. While Goldman doesn’t explicitly endorse a particular account of group belief, he follows List and Pettit (2011) in work­ ing within a framework in which group beliefs are the result of a function 17 For more on the theory of judgment aggregation, see List and Pettit (2002 and 2004), Dietrich (2005), List (2005), Pauly and van Hees (2006), and Cariani (2011). 18 See Goldman (2014). 19 For views of collective knowledge that are summative in nature in one way or another, see Corlett (1996 and 2007), Mokyr (2002), and Tuomela (2011). For instance, Mokyr (2002) argues that, under the right circumstances, “society ‘knows’ something if at least one member does” (p. 4), thereby espousing a sufficiency claim. In contrast, Tuomela focuses on necessity, arguing that “a group cannot know unless its members or at least some of them know the item in question” (Tuomela 2011, p. 85). At the same time, however, Tuomela argues that “when [a group, g] believes that p, the members of g, collectively considered, will be assumed to believe (accept) thatp when functioning as group members and thus be collectively committed to p. Their private beliefs related to P (here coveringp and -p) can be different from those they adopt as members of g” (Tuomela 2011, p. 86). Thus, for Tuomela, a group cannot know that p without some of its members knowing that p, but a group can know thatp despite the fact that none of its members privately believe thatp.

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that takes profiles of individual members’ beliefs as inputs and yields collective beliefs as outputs. Goldman calls such a mapping a belief aggregation func­ tion, or BAE Examples of BAFs mirror those for judgments discussed above; for instance, according to the majoritarian rule, a group believes that p if and only if a majority of its members believe thatp, and so on. What determines whether a BAF is an appropriate belief-forming rule for a group? As we saw in Chapter 1, there are various possible answers to this question. On one view, groups are able to select their own BAFs as they see fit. On another, BAFs are determined entirely by the socio-psychological forces that are operative within the groups structure without any choice or input from the group itself. Goldman doesn’t commit himself to a particular approach here. What he does commit himself to, however, is that whatever account of belief is endorsed, it does not bear a necessary connection to a theory of group justifiedness. For instance, consider the following example of what Goldman calls a justification aggregation function, or JAF: JAF-1: If at least sixty percent of G’s members justifiedly believe that p, then G too is justified in believing thatp. (Goldman 2014, p. 17) JAF-1 is a supermajoritarian rule for group justifiedness, according to which a group justifiedly believes that p if and only if a supermajority of its members justifiedly believe that p. But, according to Goldman, BAFs and JAFs can and often do diverge for a given group. For instance, while a majoritarian BAF might be used for arriving at a group’s belief, it is none­ theless perfectly acceptable for a supermajoritarian JAF to be relied upon for determining this same group’s justifiedness. He writes:

Notice that JAF-1 mirrors the [supermajoritarian belief aggregation function previously discussed]. There is no necessary connection, however, in the sense that a JAF must always sanction,’ or approve of, whatever BAF a given group selects. On the contrary, a given BAF may be one that a suitable JAF would classify as unsuitable for generating justified group beliefs. (Goldman 2014, p. 17) According to Goldman, then, an account of group belief need not constrain a theory of group justifiedness, nor need the latter constrain the former. There are, however, reasons to doubt this claim. To see this, consider the following:

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It is part of the bylaws of the Vegetarian Club at Northwestern University (VCNU) that the elected President of the club determines the beliefs for the entire group. Given this dictatorial BAF, com­ bined with the Presidents true belief that vegan burgers are healthier than hamburgers, it is the VCNU’s belief that vegan burgers are healthier than hamburgers. At the same time, a supermajoritarian JAF is used for arriving at the VCNU’s justifiedness in holding this belief. Since 60 of the 100 members justifiedly believe that vegan burgers are healthier than hamburgers, the VCNU justifiedly believes this. However, the President herself holds this belief purely because of wishful thinking and is thus not among the 60 members who believe this justifiedly. disconnect:

In disconnect, a dictatorial BAF is combined with a supermajoritarian JAF which, according to Goldman, seems to be a legitimate pairing. But two results follow from this, both of which are problematic. First, the process or basis responsible for the formation of the group’s belief is entirely discon­ nected from the justifying features of this very belief. In particular, while the President solely determines the VCNU’s belief, 60 different members of the group affect whether this particular belief is justified. This is quite an odd result. It would be on a par in the individual case with saying that while reason is responsible for your believing thatp, its justifiedness is determined entirely by testimony. Second, while the belief itself is formed through an epistemically baseless and unreliable process—wishful thinking—it none­ theless ends up being justifiedly held. This is tantamount to saying that the origin of a belief can be wholly without epistemic significance to its justi­ fiedness. Such a result should be regarded as epistemically unacceptable, especially by a process reliabilist such as Goldman. What is even more objectionable here, however, is that the door is left wide open for Gettier cases to abound.20 For if group belief and group justi­ fication can be determined by entirely different aggregation functions, then not only can the process responsible for the formation of the group’s belief be disconnected from its justifying features, the truth of the belief can also be disconnected from its being justified. For instance, in disconnect, it is simply a matter of luck that the President of the VCNU ends up with a true belief that vegan burgers are healthier than hamburgers, since forming beliefs purely on the basis of wishful thinking is surely not likely to result in

20 For the original Gettier cases, see Gettier (1963).

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mostly true beliefs. Given this, it is similarly a matter of luck that the VCNU ends up holding this true belief. But then there is no connection between the truth of the group’s belief and its justifiedness, since the 60 members who believe that vegan burgers are healthier than hamburgers for good reasons have nothing at all to do with the formation of the group’s true belief in the first place. This description of the situation perfectly parallels the classic diagnosis of Gettier cases, and reveals the extent to which this move of separating group belief and group justifiedness leaves group know­ ledge vulnerable to being Gettiered. Of course, an obvious solution to this problem is to require of any JAF that it aggregates the justified beliefs of at least the very members of the group who are responsible for the formation of the groups’ belief. But this is just to deny the original claim that accounts of group belief and group justi­ fiedness can float freely of one another. Thus, BAFs and JAFs must work in synch with one another, lest cases like disconnect proliferate.21 With this in mind, lets turn to deflationary summativism. According to Goldman, there are two different conceptions of group justification within an aggregative framework—what he calls horizontal and vertical justified­ ness. The best way to understand these notions is to consider the follow­ ing case:

Gisa group whose members consist of 100 guards at the British Museum, Each of the first 20 guards, M1-M20, justi­ fiedly believes that guard Albert is planning an inside theft of a famous painting (= A). By deduction from A, each of them infers the (existential) proposition that there is a guard who is planning such a theft (= T). The remaining 80 guards do not believe and are not justified in believing A. Each of the second 20 guards, M21-M40, justifiedly believes that Bernard is planning an inside theft (= B) and deductively infers T from B. The other 80 members do not believe B and are not justified in believing B. Each of a third group of 20 members, M41-M60 justifiedly believes that guard Cecil is planning an inside theft (= C) and deductively infers T from C. The 80 others do not believe and are not justified in believing C. Thus, 60 members of G (justifiedly) believe T by deduction from some premise he/she justi­ fiedly believes. (Goldman 2014, p. 16) different bases:

21 Goldman’s process reliabilism might have the resources for responding to this problem, but only by virtue of a de facto connection between BAFs and JAFs. Thus, my point still holds that these two aggregation functions cannot work independently of one another.

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Most of the leading aggregation procedures—for example, supermajoritarian and majoritarian—have the result that G believes T. But does G justifiedly believe this proposition? Goldman writes: ...G’s belief in T maybe considered from two perspectives: the horizontal perspective and the vertical perspective. The horizontal perspective addresses the question of the J-status of Gs belief in T solely in terms of other beliefs of G, i.e„ group-level beliefs.... G’s belief in T is unjustified in terms of horizontal J-dependence. This is because, although G believes T, G does not infer T from any justified group-level belief of its own. The situ­ ation is different, however, when we consider G s belief in T by reference to vertical J-dependence. Consider all of the members’ beliefs in T and the proportion of them that are justified....given...[the] vertical criterion of J-dependence, G’s belief in T is justified (because 60% of G’s members justi­ fiedly believe T). (Goldman 2014, p. 18) On Goldmans view, then, G justifiedly believes that someone is planning an inside theft at the museum when vertical justifiedness is considered, that is, when the justificational status of the groups belief is determined, not by the group’s beliefs, but by all of the members’ relevant beliefs and the propor­ tion of them that are justified. In particular, because the individual mem­ bers have different bases for their beliefs that someone is planning a theft, there is no group-level basis from which the group’s belief to this effect can be justifiedly inferred. Hence, there is no horizontal justification. But if the group’s belief that someone is planning a theft is viewed independently of a group-level basis, then the proportion of the members’ relevant beliefs that are justified render it vertically justified. Indeed, it is precisely this vertical perspective that Goldman adopts when offering his positive account of the justification of group beliefs. Moreover, Goldman claims that it is preferable to think of justifiedness as a matter of degree, and thus to regard it as a gradable notion instead of a categorical one. Rather than sketch a full-blown theory of justificational gradability for collective entities, however, he offers a few sample principles so as to give a sense of the results such a theory will deliver. Assuming that members’ doxastic attitudes have categorical justificational status, a central principle is the following:

(GJ) If a group belief that p is aggregated based on a profile of member attitudes toward that p, then (ceteris paribus) the greater the proportion of

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members who justifiedly believe that p and the smaller the proportion of members who justifiedly reject thatp, the greater the group’s level, or grade, of justifiedness in believing thatp. (Goldman 2014, p. 28)

On Goldmans view, the justificational statuses of members’ doxastic atti­ tudes depend on the processes by which they severally arrived at their respective attitudes and, as (GJ) makes clear, the justificational status of the group belief depends on the justificational statuses of the members’ atti­ tudes. Put succinctly, group justifiedness increases with a greater percentage of individual member justifiedness.22 (GJ) is not only intuitively plausible, it also is easily supported by apply­ ing an aggregative framework to group justifiedness. Despite this, I will argue in what follows that (GJ) should be rejected, as it leads to what I call the Group Justification Paradox and the Defeater Problem. To begin, let us compare different bases with the following version of the case: conflicting bases:

G is a group whose members consist of 100 guards at the British Museum, M -M , each of whom justifiedly believes that an inside theft of a famous painting is being planned by only one of a total of five possible guards—Albert, Bernard, Cecil, David, and Edmund. Each of the first 20 guards, M -M20, justifiedly believes that only guard Albert is planning the inside theft (= A). By deduction from A, each of them infers the (existential) proposition that there is a guard who is planning such a theft (= T). The remaining 80 guards do not believe and are not justified in believing A. Each of the second 20 guards, M21-M40, justifiedly believes that only Bernard is planning the inside theft (= B) and deductively infers T from B. The other 80 guards do not believe and are not justified in believing B. Each of a third group of 20 members, M41-M60 justifiedly believes that only guard Cecil is planning the inside theft (= C) and deduct­ ively infers T from C. The 80 others do not believe and are not justified in believing C. Each of a fourth group of 20 members, Mgl-M80 justifiedly believes that only guard David is planning the inside theft (=D) and deductively infers T from D. The remaining 80 guards do not believe and 22 An immediate problem with (GJ) is that the degree (or level or grade) to which any indi­ vidual member of the group justifiedly believes that p does not play any role in determining the degree (or level or grade) of the groups justifiedness in believing thatp; only the proportion of members who justifiedly believes thatp is relevant. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for raising this point.

