Group Knowledge and Collective Mental States: Some Implications of

Williamson’s View on Knowing

Timothy E. Kunke

Introduction

Two very popular topics in contemporary epistemology are ‘group knowledge’

and what has come to be known as the ‘knowledge-first’ approach. Despite the rapid

growth in discussions both published and unpublished around these two topics, very

little, if anything, has been discussed about the intersection of the two. This paper, like

others, is concerned with group knowledge, though my intentions here are quite

specific. My inquiry is fairly straightforward – what is it for a group to have

knowledge? But, I pose this question against the backdrop of Williamson’s view on

knowing, the view that knowing is a kind of mental state. There are plenty of views on

what it is for a group to have knowledge. 1 However, the question Williamson’s view

raises is whether or not groups as proper epistemic subjects, are also proper subjects of

mental state attributions. If Williamson’s view is correct, and knowing is a kind of

mental state, then how exactly should we understand group knowledge? What should

the advocate for a knowledge-first epistemology – specifically, one who holds that

knowledge is a mental state – say about group knowledge? Williamson briefly discusses

group knowledge in “Knowledge and its Limits.” In his discussion on evidence, he

states, “the communal case is needed: science depends on public evidence, which is

neither the union nor the intersection of the evidence of each scientist. We can ascribe

such knowledge by saying that p is known in community S, or that we know p, which is

not equivalent to saying that some, many, most, or all of us know p” (Williamson, 2000:

185). While I agree with the general idea Williamson is driving at, there are some

concerns. In addressing these concerns I will focus on three specific claims Williamson

makes for knowledge. They are: 1) knowing is a mental state, 2) knowing is a prime

condition and 3) knowing is the most general factive stative attitude.

1 Many authors have contributed to this debate. See Tuomela (2011, 2004) for a very thorough treatment of the topic. Also see Palermos and Prichard (2013); Goldman (2004); Tolefsen (2002); Searle (1995) and Gilbert (1989) for various discussions on the different projects in social epistemology centered on the idea of groups as proper intentional and epistemic agents. See Rupert for arguments against the notion of group cognitive states and Giere (2013) for arguments against the notion of intentional group agents.

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Given the need for the communal case, as Williamson acknowledges, we might

ask the following questions. If knowing is a unique mental state for an individual, then

what is for a group? If knowing is a prime condition, do such conditions apply to cases

where the subject is a group and not an individual subject? If having a factive (stative)

attitude is sufficient for an individual subject’s knowing that p, are such attitudes

applicable to groups? Do groups even have factive attitudes? It should be noted that for

most, regarding groups as proper epistemic subjects is not necessarily the same thing as

regarding them as proper subjects of mental or intentional states. It is one thing to

regard groups as epistemic subjects such that they are subject to some kind of epistemic

evaluation. It is another thing to claim that there are collective mental states.

Williamson’s view carries with it the complication that one cannot necessarily divorce

the notion of a mental state from an epistemic condition, since the latter is in many cases

understood in terms of the former.

By group knowledge attributions I mean simply knowledge that is attributed to a

group or set of individuals, which is not necessarily reducible to the knowledge any of

the individual members may have. Such attributions might take as their grammatical

subject plural pronouns like ‘they’ or ‘we’ or they may take proper names like ‘Ford’ or

‘America’. For the purposes of this paper I take any claim of the form ‘G knows that p’,

where G is a schematic variable that represents a group of individuals, to be potentially

a group knowledge attribution in the collective sense. So, the claim ‘They know that p’

where p is a true proposition is an example of such an attribution and so is the claim

‘The American People know that p.’ Assuming that Williamson is correct that knowing

is a kind of state of mind, it looks like, at least prima facie, what it is for a group to have

knowledge is for it to be in some kind of mental state. But this is anything but a

straightforward claim. It is one thing to say that an individual is in a particular state of

mind. It is another thing entirely to say that a group is in state of mind. However, if we

take group knowledge attributions at face value as at least putatively attributing

knowledge to some subject or other, we must ask whether we are, in these cases,

attributing some kind of psychological state to a group and not necessarily to any of the

individuals of that group.

