Abstract
In this paper, I provide the framework for an account of group assertion. On my view, there are two kinds of group assertion, coordinated and authority-based, with authority-based group assertion being the core notion. I argue against a deflationary view, according to which a group’s asserting is understood in terms of individual assertions, by showing that a group can assert a proposition even when no individual does. Instead, I argue on behalf of an inflationary view, according to which it is the group itself that asserts, a conclusion supported by the fact that paradigmatic features of assertion apply only at the level of the group. A central virtue of my account is that it appreciates the important relationship that exists between most groups and their spokespersons, as well as the consequences that follow from this relationship. My view, thus, provides the framework for distinguishing when responsibility for an assertion lies at the collective level, and when it should be shouldered by an individual simply speaking for herself.
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Notes
To avoid confusion, I should note that I argued in my (2014) on behalf of a deflationary account of group testimony. But while my topic here is on what we might call the metaphysics of group assertion or group testimony (where I here use “assertion” and “testimony” interchangeably)—i.e., what is it for a group to assert or testify—the account in my (2014) takes up the epistemology of group assertion or group testimony—i.e., how do we acquire justified belief or knowledge via group assertion. Thus, my view is inflationary in a metaphysical sense, but deflationary epistemologically.
See Searle (1995).
See Fricker (2007).
Some read Austin (1962) as requiring uptake in order for illocutionary speech acts to be successful. See, for instance, Langton (2009). For objections to the uptake requirement, see Antony (2011). Fricker (2012) applies this reading of Austin to testimony, writing “Without my uptake, whatever you may succeed in doing with your words, it won’t be quite testifying” (Fricker 2012, p. 254). Even if this is a correct reading of Austin, there are at least three worries with applying it to testimony or assertion (for our purposes here, we can treat testimony and assertion interchangeably). First, there is not a single view in the literature of what it is to testify that supports the uptake requirement [see, for instance, Coady (1992), Fricker (1995), Audi (1997), Graham (1997), Elgin (2002) and Lackey (2008)]. Second, this view has the consequence that one does not testify in a private diary that is never read, in a courtroom when one is not believed, and so on. Third, if one takes someone to be lying and thus there is no uptake, then there is, on this view, no assertion. If asserting is a necessary condition on lying, then we get the result that the known liar cannot lie. For all of these reasons, uptake should not be taken to be necessary for testifying or asserting.
Just to be clear, the parallel is as follows: just as individuals can assert in the absence of audience recognition, so, too, can groups assert via spokespersons without such recognition.
Explicit endorsement of a group’s policies and procedures is a very strong requirement for group membership. Ludwig argues that this requirement is true only of “genuine organizations,” where “members choose to join and, hence, agree to the conditions of membership, which includes an endorsement of the institutional arrangements” (Ludwig 2014, p. 97). As I will argue later, however, I think that members can join groups without such an endorsement.
Ludwig argues that citizenship is a hybrid status, where “operative members” are those “who have accepted membership” and thus when we say that a hybrid institutional group has done something qua institution, this “entails that (and only that) its operative members have all contributed, whether or not it has non-operative members as well” (Ludwig 2014, p. 99). But why would those who obtained citizenship through birthright not be operative? Doesn’t this subgroup make up the bulk of most nations? Moreover, since it is highly questionable whether accepting membership is necessary for group membership, it would be best to not build this into one’s account of group agency.
Ludwig (2014) might deny that this is a case of a spokesperson asserting on behalf of a group, since he claims that only genuine organizations can authorize proxy agents. But this isn’t plausible. Unstructured, informal groups can evolve to have spokespersons without any clear act of “joining” or of agreeing to the conditions of membership.
I will say what else is needed to distinguish individual from group assertion in what follows.
I am grateful to Michael Bratman for this question.
One might ask the following: if Philip Morris hires an outside spokesperson, S, to represent the company’s view, does this thereby make S a member of the group in question? The answer here is clearly no. If the Supreme Court hires an outside clerk to assist with legal research, this does not thereby make the clerk a member of the Supreme Court. If Northwestern University hires Bulley and Andrews Construction Firm to renovate one of the academic buildings, this does not make the construction workers members of Northwestern. Bringing a suit against the firm, for instance, is not to thereby bring suit against Northwestern.
While individuals might also grant authority to another to speaker on their behalf, such as when a lawyer represents an individual client, group assertion is distinctive in that this is the standard way in which groups assert.
I should note that in my (2006) and (2008), condition (i) is presented as being both necessary and sufficient for an individual to testify (or assert). However, to distinguish what a spokesperson does in testifying or asserting on behalf of someone else, rather than on behalf of herself, my account of individual testimony (assertion) should explicitly specify this. Thus, it should read:
S testifies (asserts) that p by making an act of communication a if any only if S reasonably intends to convey on behalf of herself the information that p (in part) in virtue of a’s communicable content.
I am grateful to Marija Jankovic for a question that led to the inclusion of this note.
One might wonder whether there is a third kind of group assertion, what we might call distributed group assertion. Suppose, for instance, that there are three members of a committee, each of whom uploads information to an automated system. M1 submits that p, M2 submits that q, and M3 submits that r. The system then aggregates the information and issues a public report that the committee’s view is that s, even though no member of the group is aware of this aggregated result. Is this group assertion? Strictly speaking, the answer is no, as there is simply no one who intends to convey the information that s. When we learn that s from the automated output, we’re learning from the system, not from the group. This is supported by the fact that if it were the group’s assertion, then the committee could learn from its own assertion. For instance, when the output that s is issued and the committee learns this by reading the report, the committee itself could come to learn that s from its own assertion. Given this, distributed group assertion is assertion in only an extended sense.
This is a slightly modified example from Audi (1997).
I am grateful to Anne Baril for this example.
Both of these views are presented as accounts of group testimony, but they can be understood as accounts of group assertion for our purposes. I will thus use “testimony” and “assertion” interchangeably here.
I should note that I am not saying that a group cannot intend to so something that no individual member of the group intends to do. But if one’s account of group testimony is going to rely on a thesis this substantive, then it should be defended.
I should note that Tollefsen’s account of group testimony is adapted from Justin Hughes’s account of group speech acts, according to which:
For a group, G, speaker, S, and utterance, x, G utters x if and only if:
1. There exists a group, G, this group has an illocutionary intention, and x conveys that illocutionary intention.
2. S believes that he or she knows the illocutionary intention of G and that X conveys this illocutionary intention.
3. G does not object to S uttering x on its behalf and if G intends for any specific individual(s) to utter x, it intends for S to utter x. S believes that he or she knows this.
4. 2 and 3 are the reasons S utters x (Hughes 1984, p. 388).
My arguments here apply, mutatis mutandis, to Hughes’s account.
Just as an attorney might bring a lawsuit on behalf of her client, without being a party to the suit herself, so, too, a spokesperson might assert on behalf of another without thereby asserting herself.
Goldberg (2015).
I should note that I have never defended a view that is entirely deflationary. Rather I have argued for views that have as a condition that some of the individual members of the group instantiate the phenomenon in question.
See my (2016) and (unpublished).
I am grateful to J. Adam Carter, Sandy Goldberg, John Greco, Marija Jankovic, Baron Reed, Deb Tollefsen, two anonymous referees, and audience members at the University of Warwick, a Social Epistemology Workshop in Helsinki, Finland, the GAP.9 Conference in Osnabrück, Germany, an Invited Symposium at the Eastern Division of the APA in Washington, D.C., and the Epistemic Dependence on People and Instruments conference in Madrid, Spain.
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Lackey, J. Group Assertion. Erkenn 83, 21–42 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-016-9870-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-016-9870-2