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are not justified in believing D. The final group of 20 members, M81-M100 justifiedly believes that only guard Edmund is planning the inside theft (= E) and deductively infers T from E. The 80 others do not believe and are not justified in believing E. Thus, 100 members of G justifiedly believe T by deduction from some premise he/she justifiedly believes.23

In the original different bases, 60 out of 100 members of G justifiedly believe that there is a guard who is planning an inside theft of a famous painting at the museum and, thus, the group itself justifiedly believes this proposition. In conflicting bases, 100 out of 100 members of G justi­ fiedly believe that there is a guard who is planning an inside theft of a famous painting at the museum and, thus, the group again justifiedly believes this proposition. According to (GJ), then, the group’s level of justifiedness is greater in conflicting bases than it is in different bases since the proportion of members who justifiedly hold the relevant proposition in the former is greater than in the latter. But let us take a closer look at conflicting bases. Each of the first 20 guards, Mx-M , justifiedly believes that only guard Albert is planning the inside theft. Given this, combined with the fact that all of the guards are aware that Albert, Bernard, Cecil, David, and Edmund are the only possible thieves, each of these 20 guards also justifiedly believes that Bernard, Cecil, David, and Edmund are not planning the theft. Each of the second 20 guards, M21-M40, justifiedly believes that only Bernard is planning the inside theft and, given their other background beliefs, also justifiedly believes that Albert, Cecil, David, and Edmund are not planning the theft. Similar considerations apply with respect to the other three subgroups: each believes that one, and only one, guard is planning the theft, and believes that the other four possible guards are not so planning.24 We are now in a position to see the Group Justification Paradox unfold: for each of the five possible candidates of the theft in question, 80 out of 100 guards justifiedly believe that he is not planning it. According to nearly every judgment aggregation function, it follows from this that the group, G, also justifiedly believes that each of the five possible candidates is not plan­ ning the theft. Since the group justifiedly recognizes that Albert, Bernard, Cecil, David, and Edmund are the only possible candidates for planning the

23 This case is similar to those involving base fragility discussed in the Chapter 1. 24 For further discussion of some of the issues surrounding groups with conflicting bases, see Cariani (2013).

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theft, the group justifiedly believing that none of them is planning the theft amounts to the group justifiedly believing that no one is planning the theft. But, according to the vertical perspective, G also justifiedly believes that someone is planning an inside theft of a famous painting at the British Museum since 100 members justifiedly believe this. (GJ) thus leads to what we might call the Group Justification Paradox: G ends up justifiedly believing both that no one is planning the theft and that someone is plan­ ning the theft.25 Now, it might be noticed that this paradox relies on accepting that con­ junction is closed for justified group belief. In particular, the group justi­ fiedly believes that each of the five guards in question is not planning the theft. Thus, G believes that it is not Albert, not Bernard, not Cecil, and so on. Let us represent the group’s justified beliefs here as follows: ~A ~B ~C ~D ~E In addition, the group justifiedly believes that someone is planning the theft and that Albert, Bernard, Cecil, David, and Edmund are the only five pos­ sible candidates. Thus, G justifiedly believes:

(AvBvCvDvE)

The contradiction found in the Group Justification Paradox is then gener­ ated by the closure of conjunction, that is, by moving from the first set of justified group beliefs above to the following: (~A & ~B & ~C & ~D & ~E) This can be rewritten as the group justifiedly believing:

-(AvBvCvDvE) 25 It should be noted that the Group Justification Paradox is analogous to the general result in judgment aggregation theory that no supermajority rule short of unanimity will always secure a deductively closed and consistent set of collective attitudes. (I am grateful to an anonymous referee for this point.)

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Thus, the result is that G justifiedly believes both (AvBvCvDvE) and ~(A v B v C vD vE), that is, both that someone is planning the theft and that no one is planning the theft. Hence, a contradiction. Given this, a pro­ ponent of (GJ) might respond to the Group Justification Paradox by deny­ ing that conjunction is closed for justified group belief, thereby avoiding the contradiction in question. But notice that even if the closure of conjunction is rejected, G is still left with an obviously inconsistent set of beliefs, even if not an outright contra­ dictory one. Specifically, since all 100 guards justifiedly believe that some­ one is planning the theft, the group justifiedly believes this, too. Moreover, all 100 guards justifiedly believe that the thief must be either Albert, Bernard, Cecil, David, or Edmund and thus that one of the propositions—A, B, C, D, or E—must be true. Given the vertical picture of justification, it follows that the group also believes one of these propositions is true. Thus, G justifiedly believes: (AvBvCvDvE) With respect to each of these five propositions, however, 80 out of 100 guards justifiedly believe it is false. On nearly every judgment aggregation function, this means that the group itself justifiedly believes that A, B, C, D, and E are false. Hence, G also justifiedly believes:

If the vertical picture is correct, then, G justifiedly believes an obviously inconsistent set of propositions, which is enough for the Group Justification Paradox to undermine (GJ). It should be further noted that unlike with some other paradoxes, this is not an inconsistent set of beliefs that it is nevertheless reasonable to have. For example, the Preface Paradox envisions an author apologizing for the errors that are contained in her book. In so doing, the author has ensured that there is at least one error in the book because she is now committed to an inconsistent set of claims: each of the individual claims made in the book, plus the claim that at least one of them is false. Nevertheless, the

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authors apology in the preface is epistemically reasonable, given the excellent grounds we all have for our own fallibility.26 But notice: the author in the Preface Paradox does not have any particular reason to revise one claim rather than another. Looking at the grounds for holding any particular belief, the author would weigh the evidence in its favor against the very small chance that it is incorrect. Given this, were the author to think through the matter, she wouldn’t change any of her beliefs. This is not the case with the Group Justification Paradox, though. For each of the claims that one of the five guards is planning the inside theft, 80 members of the group do have evidence against it that they would present. Were the group to collectively deliberate, it would have a great deal of work to do before it could reach a stable position. Moreover, with respect to the Preface Paradox, we can sup­ pose that the beliefs are largely independent, in the sense that they can be accepted or rejected without this having any implication for the other claims in the book. But this is not the case with the Group Justification Paradox: accepting one sub-group’s claims necessarily means rejecting the claims of the other sub-groups. For this reason, they can’t all be comfortably encom­ passed in a single point of view. Finally, the author in the Preface Paradox can act consistently by accepting each claim individually while also not, for instance, betting on all of the claims being true. The group in the Group Justification Paradox, however, cannot act consistently. In discussion with the police, for instance, the group will be both advising that one of the five guards is planning the theft and then ruling out each of them as the suspect. Thus, while the inconsistency in some paradoxes might be rationally toler­ able, the inconsistency in the Group Justification Paradox is not. Thus, that (GJ) succumbs to the Group Justification Paradox is sufficient for calling this view into question. However, reflecting on conflicting bases also enables us to see that (GJ) is false. For despite the fact that the proportion of members in conflicting bases who justifiedly believe that someone is planning the theft in question is greater than the proportion of members in different bases who justifiedly believe this, the group’s level of justifiedness is lower in the former than it is in the latter. This is because the group in conflicting bases has a defeater for believing that someone is planning an inside theft of a famous painting at the museum, but not in different bases. Let’s call this the Defeater Problem for (GJ).

26 For the original Preface Paradox, see Makinson (1965). See also the Lottery Paradox in Kyburg (1961). See Klein (1985), Foley (1987), Christensen (2004), and Makinson (2012) for arguments that consistency is not a requirement of individual rational belief.

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To see this, we should first take a brief detour through of defeaters. There are two central kinds of defeaters that are typically taken to be incompatible with justification. First, there are what we might call psychological defeaters, which can be either rebutting or undercutting, A psychological defeater is a doubt or belief that is had by S, and indicates that S’s belief that p is either false (i.e., rebutting) or unreliably formed or sustained (i.e., undercutting). Defeaters in this sense function by virtue of being had by S, regardless of their truth-value or epistemic status.27 Second, there are what we might call normative defeaters, which can also be either rebutting or undercutting. A normative defeater is a doubt or belief that S ought to have, and indicates that S’s belief that p is either false (i.e., rebutting) or unreliably formed or sustained (i.e., undercutting). Defeaters in this sense function by virtue of being doubts or beliefs that S should have (whether or not S does have them), given the presence of certain available evidence.28 The underlying thought here is that certain lands of doubts and beliefs—either that a sub­ ject has or should have—contribute epistemically unacceptable irrationality to doxastic systems and, accordingly, justification can be defeated or under­ mined by them. Moreover, a defeater may itself be either defeated or undefeated. Suppose, for instance, that Harold believes that there is a bobcat in his backyard because he saw it there this morning, but Rosemary tells him, and he thereby comes to believe, that the animal is instead a lynx. In such a case, the justification that Harold had for believing that there is a bobcat in his backyard has been defeated by the rebutting belief that he acquires on the basis of Rosemary’s testimony. But since psychological defeaters can them­ selves be beliefs, they, too, are candidates for defeat. For instance, suppose that Harold consults a North American wildlife book and discovers that the white tip of the animal’s tail confirms that it was indeed a bobcat, thereby providing him with a defeater-defeater for his original belief that there is a bobcat in his backyard. And, as should be suspected, defeater-defeaters can

27 For various views of what I call psychological defeaters see, for example, Bonjour (1980 and 1985), Nozick (1981), Goldman (1986), Pollock (1986), Plantinga (1993), Bergmann (1997), Reed (2006), and Lackey (2008). 28 For discussions involving what I call normative defeaters, approached in a number of different ways, see Bonjour (1980 and 1985), Goldman (1986), Fricker (1987 and 1994), Chisholm (1989), Burge (1993 and 1997), McDowell (1994), Audi (1997 and 1998), Williams (1999), Bonjour and Sosa (2003), Hawthorne (2004), Reed (2006), and Lackey (2008). What all of these discussions have in common is simply the idea that evidence can defeat knowledge (justification) even when the subject does not form any corresponding doubts or beliefs from the evidence in question.

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also be defeated by further doubts and beliefs, which, in turn, can be defeated by further doubts and beliefs, and so on. Similar considerations involving evidence, rather than doubts and beliefs, apply in the case of nor­ mative defeaters. When one has a defeater for one’s belief that p that is not itself defeated, one has what is called an undefeated defeater for one’s belief that p. It is the presence of undefeated defeaters, not merely of defeaters, that is incompatible with justification and, thus, knowledge. With these points in mind, let us return to the scenario in conflicting bases. It should be fairly clear that G has a rebutting psychological defeater for believing that someone is planning an inside theft of a famous painting at the museum that is not itself defeated. In particular, G’s belief that no one is planning such a theft indicates that G’s belief that someone is planning such a theft is false, and hence the target belief’s justification has been defeated.29 This means that G’s belief that someone is planning a theft is unjustified, despite the fact that every member of G justifiedly believes this. In contrast, there is no reason to regard the group’s belief as defeated in different bases in the same way. For even if we add to the original case that each of the 100 guards justifiedly believes that the inside theft is being planned by only one of a total of five possible guards—Albert, Bernard, Cecil, David, and Edmund—the most we get is that 40 percent believe that it is not Albert, 40 percent believe that it is not Bernard, 40 percent believe that it is not Cecil, 60 percent believe that it is not David, and 60 percent believe that it is not Edmund. This in no way provides the group with the belief that no one is planning an inside theft at the museum. Given this, G’s level of justifiedness is greater in different bases than it is in conflicting bases, despite the fact that the proportion of members in the former who justifiedly believe that someone is planning the theft in question is lower than the proportion of members in the latter who justifiedly believe this. The Defeater Problem thus shows that (GJ) is false.30

29 It might be thought that the Defeater Problem undercuts the Group Justification Paradox. For if we can take one of the beliefs to be defeated, perhaps there isn’t a paradox after all. By way of response, notice that every paradox with contradictory beliefs can be seen as involving rebutting defeaters, but this doesn’t make them any less paradoxical. 30 It is worth noting that, though Goldman includes a “ceteris paribus” clause in (GJ), these problems cannot be subsumed under it. For (GJ) just is a reflection of the notion of vertical justification: according to this principle, group justifiedness increases with a greater percentage of individual member justifiedness, and this just amounts to permitting group justifiedness to be determined independently of a group-level basis for that justification. But recall that what motivated the conception of vertical justification in the first place was different bases. Given that conflicting bases is an extension of this paradigmatic instance of vertical jus­ tification, there is no plausible sense in which it can be relegated to the ceteris paribus clause.