The essay begins with a brief discussion of Williamson’s theses, or what I’ll refer

to as the ‘knowledge as a mental state’ (KMS) view. Williamson has defended these

claims in several places and this paper is not meant to be an exegesis of his

epistemology. So, I will not spend much time elaborating on them. I will try to explicate

some of the major points about each thesis, but will leave it to the reader to see the

references for further detailed discussions on the points made. After this discussion I

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will move on to develop the main argument of the paper and consider possible

objections to it. The force of the argument can be seen as that of a dilemma for the KMS

theorist. Either statements of the form ‘G knows that p’ are genuine knowledge

attributions or not. That is, we are either attributing knowledge to some subject

(collectively or individually) with such statements, or we are not. If we are attributing

knowledge with such statements, and Williamson’s theses are correct, then as I will

argue, there are group (collective) mental states. If statements of this form do not

genuinely attribute knowledge, then it seems we are forced to explain why such

statements should not (at least putatively) be considered genuine knowledge

attributions. As many authors have noticed we do in fact regularly and systematically

make such statements, and to not countenance them amongst genuine knowledge

attributing statements would seem to require nothing short of an error theory, which

definitely requires an argument. 2 Of course, one could just deny KMS, but the purpose

of this paper is to ask the question about group knowledge on the assumption that

something like Williamson’s view is correct.3

I need to issue a note of caution here. The goal of this paper is not to give an

account of the semantics of knowledge ascriptions as they pertain to group subjects, but

to ask what it is for a group to know on the assumption that the KMS view is correct. If

we think of statements like, “My friends know that I’m on my way” or “The police

know that Smith is the culprit”, such group knowledge ascriptions share the same

grammatical form as sentences like ‘She knows that the café is open’, and as such can, at

least initially, be taken to attribute knowledge to some subject. Given that there is room

for one to offer a specific account of such ascriptions such that they are not meant to

literally attribute knowledge to groups, it must be made clear that for the purposes of

this paper, it is assumed that such ascriptions, at least sometimes, do serve just this

purpose.4 The question that interests me here is: What exactly is it for groups to have

knowledge and are there general conditions on knowledge that apply to both the

individual subject and the group subject? Specifically, what do the conditions on

2 See Goldman (2004), Lackey (2012) and Tollefsen (2002) for arguments as to the ubiquity of group knowledge statements and their inclusion into the domain of acceptable knowledge attributing statements. 3 Clearly, there is the possibility of denying outright that group knowledge attribution statements, such as “The American Government knows that Iraq has WMD’ are actually knowledge attributing statements. However, there is a difference between denying that any particular statement actually attributes knowledge as opposed to something short of knowledge, and denying that knowledge is ever actually attributable to groups. The former is simply an empirical question and irrelevant to the issue at hand, while the latter would seem to require a substantial argument, since there is just as much intuitive plausibility for acknowledging these kinds of statements as genuine knowledge attributions (at least putatively) as there is for statements made about individual knowers. 4 Cf. Phelan, Arico & Nichols (2013) who argue for a non-literal interpretation of group knowledge ascriptions.

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knowledge that the KMS view imposes tell us about the nature of group knowers?

Thus, my aim here is not to give an account of the meaning of group knowledge

attributing statements, but to discuss what it would be for a group to have knowledge.

I’d also like to make clear at the outset that I am not giving an argument for the

existence of group or “collective” mental states, but only showing that a certain view on

the nature of knowing seems to already commit us to their existence if groups are

proper epistemic subjects. The novelty of the argument presented here should be seen

as revealing an implication between a particular view in epistemology and a

controversial view about group mentality. To my knowledge there is no view in

contemporary epistemology other than Williamson’s that has such immediate

implications.

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Williamson’s position is that a subject S knows that p whenever S has some

factive (stative) attitude to p. Having such an attitude, like seeing-that or remembering-

that is a mental state for S and being in such a state is always a prime condition. So,

according to Williamson, an individual’s knowing that p is just that individual’s having

some attitude to p, and having any factive attitude, whether it is seeing or remembering

entails knowing. Knowing, it turns out, is just the most general factive stative attitude

that a subject can have toward some propositional content. It is the attitude, “…one has

to a proposition if one has any factive stative attitude to it at all” (2000: 34). And having

such an attitude just is a mental state for a subject. The idea is, as Williamson put it, “If

attitudes are relations of subjects to propositions, then the claim is that knowing is itself

a mental relation such that, for every proposition p, having that relation to p is a mental

state” (2000: 21).

