1

The subject of knowledge in collaborative science

Duygu Uygun Tunç

Abstract

The epistemic subject of collective scientific knowledge has been a matter of dispute in
recent philosophy of science and epistemology. Following the distributed cognition
framework, both collective-subject accounts (most notably by Knorr-Cetina, in Epistemic
Cultures, Harvard University Press, 1999) as well as no-subject accounts of collective
scientific knowledge (most notably by Giere, Social Epistemology 21:313–320, 2007; in
Carruthers, Stich, Siegal (eds), The Cognitive Basis of Science, Cambridge University
Press, 2002a) have been offered. Both strategies of accounting for collective knowledge are
problematic from the perspective of mainstream epistemology. Postulating genuinely
collective epistemic subjects is a high-commitment strategy with little clear benefits. On
the other hand, eliminating the epistemic subject radically severs the link between
knowledge and knowers. Most importantly, both strategies lead to the undesirable
outcome that in some cases of scientific knowledge there might be no individual knower
that we can identify. I argue that distributed cognition offers us a fertile framework for
analyzing complex socio-technical processes of contemporary scientific knowledge
production, but scientific knowledge should nonetheless be located in individual knowers.
I distinguish between the production and possession of knowledge, and argue that
collective knowledge is collectively produced knowledge, not collectively possessed
knowledge. I propose an account of non-testimonial, expert scientific knowledge which
allows for collectively produced knowledge to be known by individuals.

Introduction

Large research collaborations constitute an increasingly prevalent form of social

organization of research activity in many scientific fields. In the last decades, the concept
of distributed cognition has provided a suitable basis for thinking about collective
knowledge in the philosophy of science. Karin Knorr-Cetina’s and Ronald Giere’s analyses
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of high energy physics experiments are the most prominent examples. Although they both
refer to distributed cognition in describing the processes of knowledge production in these
experiments, their accounts regarding the epistemic subject of knowledge thus produced
are quite different. While Knorr-Cetina argues for an irreducibly collective subject, Giere
argues for eliminating the epistemic subject and opting for using the passive voice in
describing collectively produced knowledge. Neither of these views are easy to assimilate
within a mainstream epistemological account. The collective subject view postulates a
new, supra-individual epistemic subject and denies knowledge to individuals when the
processes of knowledge production are distributed. Both moves create tension with
epistemology’s traditionally individualist framework. The no-subject view envisions that
we can divorce knowledge and knowledge-production from knowers, which clashes both
with the intuitive assumption that knowledge implies a knower and the traditional
association between knowledge and intellectual autonomy. Both views entail that in
dealing with the phenomenon of distributed cognition we can do without individual
knowers.

I will argue that epistemology should be extended in a way that can accommodate
collectively produced knowledge, but that we will have a serious problem if this involves
denying scientific knowledge to individuals. If the members of a large research
collaboration cannot be said to know the collectively produced epistemic outcomes, we
would have to accept the absurd conclusion that either no one or only a supra-individual
entity learns from the most successful research collaborations we have. I will both advance
skepticism against the collective subject view and counter the skepticism towards
individual knowledge in the context of distributed cognition. To this aim, I will argue for
conceiving research collaborations in terms of a cognitive system that produces (not
possesses) knowledge, which can eventually be possessed (though not produced) by
constituent individuals when certain conditions are met. Firstly, the distributed research
process should be reliable in producing scientific evidence and secondly, there should be a
reliable distributed process of criticism for scrutinizing the reliability of the scientific
evidence that is collectively produced. I will analyze both conditions in terms of
distributed first-order and second-order justification, where I put forward a virtue
reliabilist account of justification that is compatible with epistemic dependence. I will
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conclude that the notion of justified epistemic dependence enables us to attribute
knowledge to individuals when knowledge production is irreducibly social.