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2.6 The Collective Evidence Problem We have seen, then, that (GJ) succumbs to both the Group Justification Paradox and the Defeater Problem. So where does this leave us? At the very least, the two problems afflicting (GJ) show that group justifiedness cannot be determined by aggregating individual member justifiedness independ­ ently of the relevant bases. Indeed, it is precisely because (GJ) permits such independence that the problems stemming from conflicting bases arise. For if group justifiedness were a matter of aggregating members’ doxastic states plus their bases, then the group in conflicting bases wouldn’t justifiedly believe that someone is planning an inside theft of a famous painting at the British Museum since there is no single justified belief + base combination that is had by at least a majority of the group’s members. But if the group doesn’t hold the justified belief that someone is planning a theft, then there is no paradox and there is no belief to be defeated. The problem with this strategy, however, is that it also has the result that the group in different bases doesn’t justifiedly believe that someone is planning a theft at the British Museum, which was the very case used to motivate vertical justification. So, if the goal is to avoid the Group Justification Paradox and the Defeater Problem while also retaining the notion of vertical justifiedness for groups, we need to look elsewhere. To this end, let’s consider the weakest conclusion that can be drawn from these two problems. Consider this: the central feature that distinguishes different bases from conflicting bases is that, as their names suggest, the bases of the individual members’ beliefs conflict in the latter but not necessarily in the former. For as the original case is described, 20 percent of the group believes that Albert is planning a theft of the museum, 20 percent believes that Bernard is planning a theft, and 20 percent believes that Cecil is planning a theft. By deduction, each of these groups infers the (existential) proposition that there is a guard who is planning such a theft. But since it is not built into the case that they believe that only one guard is planning such a theft, it is open for them to believe that more than one guard is. Thus, all 60 out of 100 guards might be correct in their respective beliefs because it is possible that Albert, Bernard, and Cecil are together planning a theft, different bases, then, does not necessarily involve bases that conflict. So, the weakest conclusion that can be drawn from the Group Justification Paradox and the Defeater Problem is that group justi­ fiedness cannot aggregate individual member justifiedness when the latter involves conflicting bases.

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Perhaps, then, the spirit of (GJ) can be saved by revising it as follows:

(GJ1) If a group belief that p is aggregated based on a profile of member attitudes toward that p and the individual members’ bases for believing that p are non-conflicting, then (ceteris paribus) the greater the proportion of members who justifiedly believe that p and the smaller the proportion of members who justifiedly reject that p, the greater the groups level, or grade, of justifiedness in believing that p, (GJ1) preserves group justifiedness in different bases—at least when it is read in the way specified above—but rules it out in conflicting bases, which is exactly what the proponent of vertical justifiedness needs. But now consider the following:

G is a group whose members consist of 100 guards at the British Museum, Mx-M , each of whom justifiedly believes that a man was responsible for an inside theft of a famous painting. Each of the first 20 guards, MT-M20, justifiedly believes that the thief exited a men’s bathroom right before the theft (= B). From B, each of them infers the prop­ osition that it was a man who committed the theft (= M). The remaining 80 guards do not believe and are not justified in believing B. Each of the second 20 guards, M21-M40, justifiedly believes that the thief has a goatee (= G) and infers M from G. The other 80 members do not believe and are not justified in believing G. Each of a third group of 20 members, M41-M60, justifiedly believes that the thief was greeted as “sir” (= S) while walking into the museum and infers M from S. The 80 others do not believe and are not justi­ fied in believing S. Each of a fourth group of 20 members, M61-M80, justifiedly believes that the thief was talking in a baritone voice (=V) and infers M from V. The remaining 80 members do not believe and are not justified in believing V. The final group of 20 members, , justifiedly believes that the thief’s name is William (= W) and infers M from W. The other 80 members do not believe and are not justified in believing W. Thus, 100 members of G justifiedly believe M by inference from some premise he/she justifiedly believes. non-conflicting bases:

At the same time, however, each subgroup of 20 guards also has counterevi­ dence for the basis of the justified beliefs of a different subgroup. M1-M20 justifiedly believe that not-G since they have evidence that the thief’s goatee is fake. M21-M40 justifiedly believe that not-B since they have evidence that the bathroom that the thief was seen exiting is in fact a family bathroom.

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M41~M60 justifiedly believe that not-W since they have evidence that the thief has been using a pseudonym. M61-M80 justifiedly believes that not-S since they have evidence that it was actually the thief’s companion who was greeted as ‘sir” upon entering the museum. Finally, Mgl-M100 justifiedly believe that not-V since they have evidence that the baritone voice heard at the scene of the crime wasn’t the thief’s but was instead a recording.

As the name suggests, the bases of the members’ beliefs in this case are non­ conflicting and, indeed, they are mutually supporting. In particular, when B, G, S, V, and W are taken together, they provide powerful support—far more than any piece of evidence taken in isolation—for concluding that the person responsible for an inside theft of a famous painting at the British Museum is a man. Thus, non-conflicting bases clearly satisfies the relevant part of the antecedent of (GJ1) and results in the group justifiedly holding this belief about the thief. But notice the second part of the case: in addition to the bases of the members’ beliefs being non-conflicting, each subgroup of 20 guards has counterevidence for the basis of the justified beliefs of a different subgroup. So, for instance, while the basis for guards M1-M20 justifiedly believing that it was a man who committed the theft is that the thief exited a men’s bath­ room, they also justifiedly believe that the thief’s goatee is fake, which is counterevidence for the basis of the belief for guards M21-M40. Similar con­ siderations apply to all of the subgroups, resulting in there being no basis that does not have 20 percent of the group justifiedly believing its negation. To my mind, this results in the group of guards in non-conflicting bases not justifiedly believing that a man was responsible for an inside theft of a famous painting at the British Museum. This is because there is not a single basis of the members’ beliefs that is free of direct and compel­ ling counterevidence. Otherwise put, there is no basis that would survive full disclosure: were all 100 members to fully disclose all of their evidence and counterevidence, there would be no remaining reason to believe that the thief is a man. Despite this, since 100 members of G justifiedly believe M, (GJ1) grants a very high level of justifiedness to G in holding this belief. It also is not difficult to imagine a variant of non-conflicting bases—let’s call it variant—that is exactly as the original case is described, except for two modifications: (i) only 60 of the 100 guards justifiedly believe that a man was responsible for an inside theft of a famous painting at the British Museum, and (ii) none of the 100 members possess counterevidence for any of the relevant bases. According to (GJ1), G has a lower level of

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justifiedness in the belief that the thief is a man in variant than in non-conflicting bases because there is a significantly greater pro­ portion of members who justifiedly hold this belief in the latter than there is in the former. But this seems wrong. In particular, even though there are fewer members who justifiedly hold the relevant belief in variant, there is far greater epistemic support for the group’s belief in this case than there is in non-conflicting bases when the collective entity is viewed as a whole. Let us call this general objection to (GJ1) the Collective Evidence Problem. It might be thought that there is an easy solution to this problem. For why can’t the counterevidence in non-conflicting bases be under­ stood in terms of the group possessing an undefeated defeater for believing that the thief is a man? Accordingly, why can’t (GJ1) simply be modified to rule this out as follows:

(GJ2) If a group belief that p is aggregated based on a profile of member attitudes toward thatp and the individual members’ bases for believing that p are non-conflicting, then (ceteris paribus) the greater the proportion of members who justifiedly believe that p and the smaller the proportion of members who justifiedly reject thatp, the greater the group’s level, or grade, of justifiedness in believing that p, so long as the group does not possess an undefeated defeater for believing thatp. If (GJ2) is combined with the claim that G has an undefeated defeater for believing that the thief is a man, then perhaps the spirit of vertical justifica­ tion can be retained while having the resources for denying justified belief to G in NON-CONFLICTING BASES. There is, however, a central problem with this strategy; namely, that it is not at all clear how to understand the group having an undefeated defeater in non-conflicting bases within the vertical justification framework. To see this, recall that the paradigmatic instance of vertical group justified­ ness is when members’ justifiedness is aggregated without taking into account the corresponding bases. Thus, a group can end up highly justified in believing thatp, so long as a significant percentage of members justifiedly believe that p, regardless of what it is that justifies the members’ beliefs. The corresponding view of vertical group defeat, then, would permit the group to have a defeater for believing that p, so long as a significant percentage of the members have a defeater for believing that p, regardless of what it is that does the defeating work in question. So, for instance, on this view, a group

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might have a defeater for believing that p even when the members have quite different counterevidence regarding whether p, just as a group might justifiedly believe that p even when members have quite different reasons for believing that p. But notice: this is not at all what is found in non­ conflicting bases. In this case, not a single member of the group has a defeater for believing that the thief is a man since not a single member has counterevidence for his particular basis for this belief. If group justification and, correspondingly, group defeat is understood in the atomistic aggrega­ tive way at the heart of vertical justification—where doxastic states of members are aggregated independently of their relations to other doxastic states— then there seems to be no sense in which the group has a defeater for believing that the thief is a man in non-conflicting bases. Of course, the proponent of (GJ2) might simply introduce an altogether different account of group defeat, one that is able to accommodate G’s belief being defeated in non-conflicting bases. But it should be clear that whatever account of group defeat is offered such that the groups belief that the thief is a man ends up defeated, it will be working with a wildly different conception of group justifiedness than that found in the vertical concep­ tion. For as discussed above, there is no sense in which the groups belief is vertically defeated in non-conflicting bases. Thus, this strategy will not save the aggregative version of deflationary summativism from the Collective Evidence Problem.

2.7 The Group Normative Obligations Problem We have seen that modifications to (GJ) fail to solve the problems afflicting the aggregative account of group justifiedness. There is one further objec­ tion facing this view that I would like to develop, which can be seen by con­ sidering the following: G is a group whose members con­ sist of 3 nurses employed at a nursing home, Nt-N , each of whom justi­ fiedly believes that patient O’Brien is not at risk of dying. N is aware that she forgot to give O’Brien his first medication, but she also justifiedly believes that this act of negligence alone is not sufficient to put him in dan­ ger of death. N2 is aware that she forgot to give O’Brien his second medica­ tion, but she also justifiedly believes that this act of negligence alone is not sufficient to put him at risk of serious health problems. And N3 is aware that group normative obligations:

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she forgot to give O’Brien his third medication, but she also justifiedly believes that this act of negligence alone is not sufficient to put his life in jeopardy At the same time, however, NX~N3 all justifiedly believe that O’Brien missing all three of his medications would put him at serious risk of dying.