Knowing is also regarded as a prime condition in every case in which a subject

knows. And here the term ‘condition’ is being used strictly as a logical term. Conditions

are defined in terms of cases, where cases are something like centered worlds, in which

a subject is indexed to a specific time in a possible world. Conditions are course-grained

and closed under logical conjunction, and they are indicated in each case by the

presence of a that-clause. Roughly speaking, conditions are just whatever is true of any

given case. So, in a case where a subject S sees a tree in the yard, ‘that S sees a tree’ is a

condition of that case, and so is ‘that there is a tree in the yard’. On Williamson’s view,

some conditions are composite and some are prime. He distinguishes the two thus: “A

condition C is composite if and only if it is the conjunction of some narrow condition D

with some environmental condition E. C is prime if an only it if is not composite” (2000:

66). And here, narrow refers to any condition that is determined exclusively by the

internal state of the subject, and environmental refers to any condition that is

exclusively determined by one’s environment.5 So, the claim that knowing is a prime

condition is just the claim that in any given case the condition ‘that S knows that p’ is

not a composite of an internal (narrow) condition of the subject (i.e. whatever is going

on inside the head) and an external condition of the environment (i.e. whatever is going

on in the environment). The basic idea is that knowledge doesn’t factor into mental

5 It is also important to note here that these prime mental conditions are also referred to as broad conditions, where ‘broad’ is contrasted with ‘narrow’ in the familiar sense as found in discussions about content externalism. A narrow (mental) condition can be understood as any condition, which supervenes on the total physical state of the subject, and broad conditions necessarily involve a subject’s environment as well as the internal state of the subject. The Twin-Earth scenarios are classic examples of mental states involving broad conditions. That S believes that water is wet depends just as much upon S’s environment as it does on S’s total internal physical state. The condition that ‘S believes that water is wet’ is therefore a broad condition.

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(internal) components and non-mental (environmental) components.6 It is a prime

condition for each case in which a subject knows.

It is important to note that composite conditions are such that components from

one case can be recombined with components from another case to yield new cases in

which the same composite conditions obtain. Williamson refers to this as the principle

of free recombination. Composite conditions are such that for every pair of cases α and

β where a composite condition C obtains, there exists a third case γ in which

components of C from both α and β can be recombined to yield C in γ. The idea here is

that if knowledge is a composition of internal (mental) and external (non-mental)

components, then given free recombination we should be able to construct triples of

cases by recombining the components from each such that a subject S knows in each of

them. If we cannot, then knowledge is not a composition of such components—it must

be prime.7

So, the KMS view says that what it is for a subject S to know that p is for S to

have some factive attitude to p, and that having such an attitude is a mental state for S,

which is a prime condition in every case. The three core theses here are: 1) knowing is a

mental state, 2) knowing is a factive attitude and 3) knowing is a prime condition. With

this brief sketch of the KMS view in mind, let us now turn to the main topic. Let us

assume that KMS is correct and under that assumption consider what it is exactly for a

group to have propositional knowledge.

Suppose we are interested in the epistemology of groups and want to use a

schematic variable, say, G to represent a set of individuals. What are the truth

conditions for statements of the form ‘G knows that p’? Obviously, a statement of this

form is true if an only if G knows that p. But what exactly is it for G to know that p?

Statements of the form ‘S knows that p’ are true if and only if S knows that p, and if we

adopt KMS what it is for S to know that p is for S to be in a factive mental state. Does

the same apply in the collective case? Are we actually attributing a factive mental state

to G in these cases?

As I pointed out at the beginning of this paper there is quite a lot of work being

done on the epistemology of groups, but this particular quandary seems to lead us into

strange territory. That is to say, the question of whether there are group (collective)

mental states is typically not thought to turn on any particular epistemological view

6 See Williamson (2000, Chapter 3) for a detailed discussion on the primeness of knowing. See Brueckner (2002) for a criticism of Williamson’s main arguments for primeness. 7 Obviously, what could also be problematic here is the notion of free recombination.

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about knowledge. Many theorists argue in such a way as to clearly distinguish between

ontological questions about group entities and epistemological questions about groups

as believers or knowers.8 However, as the argument below will show, the KMS theorist

simply cannot avoid blurring the line between these sets of questions. Thus, if we

assume KMS and we want to extend our epistemology to include groups as proper

epistemic subjects, then we will be forced into acknowledging a rather contentious

position in the philosophy of mind, namely, that groups can be thought of as having

collective mental states. If knowledge attributions to individual subjects are ultimately

attributions of some kind of factive mental state, then courtesy of KMS, the same can be

said of groups of individuals.