The structure of the paper is as follows. In Sect 1 I briefly outline how the
distributed cognition framework has been applied to collaborative research and the
radically divergent accounts of collective knowledge it inspired; namely, the collective
subject account and the no-subject account. In Sect 2 I elaborate on the problems both the
collective-subject account and the no-subject account face. In 2.1 I examine several
examples of the strongly anti-individualist perspective on collective scientific knowledge
which treats groups as genuine epistemic subjects. In 2.2 I examine the eliminativist
strategy which opts for impersonal or subjectless knowledge. In Sect 3 I present my
original account of collectively produced, individually possessed scientific knowledge. In
3.1 I characterize research collaborations as distributed cognitive systems for producing
objective knowledge (i.e., a system of scientific propositions). In 3.2 I present my account
of knowledge that allows for attributing non-testimonial, expert scientific knowledge of
collectively produced epistemic outcomes to individual scientists. In Sect 4 I conclude the
paper with some thoughts on potential further directions that can be taken by a social
epistemology of science that does not investigate collective epistemic subjects.

1. Distributed cognition model of collaborative research and the elusive subject of

knowledge

Scientific inquiry is at bottom a highly structured cognitive process. Cognitive processes

are generally though to occur exclusively within organismic boundaries, so as a cognitive
process scientific inquiry is intuitively something that happens in the head of the
individual scientist. But we rarely find that such a complex form of cognition as scientific
inquiry is realized without substantial reliance on scientific instruments and other experts,
past and present. Various kinds of factors external to the individual agent seem to play not
only supportive but constitutive roles in the production of scientific knowledge. Such
epistemic dependence comes into full relief in large research collaborations, where
individual agents coordinate their diverse expertise, cognitive effort and interactions with
various epistemic artifacts in ways that give rise to what we may call complex cognitive
systems. Research collaborations are formed to realize overly complex cognitive tasks, or
“big questions,” that typically surpass the bounds of individual expertise and cognitive
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capacity, thus can be said to produce knowledge at the supra-individual or epistemic
system level.

The concept of distributed cognition, which originated in cognitive science, is

grounded in the non-individualist or externalist premise that cognition is not necessarily
an intracranial process but can extend to external epistemic sources such as scientific
instruments as well as incorporate the cognitive activities of multiple agents (Hutchins,
1995; also, Clark, 1996; Clark & Chalmers, 1998). Distributed cognition provides a useful
framework for analyzing collective knowledge production in terms of division of cognitive
labor, and it has already been employed in the philosophy of science to describe
collaborative research processes in certain fields. On the basis of his observations at the
Indiana University Cyclotron Facility, Ronald Giere (2002a) describes the collaborative
research activity thus:

In thinking about this facility, one might be tempted to ask, who is gathering the
data? From the standpoint of distributed cognition, that is a poorly framed
question. A better description of the situation is to say that the data is being
gathered by a complex cognitive system consisting of the accelerator, detectors,
computers and all the people actively working on the experiment. Understanding
such a complex cognitive system requires more than just enumerating the
components. It requires also understanding the organization of the components.
And […] this includes the social organization.

Giere (2002b) also provides a more general description of distributed cognition (which he
does not intend as a definition): We speak of distributed cognition where two or more
individuals reach a cognitive outcome by combining un-shared individual knowledge and
by interacting with epistemic artifacts. Karin Knorr-Cetina (1999) similarly depicts the
High Energy Physics experiments she observed during her field research stay at CERN in
terms of distributed cognition:

The point is that no single individual or small group of individuals can, by

themselves, produce the kind of results these experiments are after ̶ for example,
vector bosons or the long “elusive” top quark or the Higgs mechanism. It is this
impossibility which the authorship conventions of experimental HEP exhibit. They
signify that the individual has been turned into an element of a much larger unit
that functions as a collective epistemic subject (p. 167-8).
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...reflexivity is turned into an instrument of knowledge, machines are redefined and

recruited into the social world, and the subjectivity of participants is put on the line
– and quite successfully replaced by something like distributed cognition (p. 25).

Although distributed cognition presents a particularly useful model for examining

the epistemic structure of collaborative science, it also raises serious doubts about whether
we can still conceive scientific knowledge as a state of the traditional subject of
epistemology—the individual. While Giere and Knorr-Cetina offer similar descriptions of
how knowledge is produced in collaborative experiments in terms of distributed cognition,
their accounts differ significantly when it comes to identifying the epistemic subject of
collectively produced knowledge.

