Belief, Acceptance, and What Happens in Groups

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter, co-authored with Daniel Pilchman, addresses the question: how should an account of collective belief or other collective cognitive state be assessed? In particular, to what extent should such accounts be assessed by reference to accounts and distinctions developed with a focus on the beliefs and other cognitive states of individual human beings? With special reference to collective belief, the chapter argues that one’s development of an account of collective cognitive states should be relatively unconstrained by such accounts and distinctions. It argues, more positively, for the development of a field of general epistemology which subsumes both collective epistemology and individual epistemology. In developing this argument it focuses on a debate as to whether collective belief according to Margaret Gilbert’s joint commitment account is really an account not of belief, but rather of a distinct cognitive state, namely, acceptance.