Collective Belief And Acceptance

Margaret Gilbert explores the phenomenon referred to in everyday ascriptions of beliefs to groups. She refers to this type of phenomenon as “collective belief” and calls the types of groups that are the bearers of such beliefs “plural subjects”. I argue that the attitudes that groups adopt that Gilbert refers to as “collective beliefs” are not a species of belief in an important and central sense, but rather a species of acceptance. Unlike proper beliefs, a collective belief is adopted by a group as a means to realizing the group’s goals. Unless we recognize that this phenomenon is a species of acceptance, plural subjects will seem prone to change their “beliefs” for irrelevant reasons, and thus frequently appear to act in an irrational manner. Margaret Gilbert explores the phenomenon referred to in everyday ascriptions of beliefs to groups. She refers to this type of phenomenon as “collective belief“ and calls the types of communities that are the bearers of such beliefs “plural subjects”. In this paper, I argue that the attitudes that groups adopt that Gilbert refers to as “collective beliefs” are not a species of belief, but rather a species of acceptance. Unlike proper beliefs, a collective belief is adopted by a group as a means to realizing the group’s goals. Unless we recognize that the phenomenon that concerns Gilbert is a species of acceptance, plural subjects will seem prone to change their views for irrelevant reasons, and thus frequently appear to act in an irrational manner. When we recognize that plural subjects accept views rather than believe them, we will realize that some considerations that would be irrelevant to determining what an individual should believe are relevant to determining what a group should accept.