For Knorr-Cetina, the epistemic subject in the case of HEP experiments is the
experiment itself. The whole collaboration, together with the instruments it employs and
all the communicative and practical activities and interactions that weave the people and
the instruments into a unitary entity, presents a novel epistemic subject:

The HEP experiments studied, in continually integrating over themselves (to put it
in mathematical terms), continually assemble the collaboration into a community
reflexively bound together through self-knowledge. The medium that brings this
assemblage about is the conversation a collaboration holds with itself. This
conversation, I maintain, replaces the individual epistemic subject, which is so
prominent in other fields. It construes, and accounts for, a new kind of epistemic
subject, a procurer of knowledge that is collective and dispersed. No individual
knows it all, but within the experiment's conversation with itself, knowledge is
produced (Op. Cit., p. 178).

For Knorr-Cetina the subjectivity of the individual subject is erased, and through
distributed cognition the experiment not only becomes a supra-individual entity (e.g., a
system) but an epistemic subject tout court, as it acquires “a stream of (collective) self-
knowledge” (p. 171-173), “a sort of consciousness” (p. 178).1

1In her portrayal even the instruments become organismic entities by virtue of the way in which researchers
interact with them and are integrated into an organismic whole that is the experiment – which she models
along the lines of Durkheimian collective consciousness. The above quoted paragraph continues: “For those
 6
Giere (2002b, 2007), on the other hand, finds such an ascription of collective
subjectivity to research collaborations too much of an ontological commitment. 2 He argues
that we can view certain research collaborations as distributed “cognitive systems”
because they realize a cognitive task,3 not because they exhibit as a whole cognitive
properties that imply agency. Thus, we do not need to postulate distributed cognitive
agents in order to speak about distributed cognitive systems. In particular we do not need
to endow such systems with mental states such as knowledge or (its prerequisite) belief.
Giere maintains, instead, that we should characterize them in a depersonalized or
impersonal way, “so that we would say things like ‘This experiment has shown that. . . .’
or ‘This experiment leads to the conclusion that. . . .’” He envisions that the developing
science of cognition could allow us to redefine cognition as a technical scientific concept
(which does not correlate with mindedness or agency) rather than a folk-psychological
one, and to leave behind the assumption that “if knowledge is being produced, there must
be an epistemic subject, the thing that knows what comes to be known” (2007, p. 316).

2. Why both no-subject and the collective-subject accounts of scientific knowledge are
problematic

Both the strategy of conceiving collective knowledge in a non-subjective or impersonal

way and that of postulating collective epistemic subjects conflict with the individualistic
perspective of traditional epistemology, according to which knowledge is a
cognitive/epistemic state of the individual. The collective subject account of collaborative
scientific knowledge is premised on the idea that the subject of knowledge should be
whomever that produces it, which in this case eliminates the individual as a candidate. It
postulates a novel kind of epistemic subject, the research collaboration or the experiment,4
in its stead. The no-subject account maintains, on the other hand, that knowledge
production does not necessarily imply subjecthood and in the particular case of large

who still remember Durkheim (1933: chap. 3), the conversation produces a version of his much-rebuffed
‘conscience collective’.”
2Kitcher (1994) and Thagard (1997) similarly argue against the view that knowledge can possessed by a

collective subject.
3 For taking the “task” as the individuating factor for distributed cognitive systems, see also Magnus, 2007.
4 Knorr-Cetina’s supra-individual subject, the experiment, comprises not only the human members of a

research team but also the technical instruments the research team relies on in producing knowledge.
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research collaborations such an implication would be mistaken—which again disqualifies
the individual along with any other candidate entity.5

As both Knorr-Cetina and Giere admit, it is clear that some modern forms of
scientific inquiry substantially challenge some of our core epistemic intuitions, starting
with our traditional individualism about knowledge. Distributed cognition provides us
with a framework in which we can reconsider this core individualistic assumption of
epistemology and talk about collective epistemic states and achievements, as it is
increasingly being done in social epistemology (E.g., Gilbert, 1987; 2004; Goldman, 2014;
List and Petit, 2011; Tuomela, 1992; 2004). I maintain, however, that this extension or
revision of traditional epistemology (cf. Palermos and Pritchard, 2013) should not go as far
as postulating collective epistemic subjects or endorsing an exclusively impersonal view of
knowledge. Both these strategies are problematic, as they entail the possibility that no one,
strictly speaking, learns from the most successful research collaborations we have.
However, as I will argue in the third section, collective production of scientific knowledge
does not present us with a forced choice between these two. What we need to
acknowledge is only that some epistemic processes whereby individuals come to acquire
knowledge can require for their realization complex cognitive systems that comprise other
agents and possibly epistemic artifacts.