Moreover, it is an explicit requirement of the collective unit comprising the positions held by N1-N3 that they always communicate with one another about the patients for whom they mutually care. Despite this, N1-N3 do not share their respective acts of negligence with one another, and so each justi­ fiedly believes that the other nurses successfully gave O’Brien his medicine. Thus, through failing to fulfill their responsibilities qua group members, Nt-N3 lack crucial evidence that they should have had and that would reveal the epistemic deficiency of their beliefs that O’Brien is not at risk of dying. Given the evidence available to N -N individually, each justifiedly believes that O’Brien is not at risk of dying. Moreover, as individual epistemic agents, N -N3 are not neglecting any epistemic duties. In particular, subtract their membership in G and they have no obligation, epistemic or otherwise, to discuss O’Brien’s care with one another. Indeed, this can even be built directly into the case—perhaps because of concerns about the unreliability of gossip, nurses are prohibited from discussing patients’ care, unless they are members of a unit. As a group, however, matters are quite different. Given the normative obligations that N -N3 are bound by as members of their nursing unit, they have an epistemic duty to consult with one another about O’Briens care. Were they to do what epistemically they ought to, they would all be aware of the fact that he failed to receive all three of his medications, and thus they would each justifiedly believe that O’Brien is at risk of dying. But failing to possess evidence through neglecting one’s epistemic duties does not get one off the hook for being responsible for such evidence, either as an individual or as a group. If one ought to be aware of evidence, this is enough for preventing epistemic justification, regardless of whether one in fact possesses it. Thus, while every member of the nursing unit justifiedly believes that O’Brien is at risk of dying, the group itself does not. Let us call this objection to the aggregative account the Group Normative Obligations Problem. This point can be put in terms of defeaters. Recall that a normative defeater is a belief that a subject ought to have, and that indicates that the target belief is either false or unreliably formed or sustained. Normative

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defeaters function by virtue of being beliefs that a subject should have, whether or not she does have them. Given this, we might say that even though Nj-N do not, qua individuals, possess normative defeaters for believing that O’Brien is not at risk of dying, they do have such defeaters qua group members. This is because, absent their membership in the group, there is no basis for saying that they epistemically ought to believe that O’Brien failed to receive all three of his medications. However, given their group member­ ship, there is such a basis for saying this, and such a belief clearly indicates that their belief that O’Brien is not at risk of dying is false. It is worth pointing out that though the normative obligations in ques­ tion arise by virtue of the nurses’ membership in the nursing unit, they are nonetheless epistemic rather than merely professional or prudential. To see this, notice that one’s professional roles often give rise to distinctively epistemic duties. If one is a medical doctor, for instance, one might be pro­ fessionally obligated to consult test results before determining a diagnosis for one’s patients. This duty arises out of ones role as a physician, but it is surely epistemic. This is made clear by the fact that it concerns evidence highly relevant to the belief in question—in this case, the diagnosis—that bears on whether one has the corresponding knowledge. Similar considerations apply in group normative obligations: the duty to consult with other members of the nursing unit regarding the mutual care of O’Brien arises out of the nurses’ professional roles, but the obligation is epistemic in nature. In particular, it concerns evidence that the nurses know is highly relevant to their beliefs about O’Brien’s health that directly affects whether they know he is not at risk of dying. Of course, not all distinctively epistemic duties that arise out of profes­ sional roles are such that their flouting prevents the possession of know­ ledge. For instance, the nursing unit might be required by the administration to form all of their beliefs about patients via only logical deduction. While this requirement might ensure a very high degree of epistemic support, it is far more stringent than what is needed for their beliefs to amount to know­ ledge. At the very least, when the epistemic duty in question concerns evi­ dence without which the belief in question will be irrationally held, its flouting will prevent the possession of the corresponding knowledge. Clearly, this is the case in group normative obligations, where the nurses continuing to believe that O’Brien is not at risk of dying is irration­ ally held when they all know that their co-workers have evidence that bears directly on this very matter. Moreover, as was the case with non-conflicting bases, it is not dif­ ficult to imagine a variant of group normative obligations—let’s

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call it variant2—that is just as the original case is described, except for two modifications: (i) only 2 of the 3 nurses justifiedly believe that O’Brien is not at risk of dying, and (ii) there is no requirement of the collective unit comprising the positions held by N -N3 that they always communicate with one another about the patients that they mutually care for. According to (GJ), G has a lower level of justifiedness in the belief that O’Brien is not at risk of dying in variant2 than in group normative obligations because there is a greater proportion of members who justifiedly hold this belief in the latter than there is in the former. But this is wrong. For even though there are fewer members who justifiedly hold the relevant belief in variant 2, none of them are neglecting any epistemic duties, as they are in group normative obligations. This means that the group has a greater degree of justifiedness in the belief that O’Brien is at risk of dying in variant2 than in group normative obligations, despite the fact that there is a greater proportion of members who justifiedly hold this belief in the latter. The aggregative account of group justifiedness is, again, shown to be false.

2.8 A Condorcet-Inspired Account of Justified Group Belief Before turning to my positive view, there is one more approach to character­ izing justified group belief that I would like to consider, one that is inspired by the Condorcet jury theorem and developed in the work of Christian List.31 Though List presents his account specifically as one of group knowledge, it can be adapted for our purposes here. In particular, on this view, (1) the theory of judgment aggregation is followed in holding that a group’s belief simpliciter is a function of the members’ individual beliefs, but (2) being justified is understood as a collective property that a group’s belief may or may not have, depending on whether it satisfies certain “truth-tracking” or “reliability” conditions at the group level. For instance, it has been shown that each of a committee members’ individual beliefs might be only very slightly better than random at “tracking the truth,” thereby meeting only the very minimal Condorcetian “greater than 1/2” probability-of-correctness condition, but, nevertheless, a sufficiently large committee of independent individuals could be very close to perfect in its collective reliability.32 On a truth-tracking or reliabilist conception of justification, then, the group 31 See List (2005).

32 For an extended discussion of this, see List (2005).

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belief that p might be regarded as justified, even though each of the underlying individual beliefs falls short of the threshold required for counting as such. Unlike Goldmans deflationary summativist view, then, justified group belief on this Condorcet-inspired picture is not merely an aggregate of justi­ fied individual beliefs. Rather, a justified group belief may be an aggregate of individual beliefs, all of which are unjustified, yet where the group belief meets the relevant truth-tracking or reliability conditions at the collective level. And unlike inflationary non-summativism, justified group belief is constructed out of the epistemic features of the individual beliefs of the group’s members. It is just that the level of justification at the collective level outstrips what is possessed by any single belief. This presents a view of justified group belief that does not fit neatly into either the inflationary non-summativist or the deflationary summativist camp, and also seems to tell against requiring justified belief at the level of individual members. For if this view is correct, then individually justified beliefs—of any sort or quantity—are not necessary for justified group belief.33 Byway of response, it is undeniable that this Condorcet-inspired approach shows that there can be epistemic value at the level of the group’s belief that is not present at the level of any of the individual beliefs. But the question that I want to focus on is whether this value is plausibly regarded as epistemic justification; and here I want to suggest that, for several reasons, the answer should be a negative one. To begin, this view counts as justified group beliefs that have an inappro­ priate epistemic grounding, both at the individual and at the collective level. Lets begin with the former: notice that in order for there to be justified group belief on this picture, the central requirements are (i) that the group have a large enough number of independent members who (ii) satisfy the ‘greater than 1/2” probability-of-correctness condition. But then a group could go about achieving epistemic justifiedness simply by extending mem­ bership to more and more people, with no regard whatsoever to the grounds of the individual beliefs beyond independence. Suppose, for instance, that we are talking about a scientific research group: it wouldn’t matter whether the members believe that p on the basis of experimental results or some biased testimony, via methodical research or wishful thinking. So long as (i) and (ii) are met, group justifiedness can be, too. Indeed, rather than 33 I am grateful to an anonymous referee for a presentation of this alternative account of justified group belief.

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checking the CVs of potential members and evaluating the epistemic quality of the relevant individual beliefs, a research group could achieve justified group belief by simply surveying the beliefs of individuals and recruiting a large enough number of members who satisfy (i) and (ii). There’s no need for any members to go to the expense of actually conducting experiments. This leads to a related, though slightly different, concern: the grounds of the members’ individual beliefs of members surely matter to the justified­ ness of the group, yet this Condorcet-inspired view cannot account for this. A group with members all of whom performed excellent scientific experi­ ments would clearly be better justified in its resulting scientific belief that p than one where they all held the same belief because of independent idiosyncratic websites. The former group would, for instance, be quite likely to have a great deal of p-related beliefs that are justified, to be able to draw appropriate inferences regarding that p, to have the capacity to explain why that p is the case, and so on, while the latter group would not. Even if none of these features is necessary for group justifiedness, they surely have the capacity to affect the level or grade of epistemic justification present. But if the truth-tracking or reliability at the collective level of the two groups is equivalent, then the Condorcet-inspired view counts them as equally jus­ tified in their respective beliefs. In fact, if the group’s belief grounded in idiosyncratic websites is slightly more reliable than the one based on excel­ lent scientific experiments, then it would have a greater level of justified­ ness, despite the fact that its basis is wildly inappropriate from a scientific point of view. So far I have focused on the bases of the individual members, but there are also similar concerns that could be raised at the level of the group and its structure. A group that luckily stumbles into reliability at the collective level through having a large enough group of members who believe that p and satisfy (i) and (ii) could end up more justified than one that sets up a structure where, for instance, evidence is vigilantly gathered, shared among members, and checked multiple times over. Or a group that isolates members and forces them to obtain information from epistemically ques­ tionable sources could end up more justified than one that engages in col­ lective deliberation and forms beliefs on the basis of pooled evidence that has been scrutinized. In this way, the Condorcet-inspired approach lacks the resources for allowing group justifiedness to be affected by the way in which truth-tracking or reliability is achieved at the collective level. There are also considerations involving group action that tell against this approach. At a minimum, there is a close connection between a group

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believing that p and its being epistemically permissible for such a group to act as if p.34 Without making any commitments here about this connection being one of either necessity or sufficiency, we can surely say that if one justifiedly believes that p, then it is generally the case that it is epistemically permissible for one to act as if p. It is also the case that groups cannot offer assertions, engage in negotiations, sign contracts, break the law, or perform any of the other sorts of actions typically attributed to groups without there being action on the part of some of its members. Of course, this does not mean that for every group, G, and act, a, G performs a only if at least one member of G performs a. It may be that one member performs action b, and another performs action c, and still another performs action d, which, when taken together, involves G performing a. But it is the case that for every group, G, and act, a, G performs a only if at least one member of G performs some act or other that causally contributes to a. Moreover, for many groups, particular members are granted the authority to serve as proxy agents, where this means that the actions performed by such individuals count as actions of the group’s.35 For instance, a spokesperson might be given the authority to testify on behalf of a corporation, a CEO the authority to pur­ chase property for a company, and an administrator the authority to deny a colleague tenure for the college. Notice, however, that in each of these cases, justified belief at the level of the individuals serving as proxy agents is crucial for rendering the group actions in question epistemically permissible. If, for instance, the administrator believes that the colleague should be denied tenure merely because, say, a department member with a grudge told him so, then the denial of tenure is clearly epistemically improper. In particu­ lar, the administrator is not properly epistemically positioned to deny the colleague tenure, given such a poor basis. This is even clearer if we assume that there is no member of the college who has a basis that is epistemically better than the administrator’s. But if justified group belief is entirely severed from the justified beliefs of members, as the Condorcet-inspired approach does, then such a denial of tenure could turn out to be entirely permissible.36

34 See, for instance, Fantl and McGrath (2002 and 2009), Stanley (2005), Williamson (2005), and Hawthorne and Stanley (2008). 35 For a detailed discussion of proxy agency, see Ludwig (2014) and Lackey (2018a and 2018b). See also Chapters 4 and 5 of this book. 36 I develop this line of argument in far more detail, and in response to a broader range of theories than just the Condorcet-inspired one discussed here, in Lackey (2014b) and in Chapter 3 of this book.

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For all of these reasons, I regard the Condorcet-inspired considerations as pointing to features of groups that are undoubtedly epistemically valuable, but that don’t track justified group belief.

