Social Knowledge and Rational Group Action

The Social Knowledge (SK) view of group knowledge holds that a group can know that p without any of its members having any awareness that p at all (Bird, 2010, 2024). Some reject SK because it seems to sever the connection between knowledge and action (Kallestrup, 2022: 21-22; Lackey, 2014, 2021: ch. 3). I argue that this style of objection to SK—the Rational Action Objection (RAO)—fails because it assumes a crucial premise linking the rationality of a group’s action to the rationality of its members’ actions. Without this missing premise, the argument is invalid. Moreover, I argue that the needed premise (1) subtly begs the question against SK and (2) implausibly rules out the possibility of conflicts between individual and collective rationality. The upshot: groups, like individuals, may have reasons to act but be unable to act on those reasons. Thus, SK can respect the connection between knowledge and action.