2.1. Irreducibly collective knowledge

The collective-subject account is problematic primarily due to the unnecessarily high

degree of ontological commitment it has to make. Firstly, research collaborations do not
seem prima facie to manifest subjective properties such as consciousness, reflectivity, care
or self-knowledge. Knorr-Cetina attributes the HEP experiments precisely such subjective
properties but does so without putting forward an explicit ontological argument that
would warrant such an attribution. In order to warrant the postulation of collective
subjects, one has to demonstrate that collective accomplishment of a cognitive task entails
a collective mind. To put this in terms of distributed cognition, one must show at least

5 It may be argued neither account necessarily denies individual knowledge but only argues for the
possibility of knowledge without an individual knower. Such a weaker reading would not make a
significant difference for the present argument.
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how distributed cognition implies distributed mental states. Such an account must go
beyond joint epistemic actions and argue for irreducibly collective mental properties.6

For justification of such an inference from distributed cognition to irreducibly

collective (or social) epistemic subjects, we can turn to other accounts that similarly
advocate high-commitment positions. More recently Alexander Bird (2010, 2014) and
Orestis Palermos (2020) argued for genuinely or irreducibly collective scientific
knowledge. Bird (2014), like Knorr-Cetina, invokes Durkheim’s concept of “organic
solidarity” in grounding distributed cognitive systems as genuine epistemic subjects. 7
Scientists in a research collaboration, for Bird, compose a genuine social entity on the basis
of their mutual interdependence due to the division of scientific labor, which implies a
distribution of cognitive sub-tasks not merely in a quantitative but also qualitative manner
(i.e., in accordance with the heterogeneity of the expertise required). Bird then goes from
division of scientific labor to irreducibly collective epistemic states via a functionalist
argument: The collective entity realizes a cognitive function, which consists in cognitive
activity geared towards a certain goal, and we can explain a cognitive function the best by
attributing intentional states to the target system. The system as a whole can be said to
have a cognitive/epistemic state on the basis of accomplishing a cognitive function even if
no individual member of the system is in that state. Thus, the group can have scientific
knowledge that all individual members lack. Bird (2010) gives the example of an
imaginary research team consisting of a physicist and a mathematician, where one
establishes that if p then q and the other the truth of p without interacting with one another
and the conclusion that q is published by an assistant per pre-arrangement. Bird argues
that in this case the research team alone knows that q.8 However, it is not clear what exactly
binds the two researchers into a research team, as nothing would change in the example if
one or both were dead. In line with the lack of any principle of individuation for epistemic
groups, Bird does not restrict this account to distributed cognitive systems with clearly

6There are other accounts of collective epistemic states which do not make the ontological commitment in the
second step, such as the joint commitment or acceptance accounts of group belief by Raimo Tuomela (1992,
1995, 2004) and Margaret Gilbert (1987, 2004, 2014).
7 For a similar invocation of Durkheim in regard to group knowledge, see Wray, 2007.
8Actually, this thought example can testify to the no-subject or impersonal knowledge account much better

than it does to the collective-subject account, as there is hardly any reason to presume a collective belief that
q.
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defined tasks. He extends it to wider science on the basis of the epistemic interdependence
of the scientific community, calling it a single entity.

A core concern here is obviously that Bird’s account is not able to differentiate
between unified cognitive systems and loosely organized epistemic communities (see also
Wray, 2007). For this reason, the framework of distributed cognition loses its conceptual
role in accounting for collective knowledge. Epistemic interdependence in the broad sense
can be said to characterize all human epistemic endeavors and we can clearly not speak of
an epistemic subject who is absolutely autonomous in producing knowledge. In this
regard, he is not in a position even to delineate an actively interacting epistemic
community from its long past contributors, since findings, theories and inventions live
much longer than their originators. This directly leads to the worry that the subject of
scientific knowledge is inflated to the point of meaninglessness.9

Palermos (2020) offers a similarly strong definition of distributed cognitive systems,

which nonetheless delineates distributed cognitive systems from broader communities of
knowledge. His account draws on Dynamic Systems Theory and can be summarized as
follows:

Emergent dynamic system view of distributed cognition: There is a distributed

cognitive system if and only if continuous and reciprocal interactions between
constituent members give rise to an integrated system with novel, non-aggregative
properties.

