Do we need collective epistemic reason: comments on Mitova’s “The collective epistemic reasons of social-identity groups”

Abstract

This paper reviews Veli Mitova’s recent article, “The collective epistemic reasons of social-identity groups,” which proposes and defends a collectivist account of epistemic reasons for social-identity groups. The paper first discusses what makes a collectivist account appealing in the context of moral obligations, a context from which Mitova apparently draws inspiration for her collectivist account of epistemic reasons. The paper then considers two issues that may make a collectivist account of epistemic reasons lose much of the theoretical advantage that a collectivist account of moral obligations has over its individualist competitor: (1) epistemic reasons need to be internally possessed and (2) the individual inability that motivates a collectivist account of moral obligations is of a special kind.