The Epistemic Significance of the Collective

Abstract

This paper discusses recent empirical research on the high epistemic status or reliability of crowds or groups in delivering accurate judgments, even in the absence of deliberation among group members. Using this information, it is claimed that the cognitive community is a crowd or group which has the epistemic virtues mentioned above; The cognitive community is defined as an informal group where meaningful discourses take place between participants who share or agree to a common set of basic beliefs and have similar cognitive capacities. It is then argued that an individual can discharge his epistemic responsibilities of (1) determining the sufficiency or adequacy of reasons for belief and (2) identifying which facts qualify as the right kind of reasons by incorporating the collective judgment of his cognitive community.