Though there are several stances one can take on the topic of group mental

states, for the purposes of this paper we can broadly classify them into two categories:

summativist views and collectivist views. Summativism is the view that any mental

state attributable to a group is always reducible to the mental state(s) of one or more

members of that group, whereas collectivism says that any mental state attributable to

groups does not necessarily reduce to the mental state(s) to any of the members of that

group.9 With respect to group knowledge attributions, roughly speaking, the same

distinction applies. That is, either knowledge is attributable to the group as a whole,

over and above the individual members of that group, or it is not. Any view that holds

that knowledge is attributable to the group, which is not reducible to the knowledge

had by any one of the members of that group we can classify as a collectivist view about

knowledge attributions. Again, the opposite view would be classified as a summativist

view. We can be more precise about the distinction by defining summativism in the

following way.

Summativism: A group G knows that p only if either some of its members know that p

or all of its members know that p.

If we let C be the statement ‘they know that p’, and let G be the set {S1, S2, S3…Sn} of

individual subjects to which the pronoun ‘they’ in C refers, Summativism then says, C

is true only if either of the analyses below is true:

(A1) KGP → [KS1P or KS2P or…KSnP] (some know)

8 Gilbert (2002) holds the view that we can attribute belief to groups considered as a whole without committing to the idea that the group is an entity over and above its individual members. 9 Quinton (1976) is often credited with initiating the current dialogue on summativism versus collectivism. See also Tuomela (2004, 2011); Wray (2001, 2007) and Gilbert (2002) for more recent work on how to divide up the possible views.

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(A2) KGP → [KS1P & KS2P &…KSnP] (all know)

We can combine both A1 and A2 into a larger disjunction A*

(A*) KGP → ([KS1P or KS2P or…KSnP] or [KS1P & KS2P &…KSnP])

So, summativism about group knowledge attributions is expressed fully by

(A*).10 It states that ‘G knows that p’ is true only if either ‘some of the members of G

know that p’ is true or ‘All of the members of G know that p’ is true. The principle at

work is a principle of reduction, which is the essence of the summativist view—there

are no truly group-level attributions going on here, or at least if there are they can

always be reduced.11

Paralleling this distinction of group-level and individual-level knowledge

attributions again is the same distinction between mental state attributions for groups

and individuals. The kinds of mental state attributions I have in mind here are

exemplified by sentences like, ‘The police think that Smith is the culprit’ or ‘We believe

our cause to be just’ or ‘My family knows that I’m traveling’. These are everyday types

of statements that at least at the surface, grammatically, seem to attribute some kind of

mental state to a group or set of individuals. We can define more specifically what is

meant by the collectivist view about mental states by stipulating a definition for the

expression ‘collective mental state’. Let us understand a collective mental state (CMS) as

the following.

CMS: A mental state that is attributable to a group (or set) of individuals, which is not

reducible to the mental state(s) of any member(s) of that group or set.

We can now summarize the first step of the argument very simply. The claim is

that KMS is incompatible with summativism about group knowledge attributions. If we

assume that summativism and collectivism exhaust the possible views available to the

KMS theorist, then since summativism and collectivism are contradictory views, either

some form of summativism is true, or some form of collectivism is true. Thus, if KMS is

true, then collectivism about knowledge attributions must be true.12 The next step will

10 Obviously, if all know, then some know. So, (A2) entails (A1). All that is really needed here is (A1), but it is possible to hold the view that ‘KGP’ is true only if ‘All members of G know that p’ is true. So, for purposes of the argument I will refer to (A*) as the correct summativist analysis of ‘KGP’. 11 It is possible to maintain a non-eliminitivist reductive position here, where the group’s knowing supervenes on some set of the members’ knowing. But even in this case, the group-level attribution is still reducible. 12 Some have challenged that the issue really cuts this cleanly. Jennifer Lackey has recently argued that there is a still finer distinction to be made between those accounts that are reductive and summativist and those that are reductive yet non-summativist. I think this position is tenuous at best. For, even in Lackey’s view (which she calls

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be to show that if we assume KMS it follows that there must be some factive attitude

that is attributable to a group of individuals in cases of group knowledge attributions,

and since what it is for a subject to have a factive attitude is to be in a mental state, it

also follows that these cases are cases of collective mental states. To see that KMS is

incompatible with summativism about group knowledge attributions, consider the

following argument.

