A Plea for Complexity: The Normative Assessment of Groups’ Responses to Testimony

The epistemic evaluation of group performance in the face of testimony and disagreement is a more complex matter than has so far been explicitly acknowledged in the literature. Not least, often it is far from clear whether our evaluations of a group’s responses to testimony are primarily epistemic or moral, and, in the latter case, how epistemic standards play into our moral assessment. For example, it is difficult to keep apart a group’s beliefs from its mere acceptances or pretensions for its purposes of communication. Further, arguably relevant criteria of groupness, group membership, and group belief vary according to our evaluative interests and perspectives. This chapter discuss an array of such perspectives.