Collective Epistemic Reasons are Implausible

This note challenges Veli Mitova’s “The Collective Epistemic Reasons of Social-Identity Groups.” Mitova aims to show that loosely structured social-identity groups are agents and have beliefs. I argue that each step in this project either begs the question or shifts scope. The examples of group action she provides are explainable as the actions of individuals. And the two theorists on whom she draws to bolster her view are both actually in disagreement with her: Charles Mills explicitly theorizes distributions of error among individuals, not group-level cognition. And in Christian List’s model, agency depends on suitable organization and information integration, which undercuts attributions to loosely structured identity groups. With group agency and belief unestablished on the terms offered, the claim that such groups bear distinctive epistemic reasons is left unmotivated.