Kollektives Verstehen

Hauswald, Rico

doi:10.1515/dzph-2019-0030

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 19 publications

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“…Collective understanding, on the other hand, is still a partially unexplored topic. (Important exceptions in this regard are Boyd, 2021; Delarivière, forthcoming; Hauswald, 2019. )…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding phenomena: From social to collective?

Malfatti

2022

Philosophical Issues

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In making sense of the world, we typically cooperate, join forces, and draw on one another's competence and expertise. A group or community in which there is a well-functioning division of cognitive-epistemic labor can achieve levels of understanding that a single agent who relies exclusively on her own capacities would probably never achieve. However, is understanding also collective? I.e., is understanding something that can be possessed by a group or community rather than by individuals? In this paper, I develop an account of understanding phenomena according to which understanding a phenomenon requires reasonably endorsing an adequate and intelligible epistemic mediator that accounts for this phenomenon. I then show that understanding, conceived along these lines, can be attributed to collective entities. An important result of my arguments will be that a collective entity's understanding cannot (always) be reduced to the sum of the understandings of the individuals belonging to it. This is because a collective entity can sometimes be rightfully claimed to understand a phenomenon while none of its individual members understands it.

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“…Collective understanding, on the other hand, is still a partially unexplored topic. (Important exceptions in this regard are Boyd, 2021; Delarivière, forthcoming; Hauswald, 2019. )…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%