2.9 The Group Epistemic Agent Account We have seen that the paradigmatic versions of both inflationary nonsummativism and deflationary summativism suffer from debilitating objections. Let us take a step back and see what can be learned from the problems afflicting the joint acceptance and aggregative accounts of group justification. The joint acceptance account treats groups as epistemic entities that can float freely of the evidential profiles of their individual members. For instance, as ignoring evidence reveals, even if every member of Philip Morris possesses massive amounts of scientific evidence revealing the links between smoking and lung cancer, such a view permits groups to choose not to accept this evidence and thereby end up justifiedly believing that smoking does not pose a health hazard. But groups cannot pick and choose what evidence is available to them—they are constrained by the evidence possessed by their individual members. This is the central lesson of the Illegitimate Manipulation of Evidence Problem. In contrast, the aggregative account altogether avoids concerns associated with this problem by securing a close dependence of group justifiedness on member justifiedness. But this is done at the cost of failing to appreciate the distinctive epistemic issues that arise at the group level. For the proponent of the aggregative account, group justifiedness is a simple “justified belief in/justified belief out” matter. Yet we have seen that this model ignores the complexity of justified belief at the group level, particularly the evidential relations that exist between members’ beliefs and bases and the epistemic obli­ gations that arise via membership in the group. Otherwise put, suppose we think of the relation between member justi­ fiedness and group justifiedness as a function. On the aggregative account, this is a very simple function; the inputs to the function are the justified beliefs of individual members, the function merely aggregates them, and the output is the justified belief of the group. We have seen, however, that there are at least three ways in which this model is importantly wrong. The first case we discussed—cconflicting bases—shows that the aggregative view is incorrect with respect to the inputs to the function that links

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individual and group justification. In addition to the justified beliefs of individuals, we also need to take into account the bases for these individual beliefs. The second case—non-conflicting bases—shows that this modification is still not enough to capture a plausible account of group jus­ tification. In non-conflicting bases, the force of the objection rests on the addition of pieces of evidence that are not part of the bases for the aggregated individual beliefs. The additional pieces of evidence are relevant, not to the beliefs of the individuals who have them, but to the beliefs of other individual members of the group. One response to this case is to say that the range of inputs to the function linking individual and group justi­ fication must be expanded yet again: the function should take into account all of the individuals’ beliefs and their bases. But this is not a plausible account of group justification. In particular, it does not come close to mod­ eling the way in which groups try to ascertain and make use of justification in determining what they ought to believe. Moreover, the third case—group normative obligations—shows that even expanding the range of inputs in this way is not enough to secure an adequate account of group justification. The upshot of the third case is that the function itself and not merely the range of inputs to the function, needs to be modified in a sig­ nificant way. In particular, what is left out is the impact of normative expectations and obligations that apply to the individuals who constitute the group—and that very often will apply to those individuals in virtue of their membership in the group. This is exactly what we find in group nor­ mative obligations, where N -N acquire epistemic obligations pre­ cisely because of their membership in the nursing unit. Moreover, we are now in a position to fully appreciate the ways in which Goldman’s claim that aggregation transmits justifiedness is inaccurate.37 In particular, aggregation does not simply transmit justifiedness from individ­ ual members to groups since there are a number of ways in which the out­ put can end up being far less justified than the aggregation of the inputs. As we have seen, this can happen when the members’ bases conflict, when their collective evidence adds up to zero, or when normative obligations that exist at the group level fail to be satisfied by the relevant members. Thus, the justified beliefs of groups should be treated neither as states that can float freely of the evidence possessed by their individual members, nor as nothing more than the aggregation of the justified beliefs of their

37 See Goldman (2014, p. 20).

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members. Instead, I propose that groups be understood as epistemic agents in their own right, though ones whose justified beliefs are constrained by the epistemic statuses and normative obligations of their individual mem­ bers. Let us call this the Group Epistemic Agent Account of justified group belief, according to which: A group, G, justifiedly believes that p if and only if:

(1) A significant percentage of the operative members of G (a) justifiedly believe that p,38 and (b) are such that adding together the bases of their justified beliefs thatp yields a belief set that is coherent. (2) Full disclosure of the evidence relevant39 to the proposition that p, accompanied by rational deliberation about that evidence among the members of G in accordance with their individual and group epistemic normative requirements, would not result in further evi­ dence that, when added to the bases of G’s members’ beliefs that p, yields a total belief set that fails to make sufficiently probable thatp.40

Let us begin with condition (la), where there are three central features that should be clarified. First, according to the Group Epistemic Agent Account, a groups justified belief involves the justified beliefs of operative members of the group. Recall that a condition of this sort was initially motivated by a 38 Silva (2019) challenges this condition through a case in which every member of a jury arrives at a belief through improper reasoning, but the group itself arrives at the same conclu­ sion through proper reasoning, hi such a case, Silva claims that “the group holds a doxastically justified belief because it properly responds to its evidence, while no member of the group properly responds to its evidence. So no member of the group is doxastically justified” (Silva 2019, p. 9). However, there is no reason to posit justified group belief in such a case when it can easily be explained in terms of other intuitively plausible descriptions, such as a justified verdict, or a justified official position, or justified collective acceptance, and so on. 39 I am assuming that the evidence relevant to the proposition that p will subsume beliefs that bear on it, including those that might arise via premise-based aggregation in "doctrinal paradox” cases. But if this is doubted, the disclosure of relevant beliefs can be built directly into condition (2), so that it reads as follows:

(2*) Full disclosure of the beliefs and evidence relevant to the proposition that p, accompanied by rational deliberation among the members of G in accordance with their individual and group epistemic normative requirements, would not result in further evidence that, when added to the bases of G’s members’ beliefs thatp, yields a total belief set that fails to make prob­ able thatp.

Moreover, notice that this condition focuses on the full disclosure of the evidence that is relevant to the proposition thatp. It should be noted that relevant does not mean here in prin­ ciple relevant but relevant in the circumstances at issue. This should make clear that condition (2) is not unrealistically strong. 40 To help grasp condition (2) at an intuitive level, it can be understood as being in the same broad spirit as requirements in the law that appeal to what “a reasonable person would do.”

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case involving the custodians at a law firm to show that the joint acceptance at the heart of inflationary non-summative views must take place between the right members. Similar considerations apply here. Suppose that all of the members of the housekeeping staff at Philip Morris have limited evi­ dence about the links between smoking and lung cancer such that they justifiedly believe that smoking does not pose health risks. Even if they turn out to constitute a majority of the employees at Philip Morris, the epistemic status of the beliefs of the CEO and board members is what matters to whether the group justifiedly believes this. This is because they are the members who have the relevant decision-making authority in the domain in question. Second, a significant percentage of operative members needs to justifiedly believe that p in order for the group to justifiedly believe it. What amounts to a significant percentage of operative members varies from group to group—it might be as small as a single dictatorial member, or as large as all of the members. But simply one or two members justifiedly believing a proposition in a fully democratic group of 50 is clearly not sufficient for the group to justifiedly believe this.41 Finally, notice that the group’s belief that p will inherit a strong, positive epistemic status from the members’ justified beliefs in which it is based. These member beliefs will, in turn, be justified by whatever features are required at the individual level, such as that they are produced by reliable processes, or grounded in adequate evidence, or track the truth. Although aggregation of these individually justified beliefs is not sufficient for justi­ fied group belief, it does lay the foundation for group justification. Let us now turn to condition (lb). Unlike the deflationary summativist approach, the Group Epistemic Agent Account requires that adding the bases of the justified beliefs thatp of the same operative members at issue in (la) yields a belief set that is coherent. This is what was learned from con­ flicting bases: member justifiedness does not transmit smoothly to group justifiedness, since the bases of the members’ beliefs might be wildly conflicting. When this happens, such a view faces the Group Justification Paradox and the Defeater Problem. Otherwise put, it is precisely because

41 As with other threshold notions in epistemology, such as “sufficient” justification for knowledge, there is room for disagreement over where on the scale the threshold is located for “significant” percentage and how it comes to be there. Some will argue that contextualism is helpful here; others will take the threshold to be fixed by practical interests or by implicit social coordination. As that debate is tangential to the thread of my argument here, I will set it aside.

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vertical justifiedness aggregates member beliefs with no regard for their bases that these problems arise. The second feature of (lb) that should be noted is that the belief set resulting from adding together the bases of G’s operative members’ beliefs that p needs to be coherent.*2 Notice that consistency is not required here. This is because various philosophers have made a compelling case for the claim that an individual can be rational despite having an inconsistent set of beliefs. As was noted earlier, the Preface Paradox describes just this sort of situation, where it is rational for the author of a book to believe both the individual claims made in the book, plus the claim that at least one of them is false. So, consistency cannot be a requirement of individual rational belief But groups can easily find themselves in situations of this kind, so similar reasoning leads to the conclusion that consistency is too strong a requirement of group rational belief, too.42 43 How, then, should we characterize the requirement that the belief set resulting from aggregation be coherent? As noted in Chapter 1, there are various ways of understanding this. One option is to understand coherence in terms of evidential support.44 Alternatively, coherence can be understood in terms of accuracy-dominance avoidance, in the sense that, for a coherent set of beliefs, there is no rival belief set that is never worse and sometimes better than it with respect to overall accuracy.45 Again, I take no stand on how precisely this concept should be understood, as it is sufficient for my purposes that there is an intuitive failure of coherence in conflicting bases, and that there are accounts that can capture this. Third, notice that the bases that are being added together to yield a coherent set are those of G’s operative members’ justified beliefs that p. If operative members believe that not-p, or believe that p for dogmatic or irrational reasons, then their beliefs and bases are simply irrelevant to the justificatory status of G’s belief thatp. Finally, with respect to condition (1) as a whole, it should be emphasized that its satisfaction is compatible with the bases of some operative members’

42 It should be emphasized that the beliefs in this set will not all be group beliefs. For instance, some of the beliefs in the set might not be shared by enough of the individual mem­ bers to count as the groups beliefs. 43 However, List (2014b) introduced the concept of “consistency of degree /c,” which is weaker than full consistency by ruling out only “blatant” inconsistencies in an agent’s beliefs while permitting less blatant ones. Condition (1) might be understood as requiring this weaker notion of consistency. 44 See Kolodny (2007). 45 See Briggs, Cariani, Easwaran, and Fitelson (2014).

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justified beliefs failing to cohere with the bases of others. All that is needed is that a significant percentage of the operative members of the group satisfy both (la) and (lb). Thus, the Group Epistemic Agent Account permits justi­ fied group belief in cases like the following: 99 out of 100 operative mem­ bers of a group have bases for their justified beliefs that p that cohere with one another, but the basis of the final operative members justified belief thatp fails to cohere with those of the others.46 The lack of coherence added by this lone basis does not prevent the group from justifiedly believing that p, given the coherence to be found among the bases for the justified belief thatp of a significant percentage of operative members. It should be clear that the inclusion of (la) in the Group Epistemic Agent Account altogether avoids the Illegitimate Manipulation of Evidence Problem afflicting inflationary non-summativist views. One of the features that make the joint acceptance account susceptible to this objection is that the evidence available to the group can end up being a matter of choice. In particular, because groups can often exercise control over what is jointly accepted, they can manipulate what evidence is, and is not, available to them as a group. But if the justification of group beliefs is necessarily a mat­ ter of the justification of the beliefs of individual members, and the evidence that is available to individual subjects is not a matter of choice, then there is no worry that epistemic justification for group beliefs can be achieved through the illegitimate manipulation of evidence. If, for instance, a significant percentage of the operative members of Philip Morris justifiedly believe that smoking causes health problems, then no amount of joint acceptance, or lack thereof, can make it the case that Philip Morris itself does not justifiedly believe this, too. At the same time, it should also be apparent that including (lb) in the Group Epistemic Agent Account denies justified group belief in con­ flicting bases and thereby avoids both the Group Justification Paradox and the Defeater Problem. In particular, adding together the bases of the British Museum guards’ beliefs that p yields an incoherent set of beliefs. This results in G failing to justifiedly believe that someone is planning an inside theft of a famous painting at the British Museum, despite the fact that all 100 members of G justifiedly believe this. Since it was the attribution of justified belief to G here that generated the problems stemming from con­ flicting bases in the first place, they simply don’t arise for the Group Epistemic Agent Account. 46 I am grateful to Sharon Ryan for a comment that led to this point.