For Palermos, collective knowledge that arises in such a distributed cognitive system is a
special kind of group knowledge, one that is not summative. Palermos’ argument contains
the premise that the emergent system is an irreducible group agent, which can also be seen
as a group mind. The reason is that emergent distributed cognitive systems exhibit, for
Palermos, socio-cognitive properties that do not belong to any individual member
(2016b).10 Palermos’ account (2020) is clearly free from the kind of inflation of the

9A similar objection directed at the extended (or distributed) cognition thesis is known as the “cognitive
bloat” (see e.g., Rupert, 2004). I am not concerned with this argument in this paper, since I assume that
distributed cognitive systems can be meaningfully individuated although I argue against attributing them
subjective or agentive states.
10Against the possible objection that the attribution of a mind implies attribution of consciousness, which

groups lack, Palermos (2016b) states that consciousness may not be necessary for mindedness. In particular,
he considers it plausible that groups manifest specific cognitive processes such as memory, decision-making
and knowing. See n.1.
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epistemic subject, since his criterion of inclusion is continuous and reciprocal interaction.
This criterion, for Palermos, applies to distributed cognitive systems in the same way it
does to individual (biological) cognitive systems. Individual cognitive systems are
characterized by cooperative interactions between the (functionally parsed) constituent
parts and sub-parts of the system (e.g., memory, motor control). Distributed cognitive
systems are organized through the coupling of multiple cognitive systems through
continuous and reciprocal interactions and by virtue of functional equivalence they also
deserve the status of cognitive systems. Further, in case distributed systems can
accomplish the same cognitive functions as biological systems, such as decision-making or
belief-formation, the resulting cognitive/epistemic states are those of the entire system in a
non-summative, irreducible sense. Thus, they can be manifest at the system level even if
no constituent member manifests them.

Being developed within a performance-based virtue framework originating from

Ernest Sosa (2007, 2009, 2011), Palermos’ argument proceeds from collective performances
to emergent collective properties. He argues that the positive epistemic standing11 of the
beliefs produced by research collaborations is an irreducibly collective property. A similar
conclusion is advanced by Jesper Kallestrup (2016) and Adam Carter (2020), who also
proposed virtue epistemological perspectives on collective knowledge. Both Kallestrup
and Carter argue for the irreducibility of collective knowledge on the basis of the
irreducibility of a particular epistemic property of group belief; namely, its aptness.
Aptness, Sosa’s criterion for epistemic virtue, refers to epistemic success that manifests
competence. An apt belief is a belief that is true because it is formed via the exercise of a
reliable cognitive skill or ability. Similarly to Palermos, Kallestrup and Carter argue that a
group can form an apt belief while no individual member of the group can.12

I think one can convincingly argue that distributed cognitive systems have weakly
emergent collective properties, which do not compel us to invoke collective subjective
states. In the case of research collaborations, the “reliability” or the “efficiency” of the
distributed research process in yielding credible empirical evidence are such weakly
emergent properties which cannot be obtained by simply adding up the corresponding

11 This positive epistemic standing of group beliefs consists, according to Palermos, in their being reliable
and epistemically responsible.
12 Using Carter’s (2020) formulation, this group of virtue epistemological accounts of collective knowledge

endorse a symmetrical conception of aptness, which they apply equally to individual and group apt belief.
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properties of constituent sub-processes with disregard to the organizational structure of
the system. Similarly, the required complex “expertise” or “competence” for
implementing the collectively agreed research design, data collection and analysis
strategy, and for the manipulation and coordination of the heterogeneous set of scientific
instruments is a property of the research collaboration as a whole. It is perfectly possible
and oftentimes true that no member of a research collaboration individually manifests
this complex competence manifested at the system level. Moreover, the system-level
competence can comprise certain “skills” that no member of the research collaboration
exercises; namely, those that are due the scientific instruments which function as epistemic
artifacts in extending (or replacing) human cognitive capabilities (see e.g., Palermos, 2011).
However, the collective epistemic competence of a research collaboration is not an
irreducible property. There is nothing in this complex competence that cannot be analyzed
in terms of constituent skills and the way in which they are organized and coordinated (cf.
Carter, 2020;13 Pino, 202114). As Kallestrup similarly maintains, “a group’s innermost
competence is reducible to a summation of innermost competences of its individual
members and their manner of arrangement within the group,” hence, “novel competences
of groups do not spring into existence or mysteriously emerge when conjoining existing
individual ones” (2016, p. 10).15 No single member of a research collaboration manifests

