All Embracing But Underwhelming…

Frederick F. Schmitt, ‘The Justification of Group Beliefs’ in ‘Socializing Epistemology: The Social Dimensions of Knowledge,’ editor: Frederick F. Schmitt, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, Maryland, 1994

p. 257 - ‘…epistemically justified belief (the kind of justified belief necessary for knowledge)…’ - my kind of belief.

Justified group beliefs exist; we routinely ascribe beliefs to groups such as ‘The Engineering Section of the Ford Motor Corporation,’ et al.

p. 260 - ‘We have, so far, a working account of groups: 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. This account of groups has the advantage of offering a way between ontological individualism and ontological holism. It suggests interpretations of these views on which they are consistent with one another and correct. The account of groups has the advantage of meeting the human intentional states requirement on an account of groups. The account also suggests an account of group action: a group acts only if its members jointly act together. These remarks, brief as they are, will perhaps suffice to explain what we have in mind in the remainder of the chapter when we talk of groups and group actions.’

p. 261 - Doesn’t believe group beliefs should be characterised as summative (i.e. they don’t merely reduce down to individual beliefs). Otherwise groups would have all sorts of beliefs we don’t think they would have; the beliefs of the Financial Planners group would include believing that the sky is blue, something the members believe, but this doesn’t seem like it should be taken to be a belief of the group they belong to.

p. 262 - Takes an action-focussed view of group beliefs; a group can be said to believe that p when they jointly act in a way that shows they would act in such a away that assumes p to be true.

p. 263-4 - Three reasons why we need Group Beliefs:
1. (p. 263) ‘…when a group action relies on coordinated beliefs, members of the group commit themselves to acting on the beliefs of other members even in the absence of the reasons possessed by those other members.’
2. (p. 264) ‘The existence of a group entails joint intention, and groups nearly always engage in joint action. Common beliefs and coordinated beliefs facilitate joint intention and action. Common beliefs serve as a basis for members’ expectations about each others’ actions and joint actions.’
3. ‘It is valuable for group action because it generates a basis for expectations of joint action.’

p. 265 - Critique of summative justification.

Appeal to joint justification (i.e. expressive of an intention to act on the status of a belief)

p. 266 - ‘…note that the account of a group’s having a reason to believe p requires that the members would properly express openly a willingness to accept r jointly as a reason to believe p, and not merely that they actually do express openly such a willingness.’

‘…note that proper joint acceptance of a reason is not the same as the reason’s being good.’

‘An individual may be justified in virtue of possessing a reason r for believing p even if that individual does not accept r as a reason to believe p. A group must, however, accept r as reason to believe p. More importantly, an individual possesses a reason only if she or he holds the belief (or has the sensory state) that constitutes the reason. A group may possess a reason r, however, even if it does not believe r, so long as members would properly accept r jointly.’

p. 267 - Compartmentalisation: different groups, made up of the same members, can have different beliefs. [This explains the action-focus; groups intend certain things and thus have beliefs in re those intended actions...]

p. 269 - Ordinary vs. Special Standards of Justification. We intuit that doctors have a special standard of justification when it comes to acquring medical beliefs. We can read a magazine to acquire that p but a doctor needs to do more if that belief is medical.

p. 270 - Can justify the above with notion of obligations.

Can also talk about permissive vs. strict strategies in re occupational standards. [This is probably important, to some extent, in re professionals commenting outside their speciality...]

p. 272 - Do groups have a special standard of justification?

Yes (p. 273), for chartered groups: ‘A chartered group is one founded to perform a particular action or actions of a certain kind.’

Not all groups are chartered.

p. 275 - For chartered groups it is possible that group justification diverges from that of some of its members.

p. 276 - ‘I have argued for a joint account of group justification. On a joint account, group justification is social in an important and nontrivial way: it is a matter of the group’s possession of good reason for belief.’

p. 280 - Argues against group reductionism. Also argues against group coherentism.

p. 281 - Argues against reflective equilibirum in re groups because each group member might be reflective but the group may generate a different belief.

p. 282 - Group reliabilism is fine; it does not turn on background beliefs in the way these other theories do.

p. 286 - ‘…coordinated belief often has a point only as a basis for a distribution of information over members of a group.’

Group belief is primary over coordinated belief.

‘…group belief does not require individual belief in the way that group action requires the singular actions of members.’