Groups, Attitudes and Speech

Abstract

Traditionally, since at least Descartes, the theory of knowledge has focussed on the individual subject, asking what he can know, using his own cognitive powers and resources.1 But in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, philosophers began to recognize that knowledge and belief ultimately subserve action (both causing and rationalizing it – cf. Davidson 1963). Accordingly, there was a shift in focus towards the individual agent, rather than Descartes’s pure subject – in short, towards pragmatism (about the attitudes).2 More recently, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, there has been a similarly profound shift in focus in the philosophical reflection in this area – this time towards a specifically social epistemology (Goldman 1999). There are (at least) two aspects to this social turn (cf. Zollman 2013): first, there is an increasing recognition that much of what a given individual knows and believes depends heavily on what others tell her; and second, there is growing interest in exploring the knowledge and beliefs of groups of individuals, and not just those of the individuals themselves.