Group Belief: Lessons from Lies and Bullshit

2020 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 185-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
I—Jennifer Lackey
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Individual Member ◽  
Single Individual ◽  
Adequate Account ◽  
White House ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Group Belief ◽  
Literature Group ◽  
Trump Administration

Abstract Groups and other sorts of collective entities are frequently said to believe things. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, for instance, was asked by reporters at White House press conferences whether the Trump administration ‘believes in climate change’ or ‘believes that slavery is wrong’. Similarly, it is said on the website of the Aclu of Illinois that the organization ‘firmly believes that rights should not be limited based on a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity’. A widespread philosophical view is that belief on the part of a group’s members is neither necessary nor sufficient for group belief. In other words, groups are said to be able to believe that p even when not a single individual member of the group believes that p. In this paper, I challenge this view by focusing on two phenomena that have been entirely ignored in the literature: group lies and group bullshit. I show that when group belief is understood in terms of actions over which group members have voluntarily control, as is standardly thought, paradigmatic instances of a group lying or bullshitting end up counting as a group believing. Thus we need to look elsewhere for an adequate account of group belief.

Group Knowledge

2020 ◽  
pp. 111-137
Author(s):  
Jennifer Lackey
Keyword(s):  
Functional Role ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Social Knowledge ◽  
Single Individual ◽  
Collective Knowledge ◽  
Group Knowledge ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Group Belief

In this chapter, two influential kinds of purported group knowledge that pose challenges to my account of justified group belief are examined. The first is often referred to as “social knowledge,” a paradigmatic instance of which is the so-called knowledge possessed by the scientific community, where no single individual knows a proposition, but the information plays a functional role in the community. The second is “collective knowledge,” where knowledge may be imputed to a group by aggregating bits of information had by its individual members. It is shown that both social knowledge and collective knowledge sever the crucial connection between knowledge and action, and open the door to serious abuses, not only epistemically, but morally and legally as well. Bits of information that are merely accessible to group members, or individual instances of knowledge that are aggregated with no communication, do not amount to group knowledge in any robust sense.

The Epistemology of Groups

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Lackey
Keyword(s):  
Group Level ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
Individual Group ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Normative Requirements ◽  
Group Members ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Belief Justification ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Trump Administration

Groups are often said to bear responsibility for their actions, many of which have enormous moral, legal, and social significance. The Trump Administration, for instance, is said to be responsible for the U.S.’s inept and deceptive handling of COVID-19 and the harms that American citizens have 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. It is argued 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, this book 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, it is argued, allows for the correct distribution of responsibility across groups and their individual members.

Can Groups Assert That P?

2019 ◽  
pp. 326-344
Author(s):  
Deborah Tollefsen
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Single Individual ◽  
Constitutive Rule ◽  
The Past ◽  
Group Members ◽  
The Common ◽  
Declarative Statement ◽  
John Macfarlane

When a group or institution issues a declarative statement, what sort of speech act is this? Is it the assertion of a single individual (perhaps the group’s spokesperson or leader) or the assertion of all or most of the group members? Or is there a sense in which the group itself asserts that p? If assertion is a speech act, then who is the actor in the case of group assertion? These are the questions this chapter aims to address. Whether groups themselves can make assertions or whether a group of individuals can jointly assert that p depends, in part, on what sort of speech act assertion is. The literature on assertion has burgeoned over the past few years, and there is a great deal of debate regarding the nature of assertion. John MacFarlane has helpfully identified four theories of assertion. Following Sandy Goldberg, we can call these the attitudinal account, the constitutive rule account, the common-ground account, and the commitment account. I shall consider what group assertion might look like under each of these accounts and doing so will help us to examine some of the accounts of group assertion (often presented as theories of group testimony) on offer. I shall argue that, of the four accounts, the commitment account can best be extended to make sense of group assertion in all its various forms.

Trump Reverses Certain Steps Toward Normalizing Relations with Cuba

2017 ◽  
Vol 111 (4) ◽  
pp. 1027-1035
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Regime ◽  
Military Government ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Obama Administration ◽  
White House ◽  
Senior Official ◽  
Roll Back ◽  
Trump Administration

In June 2017, President Donald Trump announced a plan to roll back various steps taken by his predecessor toward normalizing relations between the United States and Cuba. A senior official for the administration announced the plan in a White House press briefing:The President vowed to reverse the Obama administration policies toward Cuba that have enriched the Cuban military regime and increased the repression on the island. It is a promise that President Trump made, and it's a promise that President Trump is keeping.With this is a readjustment of the United States policy towards Cuba. And you will see that, going forward, the new policy under the Trump administration, will empower the Cuban people. To reiterate, the new policy going forward does not target the Cuban people, but it does target the repressive members of the Cuban military government.

