GROUP AGENCY AND EPISTEMIC DEPENDENCY

Episteme ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 235-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Dewitt
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Epistemic Dependence ◽  
Group Agency ◽  
Agency Model ◽  
Group Agent ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Group Agents

AbstractModern epistemic questions have largely been focused around the individual and her ability to acquire knowledge autonomously. More recently epistemologists have begun to look more broadly in providing accounts of knowledge by considering its social context, where the individual depends on others for true beliefs. Hardwig explains the effect of this shift starkly, arguing that to reject epistemic dependency is to deny certain true beliefs widely held throughout society and, more specifically, it is to deny that science and scholarship can provide true belief. Alternatively, Hardwig argues that beliefs could be granted to communities or groups but denied to individuals. This paper approaches these broad assertions using a group agency model from List and Pettit. Through a discussion of the ‘epistemic desideratum’ of group agents, I conclude that List and Pettit give us reason to accept some of Hardwig's concerns, but that attributing beliefs to groups does not require us to deny them to individuals, rather an individual can use a group agent as a source of epistemic dependence.

scholarly journals Accounting for groups: the dynamics of intragroup deliberation

Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. McKenzie Alexander ◽  
Julia Morley
Keyword(s):  
Prima Facie ◽  
Group Agency ◽  
Close Inspection ◽  
Judgement Aggregation ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Work List ◽  
Widespread Phenomenon ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Normative Constraints ◽  
Group Agents

AbstractIn a highly influential work, List and Pettit (Group Agency: The Possibility, Design, and Status of Corporate Agents, Oxford University Press, 2011) draw upon the theory of judgement aggregation to offer an argument for the existence of nonreductive group agents; they also suggest that nonreductive group agency is a widespread phenomenon. In this paper, we argue for the following two claims. First, that the axioms they consider cannot naturally be interpreted as either descriptive characterisations or normative constraints upon group judgements, in general. This makes it unclear how the List and Pettit argument is to apply to real world group behaviour. Second, by examining empirical data about how group judgements are made by a powerful international regulatory board, we show how each of the List and Pettit axioms can be violated in ways which are straightforwardly explicable at the level of the individual. This suggests that group agency may best be understood as a pluralistic phenomenon, where close inspection of the dynamics of intragroup deliberation can reveal that what prima facie appears to be a nonreductive group agent is, in fact, reducible.

‘A Routh O’ Auld Nick-Nackets’ – the antiquarian collection of John Rae

2015 ◽  
Vol 36-37 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-183
Author(s):  
Paul Taylor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Moral Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Representative Case ◽  
National Museums ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The University

John Rae, a Scottish antiquarian collector and spirit merchant, played a highly prominent role in the local natural history societies and exhibitions of nineteenth-century Aberdeen. While he modestly described his collection of archaeological lithics and other artefacts, principally drawn from Aberdeenshire but including some items from as far afield as the United States, as a mere ‘routh o’ auld nick-nackets' (abundance of old knick-knacks), a contemporary singled it out as ‘the best known in private hands' (Daily Free Press 4/5/91). After Rae's death, Glasgow Museums, National Museums Scotland, the University of Aberdeen Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, as well as numerous individual private collectors, purchased items from the collection. Making use of historical and archive materials to explore the individual biography of Rae and his collection, this article examines how Rae's collecting and other antiquarian activities represent and mirror wider developments in both the ‘amateur’ antiquarianism carried out by Rae and his fellow collectors for reasons of self-improvement and moral education, and the ‘professional’ antiquarianism of the museums which purchased his artefacts. Considered in its wider nineteenth-century context, this is a representative case study of the early development of archaeology in the wider intellectual, scientific and social context of the era.

Welfare tradeoff psychology is present in children and adults

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rhea M Howard ◽  
Annie C. Spokes ◽  
Samuel A Mehr ◽  
Max Krasnow
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Opportunity Cost ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Contextual Features ◽  
Limited Experience ◽  
The Individual

Making decisions in a social context often requires weighing one's own wants against the needs and preferences of others. Adults are adept at incorporating multiple contextual features when deciding how to trade off their welfare against another. For example, they are more willing to forgo a resource to benefit friends over strangers (a feature of the individual) or when the opportunity cost of giving up the resource is low (a feature of the situation). When does this capacity emerge in development? In Experiment 1 (N = 208), we assessed the decisions of 4- to 10-year-old children in a picture-based resource tradeoff task to test two questions: (1) When making repeated decisions to either benefit themselves or benefit another person, are children’s choices internally consistent with a particular valuation of that individual? (2) Do children value friends more highly than strangers and enemies? We find that children demonstrate consistent person-specific welfare valuations and value friends more highly than strangers and enemies. In Experiment 2 (N = 200), we tested adults using the same pictorial method. The pattern of results successfully replicated, but adults’ decisions were more consistent than children’s and they expressed more extreme valuations: relative to the children, they valued friends more and valued enemies less. We conclude that despite children’s limited experience allocating resources and navigating complex social networks, they behave like adults in that they reference a stable person-specific valuation when deciding whether to benefit themselves or another and that this rule is modulated by the child’s relationship with the target.