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While (1) addresses the Illegitimate Manipulation of Evidence Problem, the Group Justification Paradox, and the Defeater Problem, it is silent when it comes to the Collective Evidence Problem and the Group Normative Obligations Problem. This leads us to condition (2) of the Group Epistemic Agent Account, where there are six features that should be emphasized. First, notice that this is a negative condition: it requires only that full disclosure and rational deliberation be such that they would not generate further evidence that, when added to the bases of G’s members’ beliefs that p, would yield a total belief set that fails to make probable that p. This is because condition (1) proceeds by aggregating justified beliefs of operative members. The bases of these individual beliefs make probable that p. Thus, if the belief set of these bases is coherent, the set itself should still make probable that p. What (2) does is to ensure that disclosure and deliberation do not add evidence such that the resulting expanded set of beliefs that the group ends up with would no longer make probable that p. There are various ways to understand probability—for example, as grounded in fre­ quencies or propensities, or as an a priori relation—but the details are not important here.47 Second, condition (2) is a subjunctive conditional. It does not require that the group members in fact fully disclose all of the relevant evidence and engage in rational deliberation. This would be far too strong. Instead, it specifies what needs to be true of the evidence, were the group members to do this. Third, it is the evidence that actually exists that is relevant to the disclos­ ure and deliberation condition—not the evidence that would exist if the group were to engage in these activities in the counterfactual situation. This captures the sense in which the groups justification depends on the evidence they actually have, along with how they ought to think about it.48 47 See, for instance, Goldman (1979 and 1986), Kyburg (2001), and Fumerton (2004). 48 More precisely, let’s distinguish the following: e is the evidence the group members have in the actual world, e* is e plus what full disclosure and rational deliberation on e would yield, and e** is e* plus what awareness of what they are doing as they engage in disclosure and rational deliberation would yield. The last of these, e**, goes beyond what their evidence is and how they should think about it, and thus is irrelevant to the groups actual justification. This is relevant to a worry that one might have that a group couldn’t justifiedly believe that it is not deliberating now, because were they to disclose and deliberate about the relevant evidence, the process would bring about evidence that they were deliberating. (I am grateful to John Hawthorne for this objection.) But, as should be clear, what is at issue in this objection is e**, and not e*, which is what condition (2) picks out. Otherwise put, awareness of what one is doing in deliberating is typically yielded in deliber­ ating, but it follows from the deliberation itself, not from the evidence that is the content of the deliberation. Here is another instance of this pattern: suppose the existence of a particular group is tenuous, in the sense that it is likely to be formally dissolved at any moment. Suppose,

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Fourth, the rational deliberation at issue in (2) must be in accordance with the epistemic normative requirements governing both the individual members and the group as a whole. While being a member of a group does not absolve one of one’s duties—epistemic or otherwise—it can bring with it new ones. For instance, as we saw in group normative obligations, being a member of the nursing unit requires of N2-N3 that they always communicate with one another about the patients that they mutually care for, even though this is not expected of them as non-members. According to (2), then, if any epistemic norms, individual or group, have been violated, then this would be made clear in the process of disclosure and deliberation, and hence the group would not have justified group belief. Notice, however, that condition (2) does not require that the members of the group in question actually follow the epistemic normative requirements governing both the individual members and the group as a whole. That this would be too stringent can be seen by considering the following: suppose that only in group normative obligations is aware that she for­ got to give O’Brien his first medication and that she also justifiedly believes that this act of negligence alone is not sufficient to put him in danger of death. Even though N is flouting a group epistemic norm when she fails to share this information with the other members of the nursing unit, this by itself is not sufficient for the group to fail to justifiedly believe that O’Brien is at risk of dying. Condition (2) delivers exactly the right verdict here: full disclosure and rational deliberation among the members of the nursing unit would reveal both that Nx failed to fulfill this requirement, but also that this does not put O’Brien in danger. Thus, this process would not result in further evidence that, when added to the bases of G’s members’ beliefs that p, yields a total belief set that fails to make probable that O’Brien is not at risk of dying. This bears on a concern that one might have about (2): what if there is a dogmatic member who steadfastly clings to misleading evidence, but does not actually share it with the other members of the group? Should the fact that the belief set in question would fail to make probable that p were she to further, that the group has evidence on Monday that it exists then, though it hasn’t yet formed the belief that it exists on Monday. The evidence in question is silent as to whether the group might exist after Monday. So, deliberation on the import of the evidence will be silent as to whether the group exists on Tuesday Nevertheless, if the group were to deliberate on Tuesday, the act of deliberation would provide new evidence that the group exists on Tuesday, but this wouldn’t be revealed through the content of that deliberation. The condition in question is specifying the content of what the deliberation would lead to; it does not require that an act of deliberation ever occur.

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share it result in the group actually failing to justifiedly believe that p? By way of response, notice that the mere possession of counterevidence by a member does not, by itself, result in the group failing condition (2) of the Group Epistemic Agent Account; instead, it has to be such that it would survive full disclosure of all of the relevant evidence and rational deliberation by the members of G, where the latter is done in accordance with the governing epistemic normative requirements. Counterevidence that is possessed entirely because of dogmatism or some other epistemic vice would presumably be rejected or dismissed via this process. Moreover, in those cases where a member has counterevidence that is not in fact shared but is such that it would survive this sort of process of disclosure and deliberation, then condition (2) seems to provide the correct verdict. For instance, suppose that an operative member of a scientific research group has evidence that undermines the conclusion that a drug is effective in treating a particular land of cancer, but does not disclose it to the other members. Were she to share it, however, all of the other members of the research group would accept it, thereby yielding a belief set that fails to make probable that the drug is effective in treating cancer. Here, the unshared counterevidence possessed by the operative member prevents the group from justifiedly believing that the drug is effective in treating cancer. But this also seems to be the right result, one supported by the fact that we would surely hold the group responsible for the harmful consequences of treating cancer patients with the drug were we to learn that one of the operative members had com­ pelling evidence challenging its effectiveness. A related issue that arises here is this: suppose there is a skeptic in a given group who doesn’t disclose her skeptical worries to the other members. Isn’t it the case that for just about any proposition and any belief set, adding a skeptical argument to it would result in a belief set that fails to make probable that p? Thus, doesn’t it turn out on the Group Epistemic Agent Account that the mere presence of a skeptic in a group results in the group itself failing to justifiedly hold any beliefs?49 By way of response, it should be emphasized that the skeptical arguments would have to be such that they would survive full disclosure of all of the relevant evidence and rational deliberation by the members of the group in accordance with all of the indi­ vidual and group epistemic norms. This means that whether the addition of the skeptical doubts would in fact result in a belief set that fails to make

49 I am grateful to Nick Leonard for this objection.

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probable a given proposition depends on the evidential force of the skeptical arguments themselves. But many, if not most, people—philosophers and otherwise—continue to regard themselves as having knowledge even in the face of skepticism. So, there is no reason to think that the same wouldn’t be the case with respect to most groups. On the other hand, if skepticism is correct, then none of us—individuals or groups—have justified belief. But this would be in virtue of the fact that skepticism is correct and not in virtue of the presence of a skeptical group member. Fifth, all of the group members, not just the operative ones, are relevant to the counterfactual disclosure of evidence and rational deliberation in (2). This is because both operative and non-operative members can possess relevant counterevidence for believing that p, or can flout epistemic norms, that bear significantly on the justificatory status of a groups belief. For instance, suppose that the nursing unit comprising Nx-N is a smaller part of a larger group—the nursing home staff—that includes the custodians for the building. Even if the ten custodians at the nursing home in group normative obligations are not operative members of the group and thus do not contribute positively to justified group belief when O’Brien’s health is concerned, their having seen Nj-N3 all fail to give the patient his medications might still be relevant counterevidence to whether the group justifiedly believes that O’Brien is not at risk of dying. Moreover, their failing to communicate this information to the head of the nursing unit consisting of N -N3 might also be in violation of general epistemic norms embraced by the nursing home.50

50 It might be noticed that there is an asymmetry in the Group Epistemic Agent Account: while only operative members can contribute positively to the group’s justified belief, any member can bear negatively on the groups epistemic status. This shouldn’t be surprising, how­ ever, since this asymmetry is mirrored at the individual level. For instance, just about every externalist about epistemic justification accepts that negative reasons can defeat knowledge, even if positive reasons are not necessary for knowledge. Similarly, justification for believing is harder to come by than justification for doubting—I may, for example, doubt that a car is reli­ able on the basis of a used car salesman’s raising questions about the car’s condition, but I wouldn’t believe that another car is reliable on the basis of this same man’s testimony that it is. Still further, consider Harman’s (1973) well-known newspaper case: Jill reads in a newspaper that the President has been assassinated and, though the story is true, it has been suppressed by the government. As a result, all of the other newspapers and television stations are reporting that the President is fine and that the assassin actually killed his bodyguard. Harman argues that Jill does not know that the President was assassinated in such a case. But the point that is of interest here is that, if this conclusion is correct, then evidence that one does not possess can undermine one’s knowledge. But the same is never said about acquiring knowledge.

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Finally, it should be emphasized that condition (2) does not entail (lb). To see this, suppose that the bases of the operative members’ justified beliefs that p are incoherent from the start, but full disclosure and rational deliberation would not turn up new evidence that, when added to these bases, yields a total belief set that fails to make probable that p. In such a case, the group’s belief that p will satisfy condition (2), and, let us suppose, (la) as well, but surely the initial incoherent bases render the belief unjus­ tified. This verdict of unjustified group belief is precisely what condition (lb) ensures. Moreover, condition (lb) ensures that the basis for group justification is widely distributed among the group’s operative members. Even in cases where the operative members who justifiedly believe that p do not all share the same base for that belief, there is still a significant percentage of them who justifiedly believe thatp with bases that could in principle be shared. In that sense, they exhibit the cohesiveness that is characteristic of genuine group phenomena. With these points in mind, let’s see how (2) handles the Collective Evidence Problem. Recall that this objection is generated by non­ conflicting bases, where the group belief in question is that a man was responsible for an inside theft of a famous painting at the museum. In this case, none of the bases of the British Museum guards’ individual beliefs conflict, but each subgroup of 20 guards has counterevidence for the basis of the justified beliefs of a different subgroup. When viewed as a collective whole, then, the evidential basis of the group is zero. This is because there is not a single basis of the members’ beliefs that is free of counterevidence. But notice: if the 100 guards were to engage in full disclosure and rational delib­ eration, all of the counterevidence for the bases would emerge. For instance, each of the first 20 guards, Mx-M , would disclose that they have evidence that the thief’s goatee is fake, and thus all of the members would then realize that this undermines the basis of belief for M21-M40> Were all five subgroups to do this, it is clear that there would be no surviving evidence for believing that a man was responsible for the inside theft. Thus, full disclosure and rational deliberation among the guards in non-conflicting bases would clearly produce further evidence that, when added to the bases of the members’ relevant beliefs, yields a total belief set that fails to make probable the proposition in question. According to the Group Epistemic Agent Account, then, the group of British Museum guards does not justifiedly believe that a

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man was responsible for the inside theft—despite the fact that all 100 guards justifiedly believe this—which is precisely the desired verdict. Let us now see how (2) deals with the Group Normative Obligations Problem. Recall that in group normative obligations, each of Nt-N3 justifiedly believes that O’Brien is not at risk of dying, but also fails to fulfill her group epistemic duty of sharing with the other nurses that she forgot to give him his medication. In such a case, were the nurses to fully disclose and rationally deliberate about all of their relevant information, and were this evidence to be added to the original bases, the resulting belief set would clearly fail to make probable that O’Brien is not at risk of dying. For such a set would include both the belief that Nx-N3 all forgot to give O’Brien his medication and the belief that his missing all three of his medications would put him at serious risk of dying. Once again, then, the Group Epistemic Agent Account delivers the correct verdict: the nursing unit’s belief fails condition (2) and thus the group does not justifiedly believe that O’Brien is not at risk of dying, despite the fact that all 3 nurses justifiedly believe this as individuals.51

51 Silva (2019) argues for replacing my view with what he calls Evidentialist Responsibilism for Groups (ERG), according to which:

A group, G, justifiedly believes that P on the basis of evidence E iff: (1) E is a sufficient reason to believe P, and the total evidence possessed by enough of the operative members of G does not include further evidence, E*, such that E and E* together are not a sufficient reason to believe P, and (2) G is epistemically responsible in believing P on the basis of E.

