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The Independence Thesis: When Individual and Social Epistemology Diverge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Conor Mayo-Wilson ,
Kevin J. S. Zollman  and
David Danks
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Abstract

Several philosophers of science have argued that epistemically rational individuals might form epistemically irrational groups and that, conversely, rational groups might be composed of irrational individuals. We call the conjunction of these two claims the Independence Thesis, as they entail that methodological prescriptions for scientific communities and those for individual scientists are logically independent. We defend the inconsistency thesis by characterizing four criteria for epistemic rationality and then proving that, under said criteria, individuals will be judged rational when groups are not and vice versa. We then explain the implications of our results for descriptive history of science and normative epistemology.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 78 , Issue 4 , October 2011 , pp. 653 - 677
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

The authors would like to thank three anonymous referees and audiences at Logic and the Foundations of Game and Decision Theory 2010; Logic, Reasoning, and Rationality 2010; the London School of Economics; and the University of Tilburg for their helpful comments. Conor Mayo-Wilson and Kevin Zollman were supported by the National Science Foundation grant SES 1026586. David Danks was partially supported by a James S. McDonnell Foundation Scholar Award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the James S. McDonnell Foundation.

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