Binding: Hardcover
Description: Groups are often said to bear responsibility for their actions many of which have enormous moral legal and social significance. When children were separated from their parents or guardians at the U. S. - Mexico border as part of America's immigration policy for example the Trump Administration was said to be responsible for the harms these families suffered as a result. But are groups subject to normative assessment simply in virtue of their individual members being so or are they somehow agents in their own right? Answering this question depends on understanding key concepts in the epistemology of groups as we cannot hold the Trump Administration responsible without first determining what it believed knew and said. Deflationary theorists hold that group phenomena can be understood entirely in terms of individual members and their states. Inflationary theorists maintain that group phenomena are importantly over and above or otherwise distinct from individual members and their states. In The Epistemology of Groups Jennifer Lackey argues that neither approach is satisfactory. Groups are more than their members but not because they have 'minds of their own as the inflationists hold. Instead she shows how group phenomena - - like belief justification and knowledge - - depend on what the individual group members do or are capable of doing while being subject to group - level normative requirements. This framework allows for the correct distribution of responsibility across groups and their individual members.
Title: The Epistemology Of Groups
Author(s): Lackey Jennifer (Wayne And Elizabeth Jones Professor Of Philosophy Wayne And Elizabeth Jones Professor Of Philosophy Northwestern University)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Barcode: 9780199656608
Pages: 212 Pages
Publication Date: 2/1/2021
Category: Economic Theory & Philosophy