Let C be the statement ‘they know that p’. Let, G be the set {S1, S2, S3…Sn} of individual

subjects to which the pronoun ‘they’ in C refers. Assume KMS, then

1. Knowing is a prime condition

2. Any knowledge attributing statement must refer to a prime condition.

3. If C is a genuine knowledge attributing statement, then it refers to a prime

condition.

But, (A*) does not refer to a prime condition, since (A1) and (A2) are composite.13 So,

(A*) is not a necessary condition for C. And, if (A*) is not a necessary condition for C,

then (A*) cannot be the correct analysis of C. Thus, the summativist analysis of C is

incompatible with KMS.

Now, if C is a genuine knowledge attributing statement, then since KMS is

incompatible with the summativist analysis (A*), KMS rules out the summativist view.

Thus, the collectivist view must be true, which means that ‘KGP’ attributes knowledge

to the group and not to any subset of the individuals of the group. However, at this

point it does not yet follow that if ‘KGP’ attributes knowledge to the group there must

be a mental state attributable to G. All we have thus far is that summativism about

knowledge attributions is false given KMS, and that group knowledge attributions

attribute knowledge to the group as a whole. This is consistent with Williamson’s claim

deflationary) reduction plays the key role, since the epistemic weight is still carried at the individual level. See Lackey (2012). 13 Proof: Let’s say that we want to show that group G knows that p, where p is the proposition ‘Fireworks are going off’. And let’s say for sake of simplicity that the group is composed of two members, S1 and S2. Where p is the proposition ‘fireworks are going off’, let KGP stand for ‘G knows that fireworks are going off’ and let’s say there are two ways in which each member can know that fireworks are going off. They can either hear that p or see that p. Suppose in case α that both S1 and S2 see that p, but neither hears that p. And in case β both hear that p but do not see that p. Then, there is a third case γ where S1 sees that p but doesn’t hear that p and S2 hears that p but doesn’t see that p. However, in each case the conjunction (KS1P & KS2P) is true. Therefore, KGP is true in all three cases. Thus, KGP is a composite condition. This proof shows only that A2 (the conjunctive condition) is composite, but the same argument can be given for the disjunctive condition as well. In fact, it is even more intuitive for the disjunctive condition since only one of the disjuncts need be true in each case for the disjunction to be true.

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about the communal case. However, this is where the peculiarity of KMS comes into

play.

On the KMS view, epistemic conditions, like knowing, are understood in terms

of psychological attitudes. Remember, on this view, knowing is a mental state. The

formulation of KMS given above states that knowing is a factive attitude for a subject.

Thus, if knowing is a factive attitude, then ‘KGP’ entails the existence of some factive

attitude ϕ. So, ϕ is being attributed to some subject in C, which means that only one of

the following can be true.

4. ‘KGP’ implies that ‘G ϕ’s that p, or

5. ‘KGP’ implies that ([‘S1 ϕ’s that p’ or ‘S2 ϕ’s that p’ or…’Sn ϕ’s that p’] or [‘S1 ϕ’s

that p’ and ‘S2 ϕ’s that p’ and…’Sn ϕ’s that p’]).

But we’ve already ruled out the possibility of (5). That is what the incompatibility

argument above shows, that group knowledge attributions attribute knowledge to the

group as a whole—knowledge that cannot be reduced to the knowledge had by any of

the members of that group. So, ‘KGP’ implies that ‘G ϕ’s that p’, which means C

attributes a factive attitude to G directly. Finally, KMS states that factive attitudes are

mental states for the subject, which means that C attributes a mental state to G. ‘KGP’

thus refers to a factive mental state of G. Now, any reduction of a mental state

attributable to G, to the mental state(s) of the individuals in G, would be equivalent to

the consequent of (5), which is false. Therefore, C attributes a factive mental state to G,

which is not reducible to the mental state(s) of any member(s) of G. It follows directly

from our definition of a CMS that the mental state attributed to G in C is a CMS.

We can think of the KMS theorist’s commitment to collective mental states in

another way, by considering what it would be rational to say about the following two

statements.

i) ‘KSP’ attributes a factive mental state to S.

ii) ‘KGP’ attributes a factive mental state to G.