13 Carter maintains that not only the aptness of group beliefs but also group competences are genuinely or
irreducibly collective. His argument is based on the case of so-called Mandevillian intelligence; i.e., “some
dispositions that are unreliable and thereby are not individual-level competences can […] lead to knowledge
conducive dispositions at the collective level” (2020, p.24). There is one minor and one major problem with
this argument. The minor one is that the case for Mandevillian intelligence (see Smart, 2018) lacks convincing
real-world examples of collaborative research and rests largely on computer simulations. For this reason, its
external validity remains to be explored. The major one is that the concept, assuming that it has some
external validity, is applicable to loosely organized scientific communities rather than research
collaborations. Research collaborations have clear cognitive goals and research strategies to achieve them,
both of which are often set in advance. Thus, they do not give the individual researchers sufficient elbow
room to engage in “deviant” epistemic behaviors which would be incompatible with the collective aims. We
can see this more clearly if we take some applications of the idea to scientific inquiry, such as Zollman’s
(2010), who argues that individuals who are intellectually dogmatic can possibly bring about epistemic
benefits at the collective level by exploring areas of the “epistemic landscape” that would be left uncharted
by those who are motivated by “truth.” While such independent exploration can take place in a loosely
organized scientific community such as a research field, it is unrealistic to expect it in a research
collaboration.
14 Pino (2021) defends that group epistemic competence should be seen as an irreducible property, as “group

normative status that guides towards knowledge.” However, his argument rests on an anti-intellectual
conception of group know-how. Research collaborations are typically much more fitted for an intellectualist
interpretation, according to which a “group is guided by explicit norms that result from the member’s joint
acceptance.”
15 Kallestrup conjoins this deflationist account of group competence, however, with a non-deflationist

account of group knowledge on the basis of group apt belief, which I reject as I see belief as an unfit category
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fully the complex competence that we see at the level of the distributed cognitive system,
but the latter consists in a particular organization of various individual competences.

These and similar weakly emergent properties of research collaborations can be

among the determinants of whether accepting a scientific proposition asserted by the
collaboration counts as knowledge. As Sosa acknowledges, the epistemic success of an
individual belief might be due to a “complex social competence only partially seated in
that individual believer” (2007, p. 97). The epistemic status of the individual scientist’s
belief in the findings established by a research collaboration depends to a substantial
extent on various weakly emergent properties of the distributed cognitive system such as
the complex competence it manifests, as I will explicate further in the following sections.

However, it is not clear what in particular would be gained by attributing epistemic

subjecthood, let alone beliefs to research collaborations in any literal sense, which would
imply strongly emergent properties such as collective intentionality or collective epistemic
responsibility16 (if not collective consciousness). The distributed cognitive process realized
by a collaboration is primarily one of establishing scientific evidence for a (set of)
proposition(s) by implementing a methodological plan; it is not a process of belief-
formation.17 It is of secondary importance that these statements are also affirmed by a
particular collective body. Here I must further note that when we take the research
collaborations at CERN as real-world and prominent examples of a distributed research
process, we see that while they can be said to accept and assert propositions, it is much
more difficult to characterize them as having group beliefs—except maybe in a summative

to describe the collective epistemic output of research collaborations. I elaborate on this in the rest of the
paper.
16 Unlike subjecthood, I have no objection to the application of the concept of collective accountability to

research collaborations. Collectives can sensibly be treated as agents for specific purposes, such as
attributing due credit or blame when they make assertions in the form of publications or public
announcements, similar to the category of juridical persons in law. But it is important to note that when we
treat groups as agents who are subject to praise and blame, a strongly social view of knowledge is
particularly problematic. As Lackey (2014) maintains, when a group knows that p without any individual
member knowing that p, then it will be epistemically irrational for the group to act on p. Since a public
assertion (e.g., publication) is an action, even if we grant strongly emergent epistemic states such as belief or
knowledge that p to a research collaboration, it would be epistemically irrational for the collaboration to
assert that p—which would undermine its purpose.
17 I should note that Palermos (2020) does not premise his argument on the metaphysics of collective belief.