Group Responsibilist Condition: A group, G, is epistemically responsible in believing P on the basis of E iff (a) enough of the operative members of G satisfy their G-relevant epistemic duties, and (b) G properly bases its belief on E. Space constraints prevent me from discussing Silvas very interesting view in detail, but let me just note a couple of concerns with his account. First, according to the ERG, some operative members of a group can have defeaters while the group itself remains justified on this view. This is because the total evidence possessed by “enough” of the operative members cannot include further evidence, E*, that functions as a defeater. Presumably, then, there can be “some” operative members who have such counterevi­ dence. But why would justified group belief be compatible with any operative members having evidence that is in direct conflict with the evidence that other operative members possess? Second, the ERG requires that the relevant operative members of G satisfy their G-relevant epistemic duties, But what if the G-relevant epistemic duties deviate in important ways from general epistemic duties? For instance, as we’ve noted, juries exclude hearsay evidence even when this exclusion not only fails to have a general epistemic advantage, but often has specific epistemic disadvantages, by, for instance, leading us farther away from the truth. Other groups might have similarly epistemically disadvantageous group duties. A group, for instance, might exclude the relevance of scientific testimony from non-approved sources, where the criteria for approval is explicitly bound up with financial motivations. Thus, the group satisfies its G-relevant epistemic duties, but such duties are objectively deeply epistemically problematic. Why would we say that the group is justified?

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2.10 Central Objection to the Group Epistemic Agent Account I would like to here consider and respond to a central objection that might be raised to the Group Epistemic Agent Account; namely, that it succumbs to a version of the IMEP. In particular, if group justification depends on the justification of the beliefs of the group members, then isn’t it possible for the epistemic status of group beliefs to be determined by the deliberate manipu­ lation of the group membership? For instance, suppose that a group aims to arrive at a particular justified group belief through the accepting and removal of certain members. To this end, suppose that Philip Morris hires only new employees who actually justifiedly believe that the scientific evidence regarding the ill effects of smoking is unreliable, and they fire all those who believe such evidence to be reliable. In such a case, isn’t it possible for Philip Morris to end up justifiedly believing that the scientific evidence regarding the ill effects of smoking is unreliable precisely because they illegitimately manipulated the justified beliefs of the group members?52 And isn’t this just a slightly different version of the IMEP? By way of response, the first point to notice is that, unlike the version of the IMEP afflicting the JAA, every account of group justification succumbs to this one. For instance, at the inflationary end of the spectrum, Philip Morris might hire only new employees who will jointly accept that the sci­ entific evidence regarding the ill effects of smoking is unreliable, and fire all those who will not, thereby resulting in Philip Morris justifiedly believing that smoking is not dangerous according to the JAA. At the deflationary end of the spectrum, Philip Morris might hire only new employees who actually justifiedly believe that the scientific evidence regarding the ill effects of smok­ ing is unreliable, and fire all those who believe such evidence to be reliable, thereby resulting in Philip Morris justifiedly believing that smoking is not dangerous according to deflationary summativism. What this reveals is that it is simply part of the nature of collective justification that a change in a group’s membership can change the justificatory status of the group’s beliefs. The second point I should like to make is that there is an important asymmetry between the version of the IMEP afflicting the JAA and the one purportedly facing the Group Epistemic Agent Account; namely, that the illegitimate manipulation of evidence easily results in the group’s belief

52 I am grateful to Stew Cohen, Juan Comesana, and Brian Miller for this objection.

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being justified in the former, but not in the latter. With respect to views where the very reasons available to the group are determined via joint acceptance, the group can illegitimately restrict the evidence available to them and thereby end up with justified beliefs that are intuitively unjusti­ fied. But when there is a summative constraint on group justification, this also brings with it a broadly summativist conception of defeaters. Thus, if a group aims to arrive at a particular justified group belief through the accept­ ing and removal of certain members, then at least some members of the group are aware of this. And if at least some members of the group are privy to the fact that the evidence is being manipulated in this way, then they have a defeater for accepting the proposition in question, thereby preventing the group from justifiedly holding the target belief. But what, it might be asked, if a person outside of the group aims to arrive at a particular justified group belief through the accepting and removal of certain members? If this person is not a member, then the evidence she has will not count as a defeater for the group. So, couldn’t the group end up with a justified belief through the manipulation of evidence by this out­ side person? However, the mere fact that evidence can be illegitimately manipulated, with the end result being a justified belief, is not at all surprising. This hap­ pens at both the individual and at the group level. For instance, if I deliber­ ately undergo a memory-removal procedure, then obviously the justification of my memorial beliefs will be seriously altered. More realistically, I might deliberately choose to watch only BBC news because my friend works there, my students might hide their consulted sources because they don’t want me to know that they plagiarized, or I might always consult brunettes when asking for directions out of habit. In such cases, the evidence available to me is being restricted—either by me or by others—but this does not necessarily prevent me from having justified beliefs in the relevant domains. If, say, the BBC news or brunettes are reliable source of information, then their testi­ mony may be able to provide the epistemic grounding needed for me to have knowledge. Or, if I am wholly ignorant of what sources my students relied upon, then they cannot provide evidence that either grounds or defeats my belief that the work is original. This is true with respect to groups, too. The members of a company may decide to only rely on CNN because their CEO owns stock in it, or they may never look in the drawers of co-workers because it is against the company’s ruled to do so, or they may always depend on the testimony of their own lawyers when obtaining legal counsel

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out of habit. Again, this restriction of the available evidence does not, by itself, prevent the group in question from having justified beliefs, since the sources might still be reliable or provide adequate evidence. Applying this to the case at issue, if an outside person of a group aims to arrive at a particular justified group belief through the accepting and removal of certain members, then this seems no different from an outside person deliberately restricting the evidence available to a group. And if, as we have seen above, the latter can result in a justified belief, I see no reason why the former cannot. Otherwise put, in all of the cases where the attribution of justified belief is epistemically unproblematic, the manipulation of evidence at issue is what we might call indirect— it involves restricting one’s access to evidence. This is importantly different from manipulating evidence in a direct way, which involves ignoring evidence of which one is already aware or fabricating evidence that doesn’t otherwise exist. A paradigmatic example of the former is choosing to not read a newspaper; a paradigmatic example of the latter is reading the newspaper and then deliberately choosing to ignore what one just learned. Thus, the version of the IMEP afflicting the JAA concerns the direct manipulation of evidence, while the one at issue with respect to the Group Epistemic Agent Account involves only the indirect manipulation of evidence.

2.11 Conclusion We have seen that the Group Epistemic Agent Account handles all of the problems afflicting the two dominant approaches in the literature to understanding the justification of group beliefs. While inflationary nonsummativists focus entirely on what a group does—that is, whether its members engage in joint acceptance or not—deflationary summativists focus exclusively on what a group has—that is, whether its members’ beliefs are individually justified. The Group Epistemic Agent Account, in contrast, incorporates both components. In particular, groups are understood as epistemic agents on this view, ones that have evidential and normative con­ straints that arise only at the group level, such as a sensitivity to the rela­ tions among the evidence possessed by group members and the epistemic obligations that arise via membership in the group. These constraints bear significantly on whether groups have justified belief. At the same time,

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however, group justifiedness on the Group Epistemic Agent Account is still largely a matter of member justifiedness, where the latter is understood as involving both beliefs and their bases. The result is a view that neither inflates nor deflates group epistemology, but instead recognizes that a group’s justified beliefs are constrained by, but are not ultimately reducible to, members’ justified beliefs.

Group Knowledge There are two quite influential views of group knowledge that are inflationary and non-summative in nature, and that pose challenges to the account of justified group belief developed in Chapter 2. The first is often referred to as “social knowledge,” and it is developed and defended in most detail by Alexander Bird. A paradigmatic instance of social knowing is taken to be the so-called knowledge possessed by the scientific community, where no single individual knows a given proposition, but the information plays a particular functional role in the community. The second is “collective knowledge,” which occupies an important place in United States law. According to the “collective knowledge doctrine,” knowledge may be imputed to a group by aggregating bits of information had by its individual members. If these accounts of social knowledge and collective knowledge are correct, then my view of justified group belief is false, particularly the requirement that some of the operative members of a group have the rele­ vant justified beliefs themselves. So, in this chapter, I will take a close look at these two inflationary conceptions of group knowledge. I will argue that both accounts fly in the face of fundamental features of knowledge, and thus should be rejected as accounts of group knowledge.

3.1 Social Knowledge One way that a group is said to know that p without a single of its members knowing thatp is if information is distributed across a collective entity in a “compartmentalized” way. An oft-cited instance of this is Edwin Hutchins’s example of the crew of a large ship safely navigating the way to port.1 Each crew member is responsible for tracking and recording the location of a dif­ ferent landmark, which is then entered into a system that determines the ship’s position and course. In such a case, the ship’s behavior as it safely travels into the port is clearly well-informed and deliberate, leading to the 1 See Hutchins (1995).

The Epistemology of Groups. Jennifer Lackey, Oxford University Press (2021). © Jennifer Lackey. DOI: 10.1093/OSO/9780199656608.003.0004

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conclusion that there is collective knowledge present, More precisely, it is said that the crew as a whole knows, for instance, that they are traveling north at 12 miles per hour, or that the ship itself knows this, even though no single crew member does. This is taken to show that knowledge is socially extended in an important sense.2 Recently, an even more radical conception of socially extended knowledge has been defended by Alexander Bird, according to which knowledge can be possessed, not only by structured groups with a unified goal—like the crew of a ship—but also by large and unstructured collective entities with diverse aims. He calls this phenomenon “social knowing” or “social knowledge,” paradigmatic instances of which are “North Korea knows how to build an atomic bomb,” or “The growth of scientific knowledge has been exponential since the scientific revolution.” In such cases, a collective entity is said to know that p despite the fact that not a single individual member is even aware of thatp, thereby showing that social knowledge does not super­ vene on the mental states of individuals. In the first part of this chapter, I will argue that knowledge is not socially extended in this radical sense.3 My argument is twofold: first, I show that endorsing “social knowing” or “social knowledge” leads to serious epis­ temological problems and, second, I suggest that the work done by ascrib­ ing social knowledge to collective entities can instead be done by describing such entities as being in a position to know. To begin, it is undeniable that we often attribute knowledge to large, unstructured social groups. We talk about the U.S. knowing that Osama bin Laden was killed, the scientific community knowing that climate change is having a serious impact on wildlife, and liberals knowing that Fox News is biased. These are all instances of what Bird calls organic groups. Unlike established or structured groups, which derive their cohesion from joint acceptance or external rules, organic groups are held together by organic solidarity, which “involves bonds that arise out of difference, primarily the inter-dependence brought about by the division of labour. The key feature of the division of labour is that individuals and organizations depend on others who have different skills and capacities” (Bird 2010, p. 37).

2 Indeed, some go further and argue that Hutchins’s example, “rather than that of a jury or a board of directors facing a special decision, should serve as a paradigm of collective know­ ledge” (Klausen 2015, p. 823). 3 While I will here focus on Bird’s radical view, in large part because it is developed in such fine detail, my arguments apply to weaker inflationary non-summativist views of group know­ ledge as well.

