New Book on the Epistemology of Collectives

The Epistemic Life of Groups
Essays in the Epistemology of Collectives

Ed. Michael S. Brady & Miranda Fricker

(Oxford University Press, 2016)

272 pages




Description

Social epistemology has been flourishing in recent years, expanding and making connections with political philosophy, virtue epistemology, philosophy of science, and feminist philosophy. The philosophy of the social world too is flourishing, with burgeoning work in the metaphysics of the social world, collective responsibility, group action, and group belief. The new philosophical vista now more clearly presenting itself is collective epistemology - the epistemology of groups and institutions.
Groups engage in epistemic activity all the time - whether it be the active collective inquiry of scientific research groups or crime detection units, or the evidential deliberations of tribunals and juries, or the informational efforts of the voting population in general - and yet in philosophy there is still relatively little epistemology of groups to help explore these epistemic practices and their various dimensions of social and philosophical significance. The aim of this book is to address this lack, by presenting original essays in the field of collective epistemology

Contents

Introduction [Preview] - Michael S. Brady & Miranda Fricker

Epistemology
1. Mutuality and Assertion [Abstract] - Sanford Goldberg
2. Fault and No-fault Responsibility for Implicit Prejudice [doc] - Miranda Fricker
3. On Knowing What We're Doing Together [Abstract] - Hans Bernhard Schmid

Ethics
4. The Social Epistemology of Morality [pdf] - Elizabeth Anderson
5. Group Emotion and Group Understanding [Abstract] - Michael Brady
6. Changing our Mind [Abstract] - Glen Pettigrove

Political Philosophy
7. The Epistemic Circumstances of Democracy [pdf] - Fabienne Peter
8. The Transfer of Duties [pdf] - Stephanie Collins & Holly Lawford-Smith
9. Four Types of Moral Wriggle Room [Abstract]- Kai Spiekermann 

Philosophy of Science
10. Collective Belief and the String Theory Community [Draft] - Margaret Gilbert & Jim Weatherall
11. Collaborative Research, Scientific Communities, and the Social Diffusion of Trustworthiness - Torsten Wilholt