scholarly journals Individual behavioural traits not social context affects learning about novel objects in archerfish

2021 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick A. R. Jones ◽  
Helen C. Spence-Jones ◽  
Mike Webster ◽  
Luke Rendell
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Behavioural Phenotype ◽  
Social Species ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Animals ◽  
Novel Objects ◽  
The Individual

Abstract Learning can enable rapid behavioural responses to changing conditions but can depend on the social context and behavioural phenotype of the individual. Learning rates have been linked to consistent individual differences in behavioural traits, especially in situations which require engaging with novelty, but the social environment can also play an important role. The presence of others can modulate the effects of individual behavioural traits and afford access to social information that can reduce the need for ‘risky’ asocial learning. Most studies of social effects on learning are focused on more social species; however, such factors can be important even for less-social animals, including non-grouping or facultatively social species which may still derive benefit from social conditions. Using archerfish, Toxotes chatareus, which exhibit high levels of intra-specific competition and do not show a strong preference for grouping, we explored the effect of social contexts on learning. Individually housed fish were assayed in an ‘open-field’ test and then trained to criterion in a task where fish learnt to shoot a novel cue for a food reward—with a conspecific neighbour visible either during training, outside of training or never (full, partial or no visible presence). Time to learn to shoot the novel cue differed across individuals but not across social context. This suggests that social context does not have a strong effect on learning in this non-obligatory social species; instead, it further highlights the importance that inter-individual variation in behavioural traits can have on learning. Significance statement Some individuals learn faster than others. Many factors can affect an animal’s learning rate—for example, its behavioural phenotype may make it more or less likely to engage with novel objects. The social environment can play a big role too—affecting learning directly and modifying the effects of an individual’s traits. Effects of social context on learning mostly come from highly social species, but recent research has focused on less-social animals. Archerfish display high intra-specific competition, and our study suggests that social context has no strong effect on their learning to shoot novel objects for rewards. Our results may have some relevance for social enrichment and welfare of this increasingly studied species, suggesting there are no negative effects of short- to medium-term isolation of this species—at least with regards to behavioural performance and learning tasks.

scholarly journals When physical activity meets the physical environment: precision health insights from the intersection

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Luisa V. Giles ◽  
Michael S. Koehle ◽  
Brian E. Saelens ◽  
Hind Sbihi ◽  
Chris Carlsten
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Main Body ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
Optimizing Design ◽  
Physical Activity Recommendations ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Precision Health ◽  
Activity Recommendations

Abstract Background The physical environment can facilitate or hinder physical activity. A challenge in promoting physical activity is ensuring that the physical environment is supportive and that these supports are appropriately tailored to the individual or group in question. Ideally, aspects of the environment that impact physical activity would be enhanced, but environmental changes take time, and identifying ways to provide more precision to physical activity recommendations might be helpful for specific individuals or groups. Therefore, moving beyond a “one size fits all” to a precision-based approach is critical. Main body To this end, we considered 4 critical aspects of the physical environment that influence physical activity (walkability, green space, traffic-related air pollution, and heat) and how these aspects could enhance our ability to precisely guide physical activity. Strategies to increase physical activity could include optimizing design of the built environment or mitigating of some of the environmental impediments to activity through personalized or population-wide interventions. Conclusions Although at present non-personalized approaches may be more widespread than those tailored to one person’s physical environment, targeting intrinsic personal elements (e.g., medical conditions, sex, age, socioeconomic status) has interesting potential to enhance the likelihood and ability of individuals to participate in physical activity.

Recovery Capital, Drug Policy and the Cycle of Incarceration

2010 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Lyons
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Drug Policy ◽  
Marked Improvement ◽  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
Alcohol Problem ◽  
Prison Inmates ◽  
Internal Process ◽  
Recovery Capital ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Recovering Addicts

By some estimates, more than half of prison inmates in America have a drug or alcohol problem (Mumola and Karberg 2006). Existing models of treatment for these individuals, both inside and outside prison, have typically focused on the individual addict. These interventions often neglect the users' families and communities, and view poverty and marginalization as tangential to recovery—which is seen instead purely as an individual, internal process. This perspective defines addiction as a brain disease, and emphasizes the need of recovering addicts to learn new skills and to take personal responsibility for their actions and lives (Committee on Addictions of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, 2002). These models, though a marked improvement over the idea of drug addiction as a moral failing, place an over-riding emphasis on the individual at the expense of the economic and social context.