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For instance, the division of labor in science is made clear through the way in which different subfields and specialties bind scientists together. Bird offers the following to illustrate this: ...a palaeobiologist is investigating the relationship between certain extinct animals. A significant part of the relevant evidence concerns the age of the rocks in which the fossils of the animals were found, and thus depends on the work of geologists. The geologists, in dating the rocks, depend in large measure on techniques that concern the radioactivity of rock samples, and thereby depend on theories and equipment developed by physicists. (Bird 2010, p. 38)

The sort of interdependence found between scientists is a paradigm of the land of division of labor that is central to organic groups, and such groups are, according to Bird, the bearers of social knowledge. Unlike every other conception of group knowledge, however, social knowledge is said to not supervene on the mental states of individuals. Notice the force of this claim: it is not saying that a group can know that p without a single individual member of the group knowing thatp. As we saw earlier with respect to belief and justification, this is a widely accepted thesis in the collective epistemology literature, and allows for weaker require­ ments involving the members of groups, such as joint acceptance. But social knowledge permits an organic group to know that p without individual belief that p, joint acceptance that p, commitment thatp; indeed, without a single individual person—group member or not—even being aware of thatp. This conclusion is motivated by cases like the following: Dr. N. is working in mainstream science, but in a field that currently attracts only a little interest. He makes a discov­ ery, writes it up and sends his paper to the Journal ofX-ology, which pub­ lishes the paper after the normal peer-review process. A few years later, at time t, Dr. N. has died. All the referees of the paper for the journal and its editor have also died or forgotten all about the paper. The same is true of the small handful of people who read the paper when it appeared. A few years later yet, Professor O. is engaged in research that needs to draw on results in Dr. N.’s field. She carries out a search in the indexes and comes across Dr. N.’s discovery in the Journal ofX-ology. She cites Dr. N.’s work in her own widely-read research and because of its importance to the new field, Dr. N.’s paper is now read and cited by many more scientists. (Bird 2010, p. 32) accessible information:

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Let T1 be the time at which Dr. N.’s scientific discovery, d, is first published, T2 be the time at which Dr. N. and all of the readers of the paper are dead, and T3 be the time at which Professor O engages with Dr. N’s work and makes it such that it is widely read and cited. According to Bird, there is a collective subject—namely, the scientific community or “wider science”— that knows that d throughout this entire process. He writes: Was Dr. N.’s discovery part of scientific knowledge? I argue that it was so throughout the period in question. There is no doubt that it was at the end and also at the beginning. By publishing in a well-known, indexed journal, Dr. N. added to the corpus of scientific knowledge in the way that many hundreds of scientists do each month. Now consider the intermediate time t. As regards its status as a contribution to scientific knowledge, it seems irrelevant that Dr. N. and others who had read the original paper had died or forgotten about it. What is relevant is that the discovery was in the public domain, available, through the normal channels, to anyone, such as Professor O., who needed it. (Bird 2010, p. 32)

According to Bird, then, the scientific community knows that d at T2 despite the fact that not a single individual is even aware of that d at this time. This is taken to support the negative claim that social knowledge does not supervene on the mental states of individuals. It is also taken to estab­ lish the positive thesis that social knowledge is fundamentally a matter of the accessibility of the information in question to the members of the col­ lective entity who need it. But surely accessibility cannot be the full story for social knowledge, This is where Bird’s thesis about the “functional role of knowing” enters. Taking individual cognitive faculties as the model, Bird argues that only social structures with the following properties are candidates for being social knowers:

(i) They have characteristic outputs that are propositional in nature (propositionality); (ii) They have characteristic mechanisms whose function is to ensure or promote the chances that the outputs in (i) are true (truth-filtering); (iii) The outputs in (i) are the inputs for (a) social actions or for (b) social cognitive structures (including the very same structure [the structure that produces the output]) (function of outputs) (Bird 2010, pp. 42-3)

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Scientific communities clearly satisfy (i)-(iii). The characteristic output of the scientific community is the journal article, which is clearly propositional. There are mechanisms within science, such as the peer-review process, to promote the chances that the outputs in journal articles are true. And the research results published in scientific journals are the direct inputs for social action, such as the use of new drugs for diseases or the application of novel technologies in businesses. Combining these considerations, the following conception of social knowledge emerges:

SK: Social Knowledge: A social structure, S, socially knows that p if and only if (1) that p is true,4 (2) S satisfies (i)-(iii), and (3) the information that p is accessible5 to the members of S who need it.6 SK is able to capture not only the knowledge purportedly had by the scien­ tific community in cases such as accessible information, but also our ordinary attributions of knowledge to collective entities like the U.S. Despite these virtues, I will argue in what follows that social knowledge is not knowledge after all, as accepting SK leads to unacceptable epistemo­ logical consequences.

3.2 Social Knowledge and Action The first point to notice is that no matter how inflationary collective entities and their states are deemed, groups cannot float entirely freely from their individual members. Indeed, even those who argue that groups “have minds of their own”7 recognize that there is undoubtedly an intimate connection 4 Bird writes, “My view is unashamedly veritistic, and is an extension of traditional analytic epistemology and its conviction that knowledge entails truth” (Bird 2010, p. 24). 5 There are questions that may be raised about the notion of accessibility operative here, but they lie beyond the scope of this chapter. 6 Despite the fact that Bird argues throughout his (2010) that accessibility is what is key for social knowing (e.g., “What is important [for social knowing] is that the information should be accessible to those who need it” (2010, p. 48), he weakens this requirement near the end of his paper. He writes: “...the fundamental point is functional integration—the knowledge plays a social role.... [I]t is not the accessibility of the knowledge that is essential to its being social knowledge; rather it is the capacity of the knowledge to play a social role... in virtue of the structure and organization of the group; accessibility is the principal means by which that is achieved” (2010, p. 48). This is an even weaker account than what is offered in SK. Since the arguments that follow will all show that SK is too weak, I will ignore this slightly modified version. 7 See Pettit (2003).

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between groups and their individual members, as is made clear in the following passage from List and Pettit: The things a group agent does are clearly determined by the things its members do; they cannot emerge independently. In particular, no group agent can form intentional attitudes without these being determined, in one way or other, by certain contributions of its members, and no group agent can act without one or more of its members acting. (List and Pettit 2011, p. 64).

Such a connection between groups and their members is particularly vivid when it comes to action. A group cannot offer assertions, engage in negoti­ ations, sign contracts, break the law, or perform any of the other sorts of actions typically attributed to groups without there being action on the part of some of its members. Of course, this does not mean that for every group, G, and act, a, G performs a only if at least one member of G performs a. It may be that one member performs action b> and another performs action c, and still another performs action d, which, when taken together, involves G performing a. For instance, one nursing home worker might forget to turn a patient over in order to prevent bedsores, another might forget to wash this same patient’s bedsores, and a third might forget to give the patient her anti­ biotics. Each of these actions might be necessary, though not sufficient, for the patient’s death, and thus the collective entity might be convicted of neg­ ligent homicide, even though not a single one of the workers is herself guilty of this action. Nevertheless, even though the group committed an act of negligent homicide without any individual committing this very same act, the group could not have performed the act without the members perform­ ing relevant acts, such as failing to turn the patient over and wash her. This supports the following weaker relationship between groups and their mem­ bers when actions are concerned:

GMAP: Group/Member Action Principle: For every group, G, and act, a, G performs a only if at least one member of G performs some act or other that causally contributes to cz.8 8 I should make explicit that I will discuss various forms of “proxy agency” in the next two chapters where an agent has authority to perform an action on behalf of a group. Such an agent may or may not be a member of the group itself, but I do not regard these cases as violating GMAP. In all cases of proxy agency, there is some action made by a member of the group that causally contributes to the group's action, whether this is the granting of authority to the proxy agent, the acceptance of inherited authority, the absence of objections (which is an omission that causally contributes to the group’s action), and so on.

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What the GMAP makes clear is that while group action cannot occur independently of its members, it can go beyond what any of them do individually The second point to note is the intimate connection that exists between knowledge and action. A widely accepted view of this connection is that a necessary condition on knowing that p is that it is epistemically appropriate to use the proposition that p in practical rationality. For instance, Jeremy Fantl and Matthew McGrath argue that “S [knows] that p only if S is rational to act as ifp” (Fantl and McGrath 2002, p. 78).9 According to Fantl and McGrath, then, rationally acting as if p is a necessary condition on knowing that p. Some argue for an even stronger relationship between knowledge and practical rationality. John Hawthorne and Jason Stanley write, “Where one’s choice is p-dependent, it is appropriate to treat the proposition that p as a reason for acting iff you know that p” (Hawthorne and Stanley 2008, p. 578).10 Similarly, Timothy Williamson maintains that the “epistemic standard of appropriateness” for practical reasoning can be stated as follows: “One knows q iff q is an appropriate premise for one’s practical reasoning” (Williamson 2005, p. 231).11 Since the sufficiency of S’s knowing that p for S to rationally act as if p is logically equivalent to the necessity of S’s rationally acting as if p for S’s knowing that p, both Hawthorne and Stanley and Williamson are in agreement with Fantl and McGrath, but they also think that knowing thatp is necessary for it being epistemically appro­ priate to use the proposition that p in practical reasoning. A similar view is found in Stanley (2005), where he writes: “To say that an action is only based on a belief is to criticize that action for not living up to an expected norm; to say that an action is based on knowledge is to declare that the action has met the expected norm” (Stanley 2005, p. 10). Here, Stanley sug­ gests that knowledge is sufficient not only for being properly epistemically positioned to rely on p in practical reasoning, but also for being so posi­ tioned to act on p. While the subtle differences between these accounts are

9 The explicit formulation of this quotation refers to justified belief, rather than to know­ ledge. But immediately following this passage, Fantl and McGrath write, “. . .it might seem that we are imposing an unduly severe restriction on justification and therefore on knowledge” (Fantl and McGrath 2002, p. 79). It is clear, then, that Fantl and McGrath intend for this condi­ tion to apply to both justification and knowledge. See also Fantl and McGrath (2009). 10 Hawthorne and Stanley restrict their conditions to “p-dependent choices” since p may simply be irrelevant to a given action. 11 A contextualist version of this principle is: “A first-person present-tense ascription of ‘know’ with respect to a proposition is true in a context iff that proposition is an appropriate premise for practical reasoning in that context” (Williamson 2005, p. 227).

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interesting, I will focus here on their similarities. In particular, they all endorse at least the following: KAP: Knowledge/Action Principle: S knows thatp only if S is epistemically rational to act as if p or, equivalently, S is epistemically rational to act as if p if S knows thatp.12

Now, it should be noted that the KAP holds that knowledge is sufficient for rendering action epistemically appropriate, but there may be other senses of propriety in which knowledge fails to be so sufficient. For instance, I may clearly know that my drunk colleague is making a fool of himself at a departmental party, but it may nonetheless be inappropriate for me to act as if this is the case by confronting him about his behavior. It may be impru­ dent because it would strain our friendship; or it may be impolite because it would be utterly embarrassing to him; or it may simply be pointless because he won’t remember my actions the next day anyway. Thus, my confronting my friend may be inappropriate in all of these ways, while nonetheless being epistemically proper and thus in keeping with the KAP. The KAP is defended on a number of different grounds that apply at both the individual and the group level. First, it has intuitive appeal. If I decide to leave for the airport an hour later than was expected, my knowing that the relevant flight was delayed seems sufficient to render such a conclusion epistemically permissible. If my choice is questioned, appealing to my knowledge adequately meets the challenge, while offering anything less— such as my suspecting that the flight is delayed, or being justified in believ­ ing that it is—does not. Similarly, if BP uses dispersants to clean up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the company knowing them to be both effective and safe seems adequate to render the action epistemically permissible. If BP’s action is challenged, appealing to knowledge sufficiently meets the challenge, while offering anything less—such as suspecting that the dispers­ ants are effective and safe—does not. Moreover, the KAP has significant theoretical power. For instance, it is often noted that while it is epistemically inappropriate to rely on the propos­ ition that one’s lottery ticket will lose in one’s practical reasoning and rele­ vant actions if one has merely probabilistic evidence for this conclusion, it is epistemically permissible to so rely on this proposition once one has learned 12 I should note that I argue in Lackey (2007) against a principle similar to KAP, but the weaker condition I defend would support my arguments here against SK just as well.

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the results of the lottery.13 The KAP, combined with the thesis that one possesses knowledge that ones lottery ticket will lose in the latter, but not the former, case can easily explain this data. Similarly, it is frequently observed that when low standards are in play within a contextualist frame­ work, such as in DeRose’s case of self-attributing knowledge that the bank is open when it is not especially important that he deposit his paycheck, it seems epistemically appropriate to rely on the proposition in question in practical reasoning and action.14 In contrast, when high standards are in play, such as when DeRose has just written a very large and important check for which he needs to ensure that adequate funds will be available in his bank account, it seems inappropriate to so rely on this proposition.15 Once again, the KAP, combined with the view that one can self-attribute knowledge in the former, but not the latter, case can account for this data with ease. Finally, the KAP is said to explain what makes knowledge distinctively important or valuable. According to Fantl and McGrath, “If you know that p, then p is warranted enough to justify you in