Abstract
Within analytic philosophy, the existence of collective knowledge has been motivated by means of two apparently distinct, and in direct competition with one another, theoretical approaches: (i) the commitment model and (ii) the distributed model. This paper agues, however, that to fully account for collaborative knowledge—i.e., a special kind of collective knowledge—both models are required. In other words, there is at least one kind of collective knowledge, the account of which requires treating the two models not as competitors but as complementary to each other. If that’s correct, not only can we gain a deeper understanding of the specifics surrounding collaborative knowledge but also a clearer picture of the broader debate surrounding collective knowledge.
Highlights
Epistemic collaborations such as Scientific Research Teams, Intelligence Agencies, Transactive Memory Systems (Wegner, 1986; Wegner et al, 1985) and even Social Machines like Wikipedia (Palermos, 2017) are already powerful, social engines of knowledge production
Within analytic philosophy, the existence of collective knowledge has been motivated by means of two apparently distinct, and in direct competition with one another, theoretical approaches: (i) the commitment model and (ii) the distributed model
Synthese (2022) 200:54 importance, collaborative knowledge is remarkable from a theoretical perspective: In several authors’ minds, this special kind of knowledge is a paradigmatic case of a wider, and somewhat controversial, phenomenon usually referred to as collective knowledge—i.e., knowledge that is irreducibly social
Summary
Epistemic collaborations such as Scientific Research Teams (de Ridder, 2014; Giere, 2002a, 2002b, 2006, 2007; Palermos, 2020), Intelligence Agencies, Transactive Memory Systems (Wegner, 1986; Wegner et al, 1985) and even Social Machines like Wikipedia (Palermos, 2017) are already powerful, social engines of knowledge production. Little doubt should there be, that, as time goes by, such collaboratively produced knowledge is bound to become increasingly important—especially if we factor in the rise of Web 2.0 and similar technologies. The article belongs to the topical collection on New Directions in Social Epistemology, edited by Adam Carter and Christoph Kelp
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