What reason would the KMS theorist have for accepting (i) but denying (ii)? One could

deny that generally speaking, mental states are not attributable to groups considered as

a whole. However, whether one has independent reasons for denying group mental

states is tangential to the point argued here. The relevant question is: Given that group

knowledge attributions actually attribute knowledge to the group as a whole, can the

KMS theorist plausibly deny (ii) while still accepting (i)? Recall that the KMS theorist

claims the following:

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(iii) The condition, ‘that KSP’ ≠ ‘that (BSP & P)’.14

Yet, for the KMS theorist to deny that group knowledge attributions actually attribute a

mental state to the group they would also have to claim,

(iv) The condition ‘that KGP’ = ‘that ([KS1P or KS2P or…KSnP] or [KS1P and KS2P

and…KSnP])’

The problem with this is that the suggestion we get from the KMS theorist for why (iii)

is true is that knowing is a prime condition. This is precisely why any conjunctive

analysis of knowledge supposedly fails. But, the same be true for (iv). The two cases are

structurally similar enough to warrant the same suggestion as to why the right-hand

side of each equation is not the correct analysis of the left-hand side. If we assume that

knowing is a prime condition, then that explains why the right-hand side fails as an

analysis, but we should accept it for both statements unless there is some structural

dissimilarity between the two cases, which there is not. Again, there may be

independent reasons for denying the existence of collective mental states, but those

reasons cannot be an objection to the argument presented here. The KMS theorist is thus

faced with a dilemma: either explain why group knowledge attribution statements are

never really genuine attributions of knowledge, or accept that in such cases we are

attributing a factive mental state to a group.

Now, a careful reader might object that Williamson’s definition of primeness is

really only meant to illustrate something peculiar about an individual’s mental states.

The concern here is that primeness is a technical notion invoked to explain the non-

compositional nature of some mental states, that they are not decomposable into

narrow (mental) and environmental conditions. Thus, the application of this notion to

the members of a group, where the components are not internal mental components

and external environmental components is off-base. Since Williamson defines

composite conditions in terms of narrow and environmental conditions, it is just

incorrect to apply this notion to something other than narrow and environmental

conditions.

The problem with this objection is that even if the intention of invoking the

concept of primeness is to illuminate some feature of our mental states, Williamson’s

14 The second condition ‘that (BSP & P)’ is simplified for the purposes of clarity, but obviously depending on what one’s theory of knowledge is, there may be other conditions besides belief and truth that are necessary (and perhaps sufficient) for knowledge. The point here is not to call into question any individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for knowledge, but to show that knowing that p is not a conjunctive condition, which is essentially the KMS theorist’s point.

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notion of composite conditions is completely generalizable. What is crucial for

Williamson’s arguments for the primeness of knowing is that composite conditions are

simply those that are truth-functionally related, specifically those that are conjunctively

or disjunctively related. What is really doing the work here, what allows for free

recombination, is just the associative property of compound conditions. In fact, we can

think of compositeness as something like truth-functionally-relatedness, which can be

applied to any set of conditions, mental and non-metal. The idea is that just as the

logical rule of association allows one to freely regroup the conjuncts of any set of

compound propositions, the components of compound conditions are freely

recombinable amongst cases, and despite such recombinations the overall compound

condition in each of those cases is preserved.15

In fact, if the way of thinking of composite and prime conditions must always be

in terms of narrow and environmental conditions, then Williamson’s claim that

knowing is a prime condition is left hanging without any explanation. For, what

explains the fact that ‘S knows that p’ is a prime condition is just that we cannot

construct triples of cases where that condition remains true across all three of them.

That is just what it means for a condition to be prime. Compositeness is the more

fundamental notion here since primeness is defined in terms of it, and there is nothing

about narrow or environmental conditions that gives them exclusivity to the concept of

compositeness.16 Thus, composite conditions do not necessarily have to be conjunctions

or disjunctions of narrow and environmental conditions. What they must be at least is a

conjunctive or disjunctive condition.

Another possible objection could be that the argument really only turns on this

notion of primeness and not anything else unique to KMS. If we simply replace the

epistemic operator in the preceding argument with another one, say one for belief, then

the same argument could be made for belief. Since belief is also a prime mental

condition, group belief attributions are also cases of attributing a collective mental state.