The Easy Approach to Group Agency. A Simple Realist View on Group Agents

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-102
Author(s):  
Andreea Popescu
Keyword(s):  
Group Agency ◽  
Group Agents ◽  
Realist View ◽  
As If

"We talk about groups as doing something, we talk as if groups have agency. Is our talk legitimate? Are there group agents? Is there something like group agency? In this paper, I discuss two ontological frameworks concerning existence questions: the Quinean framework and the Thomasson-Carnap framework. I apply them to the problem of group agency. I review the Quinean-oriented literature debating the existence of group agents and its methodological background. I argue, via Thomasson’s easy approach to ontology, that deflationism can simplify the debate surrounding group agents. Thus, I argue for a Thomasson-Carnap framework and show that it is better suited to answer the particular question whether there are group agents. More specifically, I argue for a non-reductive simple realist view on group agents, i.e. I argue for the truth of “There are group agents,” via analytic entailments, by truths about the actions and deeds of groups. Keywords: Analytic Entailments, Deflationism, Group agency, Group agents, Simple Realism "

scholarly journals REPORT BETWEEN SOCIAL ETHICS AND PERSONAL MORALS IN OUR DAYS

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (6) ◽  
pp. 1737-1741
Author(s):  
Rita Loloçi ◽  
Orneda Gega Hoxha
Keyword(s):  
Moral Education ◽  
Social Ethics ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Legal Rules ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
Traditional Societies ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Contemporary Development ◽  
Personal Ethics

In this study, we will try to explain the correlation that exists between social ethics and personal ethics. Today’s challenges of human society in the field of ethics, morality and consciousness are not the same in different eras and in nations or groups of states. All three of these domains move more slowly than other processes, but are indispensable in everyday life. State authority in constantly way strive to create legal rules, but their non-compliance with ethic, principles of morality and conscience create major problems in contemporary development. Rapid contemporary developments, especially those in the field of technology and science have brought other concepts to social and personal ethics, but the necessity of their presence always adapting to other conditions has been felt. Today’s man seeks to understand it more in the form of ethics and social education. For example: nudity, morality principles to this phenomenon have changed from generation to generation, once considered shame and today as something private. The reality of the moral and conceptual problems that human and society have had over law, the rights and ethics have changed, concepts have been overthrown, and the way how people have been judged for different situations has evolved. Individual’s education in the traditional societies have been very important issue in his/ her life. That was a lifelong learning process instead. Education’s main purpose was to help the individual during his/her life so that he/she was not only responsible and aware of the environment, but to prepare the individual to fit into real life. In the actual society there are different points of views as far as the moral and civilizing education bonds are concerned. A mutual environment asks for mutual values, but on the other hand it is assumed the need to understand, accept and support even the values which may be different from the individual ones. In other words, the civil education has to treat moral as a separate issue, even though there are different opinions like: moral is a personal choice, moral is given by God, moral is a social agreement, etc. What we should emphasize is the fact that dealing with similar points of view is as important as debating against the opposite ones. It would be very positive if this could be achieved for a common understanding. But does everyone understand what moral, social and personal ethic is? Another question adds to this one: How is the problem of moral going to be treated? And is it necessary to set tasks or duties on moral as well? What features must moral education have in a view of the evolution of society as whole in terms of a new worldview? Today humanity is on the rise and is heading towards great organisation, but one must keep in mind that within this uniformity there is also diversity to be respected. The new worldview must be open to new progress and thinking not only from the content but also from the form.

4. Levels of selection

2019 ◽  
pp. 45-62
Author(s):  
Samir Okasha
Keyword(s):  
Kin Selection ◽  
Group Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Levels Of Selection ◽  
Major Transitions ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Major Transitions In Evolution

‘Levels of selection’ examines the levels-of-selection question, which asks whether natural selection acts on individuals, genes, or groups. This question is one of the most fundamental in evolutionary biology, and the subject of much controversy. Traditionally, biologists have mostly been concerned with selection and adaptation at the individual level. But, in theory, there are other possibilities, including selection on sub-individual units such as genes and cells, and on supra-individual units such as groups and colonies. Group selection, altruistic behaviour, kin selection, the gene-centric view of evolution, and the major transitions in evolution are all discussed.

Redundant Group Agency

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (5) ◽  
pp. 364-384
Author(s):  
Lars J. K. Moen
Keyword(s):  
False Beliefs ◽  
Group Agency ◽  
Intentional States ◽  
Group Agent ◽  
Group Members

According to group-agent realism, treating groups as agents with their own intentional states, irreducible to those of the group members, helps us explain and predict the groups’ behavior. This paper challenges this view. When groups judge logically interconnected propositions, group members often have incentives to misrepresent their beliefs concerning propositions they care less about in order to increase the probability of their groups adopting their view of propositions they consider more important. Aggregating such untruthful judgments may lead to the group forming false beliefs. Treating groups as agents will then not help us explain or predict their behavior.

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