Jennifer Lackey, "The Epistemology of Groups" (Oxford UP, 2021)
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What is the central problem that motivates the study of group epistemology?
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Hello and thank you for joining us for this episode of New Books in Philosophy, which is part of the New Books Network. I'm Robert Talise, I'm Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. I co-host the program with Carrie Figner, Alexis McLeod, and Sarah Tyson. My guest today is Jennifer Lackey. Jennifer is the Wayne and Elizabeth Jones Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University, where she also directs the Northwestern Prison Education Program. Jennifer is an epistemologist whose research spans an uncommonly broad range of issues that include testimony, assertion, and disagreement. A good deal of her current work is focused on collective and group epistemology. Might be no surprise then that her new book is titled The Epistemology of Groups.
It's just been published by Oxford University Press. We commonly ascribe beliefs and similar kinds of attitudes to groups. For instance, we say that a foreign government believes that certain members of the press are spies. Sometimes we say that a corporation denies that its product is harmful to the environment. Sometimes it seems that in these cases, we're simply ascribing to the group something like the shared belief of its members. But there are other cases in which it appears that we are referencing an independent subject. Um, like the government or the corporation, in a way that indicates that it exists over and above its members and their beliefs. Philosophical puzzles abound. In her book The Epistemology of Groups, Jennifer Lackey develops a unified account of group belief, justified group belief, group knowledge, and group assertion.
Intriguing intriguingly, this account serves to ultimately allow us to make sense of group lies and deception. Now as is usual there's a lot to talk about, but why don't we begin where we normally do with the author?
Hello Jennifer. Hello, Bob. Thank you for having me. I'm doing well.
That's great. Thanks for appearing. Um, you know, uh we usually start these interviews with a little bit about the author. Uh, can you tell us a bit about yourself?
Um yes, thanks again for having me. Um so I've been working broadly in the area of social epistemology since my dissertation. So I was working um I was in graduate school in the late nineteen nineties and Um there was very little social epistemology being done at that time in contrast to I think um now where I think the area has really exploded and there's a great deal of very exciting and innovative work being done. Um, but back in the late 90s, um, just even working on a topic like my dissertation was on, testimony, was considered rather rather radical. Um, so uh Cody's book had come out in the early 1990s, um, but in my whole time in graduate school, we never really talked about testimony, never um read Cody's book for a seminar, despite the fact that there was a lot of epistemology going on.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the central problem that motivates the study of group epistemology?
0:00–8:04
2
How does Jennifer Lackey explain the difference between ascribing beliefs to individuals versus to groups?
8:04–15:43
3
Why do group lies matter, and how did they lead to a unified theory of group belief?
15:43–23:39
4
What are the main arguments for and against deflationary versus inflationary accounts of group belief?
23:39–31:59
5
How does the book connect individual justification to justified group belief?
31:59–38:58
6
What criteria does Lackey propose for a group to have knowledge?
38:58–46:46
7
How does the theory of group assertion work, and why is an authorized spokesperson crucial?
46:46–53:48
8
What is the final account of group lies, and how does it integrate belief, justification, and assertion?
53:48–59:56
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from New Books in Philosophy
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