It looks like any prime mental condition, if it is attributable to a group, must be a

collective mental state of the group. So, the KMS theorist is not committed to anything

15 Think of the replacement rule of association in propositional logic: (P & Q) & R ≡ P & (Q & R). Free recombination is the application of this rule to the components of composite cases. 16 In fact, Williamson gives a structural analogy of primeness that has nothing to do with narrow or environmental conditions. He says, “Suppose that a property P is the conjunction of a color property Co and a shape property Sh, and that both a black sphere and a white cube have P. Then a black cube also has P: it has Co because it is the same color as the black sphere, which has Co, and it has Sh because it is the same shape as the white cube, which has Sh. By contraposition, if a black sphere and a white cube have a property which a black cube lacks, then that property is not the conjunction of a color property and a shape property.” (2000: 68)

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that others who might hold that belief and other mental states are prime conditions is

not committed to. Group attributions, whether they are of knowledge or belief are

inherently problematic anyway, even if we don’t accept KMS. So, why is this

particularly troubling for KMS?

It is true that the argument can be run just the same for belief. But to my

knowledge there is no view on the nature of belief that automatically rules out a

summativist view of group belief attributions. To put the point another way, even

though believing that p can also be regarded as a prime mental condition, there is no

view arguing for this fact. It simply isn’t controversial to claim that belief is not a

composite condition. What is controversial is KMS, the view that knowing is not a

composite condition, that the condition that one knows that p is not the composite

condition of believing that p plus other conditions. The argument presented here is

meant to demonstrate a implication of KMS, not to establish anything about group

psychological attributions in general.

One could also argue that no argument was made for the claim that

summativism and collectivism exhaust the possible views on the issue of collective

mental states, nor on the issue of group knowledge attributions. So, it is open to the

KMS theorist to argue for an alternative view. It might be argued that summativism and

collectivism just present a false dichotomy, and that there may either be middle ground

between the two or another view altogether which denies that this dichotomy correctly

represents what is at issue. A middle ground view seems unlikely though, for the

summativist thesis is (at least meant to be) a contradictory of the collectivist thesis,

which means that the two seem to naturally exclude any middle ground.17 It might be

argued that it is open to the KMS theorist to offer a separate account of what it is for

groups to know and it might seem that this is really the only viable option—just give a

different account of group knowledge altogether.18 The danger with taking this route is

that it calls in to question what is said about knowing in the individual case. If none of

the three theses above hold in the group case, then we have prima facie reason to

suspect that they fail to hold in the individual case, since in both cases what we are, or

17 Even if we adopt something like Lackey’s view, where the mental state does not necessarily reduce to any members of the group, but can be perhaps attributed to someone else who is not technically a member of the group, something like (A1) would still have to be true. In which case, the argument would still go through, since that too would be incompatible with KMS. 18 There are several approaches one can take here. One could adopt a view where knowledge is thought of as a kind of collective good, and that this view rather nicely accommodates group knowledge attributions. Kush (2002), Longino (2002) and Hardwig (1985) all offer something very similar to this approach. See also Green (1991) and Fagan (2012) for similar views.

14

at least seem to be attributing is knowledge. If only some of Williamson’s theses hold

for the group case, then it looks like an ad hoc move to develop a view on group

knowledge that takes only some of them into account and not others, since each plays

an integral part in the overall picture KMS offers and there is a kind of explanatory

dependence between them. There is also the risk of changing the subject completely if

we offer a completely different account of group knowledge from the one we offer in

the individual case. If knowing for a group subject looks nothing like knowing for an

individual subject, then the fact that we are even talking about the same thing in both

cases is no longer obvious. And this seems quite problematic for KMS, since knowledge

plays a fundamental role in articulating various epistemic concepts, such as belief,

justification and evidence. If the communal case is needed, as Williamson

acknowledges, then presumably, it is communal knowledge that is needed and not some

corollary of knowledge.

Conclusion

Whether or not we can actually make sense of group knowledge attributions, if

we endorse KMS, ultimately will depend upon where we come down on the debate of

whether or not groups, considered as a whole, can be properly said to have mental

states of their own. This is a debate for the philosophy of mind, but is one that the

epistemologist intent on understanding the specific role that groups play as epistemic

subjects cannot avoid becoming embroiled in if he holds something like Williamson’s

view. Insofar as theories in one area of philosophy often inform our thinking in another

area with beneficial outcomes, perhaps this is a good thing. On the other hand, the

acknowledgement of full-blown mental states for groups may be a bridge too far for

some and may prove fatal for the KMS theorist who considers group subjects as proper

epistemic subjects.

15

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