Depth in Staff

2021 ◽  
pp. 65-75
Author(s):  
Stephen Skowronek ◽  
John A. Dearborn ◽  
Desmond King
Keyword(s):  
Executive Branch ◽  
House Staff ◽  
First Year ◽  
White House ◽  
Flow Of Information ◽  
Trump Administration ◽  
At Will

This chapter considers depth in staff, exploring the role of White House officials tasked to bridge the president’s personal direction with the institutional presidency and the executive branch at large. These staffers are normally part of the presidential party, collectively representing the different wings of the president’s electoral coalition. In the Trump administration, the White House staff jostled for influence and favor throughout the president’s first year. Trump bristled at their efforts to establish regular processes and to control the flow of information. The president saw management of that sort as an impingement on his authority to act on his own instincts and to direct his subordinates at will. Differences over the issue of trade afford a brief, but sharp, illustration of the tension between an institutional presidency and the personal direction of a unitary executive.

scholarly journals Climate change denial as far-right politics: How abandonment of scientific method paved the way for Trump

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-60
Author(s):  
Gavin Byrne
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
The United States ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Climate Change Denial ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Constitution ◽  
Democratic Norms ◽  
Trump Administration

In this article I show that the form of argument put forward by the climate change denial movement in the United States (US) closely resembles that used in Nazi Germany with regard to Nazi racial definitions. Each involves a rejection of scientific method. This rejection inherently lends itself to far-right politics, which is a philosophy of prejudice. The prevalence of such a philosophy in contemporary American political culture, exemplified through climate change denial, has arguably opened the door for a president of Trump's type. Nevertheless, the US Constitution is far more difficult to suspend than that of the Weimar Republic. As a result, US institutional safeguards against a philosophy of prejudice are likely to hold against a short-term assault on environmental justice in a way that the Weimar Republic's constitutional order did not against Nazism's assault on civil rights. The greater threat to environmental protection in the contemporary US situation is the slow erosion of democratic norms by the Trump administration.

Rolling Back Climate Regulation: Trump’s Assault on the Planet

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-130
Author(s):  
Ronald C. Kramer
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Corporate Crime ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Regulatory Policies ◽  
Climate Regulation ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
Trump Administration

The Donald Trump administration has engaged in a number of crimes related to climate change. This article examines these climate crimes, in particular, the administration’s organized denial of global warming and its political omissions concerning the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions that result in the rollback of existing regulatory policies related to the climate crisis. This criminality is explored through the lens of the concept of state–corporate crime, a concept utilized by a number of green criminologists to analyze environmental harms. The Trump administration’s rollback of climate change regulations is first located within its historical, political, and social contexts. Then, the specific actions and political omissions that constitute these rollbacks are described and analyzed as state–corporate environmental crimes.

scholarly journals Seeking Patterns in Chaos: Transactional Federalism in the Trump Administration’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (6-7) ◽  
pp. 512-518 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia J. Bowling ◽  
Jonathan M. Fisk ◽  
John C. Morris
Keyword(s):  
Local Governments ◽  
Federal Agencies ◽  
The Novel ◽  
White House ◽  
Federal Response ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
Trump Administration

The federal government’s response the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has been marked by a series of apparently disjointed, chaotic, and confusing statements and actions on the part of both the White House and federal agencies charged with coordinating the federal response. These actions have left many state governors (and citizens) in a position to address the effects of the pandemic in a haphazard and atomistic manner. In this essay, we contend that the actions of the Trump administration, and its relationships with states and local governments, can best be understood through a lens of what we refer to as “transactional federalism,” in which federalism relationships are governed by a set of exchanges between the president and states, and between states. We conclude by discussing the ramifications of this form of federalism.

Courts will slow Trump's push for energy deregulation

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Fuel Efficiency ◽  
Content Type ◽  
White House ◽  
Oil Drilling ◽  
Pricing Scheme ◽  
Fossil Fuel Industry ◽  
Energy Deregulation ◽  
Fuel Industry ◽  
Offshore Oil ◽  
Trump Administration

Significance The Trump administration has targeted rules and regulations implemented by former President Barack Obama's government on the environment and climate change as he looks to boost the US fossil fuel industry. The White House has sought to expand offshore oil drilling, revoke the Clean Power Plan, cut environmental rules for coal producers and reduce fuel efficiency standards. Impacts Pro-extraction EPA aides will push Administrator Scott Pruitt’s deregulatory agenda despite his recusal from certain cases. Companies developing pipeline and liquefied natural gas export projects are likely to see faster approvals under the Trump administration. Reopening offshore drilling areas could benefit offshore seismic imaging companies, which is the first step to exploring frontier regions. Republican ideological opposition to federal regulation will foil any attempt to implement a market-friendly carbon pricing scheme.

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