His focus is on the justificatory properties of processes of belief-formation rather than beliefs themselves.
Nonetheless, he treats distributed research processes as processes of belief-formation, which I think is not
necessary. See also my next note.
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sense, which does not imply genuinely collective mental states.18 Beliefs are generally
considered to be automatic or involuntary (Hakli, 2006). However, in these and similar
cases in science the goal (e.g., investigating whether p) is typically determined beforehand
in panels and committees, and the results do not automatically turn into epistemic outputs
as the collaborations still have to decide whether to make the findings public or examine
them further. Moreover, a collaboration may always revise the conclusions drawn on the
basis of the findings or decide to retract a publication upon finding a mistake in the
calculations. Thus, while the epistemic output of a research collaboration, typically a
publication or public announcement, can be regarded as involving a propositional attitude
for certain intends and purposes, such as attributing due credit or blame, such
propositional attitudes are better characterized as acceptances and assertions rather than
beliefs (see also Hakli, 2007; Wray, 2001). Consequently, the distributed cognition
framework is pertinent for conceiving how research collaborations realize the cognitive
task of evidence-generation, but we do not have sufficient reason to regard collective
research processes as processes of belief-formation (cf. Carter, 2020).

The chief complication for any strongly anti-individualist view of collective

knowledge such as the foregoing is obviously the close association between epistemic
states and subjective states. An alternative strategy may be to distance epistemological
concerns from psychological ones and give terms like “believes” a novel, non-mentalistic
interpretation which need not imply consciousness.19 Such a move would be permissible
of course, but it is not so clear why it should be desirable. Ethics of terminology would
require that there should be a clear gain from changing the ordinary meanings of terms to
render them applicable to a broader class of objects. I do not think that this is the case with
group knowledge, as it can be conceived in a way that “saves the phenomenon” to the
same extent without undertaking a substantial redefinition of ordinary epistemological
and psychological terms. Moreover, there may be good reasons to treat group or system

18 A research collaboration can be said to summatively believe that p when most or all collaboration
members believe that p (see Quinton, 1976). The summative interpretation of group belief may still be
difficult to apply to most research collaborations, because it is perfectly possible that a collaboration refrains
from publicly affirming that p (for instance due to high epistemic or other kinds of risks involved) while all
collaboration members believe that p. A notion of group acceptance can thus be more suitable in most cases.
For accounts of group acceptance, see Hakli (2007), Wray (2001).
19 Similarly to how cognition has largely been de-psychologized in turning into a cognitive scientific concept.

There are also widely acclaimed proposals for de-psychologizing the concept of mind. See “extended mind,”
Clark & Chalmers, 1998.
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level epistemic properties as being qualitatively distinct from individual ones, because
there are properties that can be exhibited by social organizations and not by individuals
(no matter with or without subjective states) and vice versa. I will come back to this point
in the last section of the paper.

Most importantly, besides their costly ontological commitment to collective

epistemic subjects, these and similar accounts explicitly acknowledge the possibility of a
scenario where we can rightly attribute knowledge of a scientific discovery to literally no
scientist.20 For instance, Palermos (2020) states that his “distributed virtue reliabilism
denies that collaboratively produced knowledge belongs to any particular individual
subject.” Similarly, Bird (2014) maintains that “there can be scientific knowledge without
any individual knowing.” This is a highly undesirable conclusion, as it entails that
knowledge does not supervene on individual cognitive states.21 It rests, I think, partly on a
conflation of collective processes and their properties with the outcomes of such processes.
Sometimes a task consists merely in a “performance,” but in many other cases there is an
output distinct from the performance that brought it about. Let us think of Hutchins’s
example of ship navigation, through which he greatly popularized the concept of
distributed cognitive system.22 A typical task on a ship can be bringing the ship to a dry
dock, the outcome of which is only that the ship has been dry-docked. It is accomplished
by a system, where instruments and people co-constitute a vast network of mutual
computational and representational dependencies, as Hutchins describes. The task is
massively distributed, such that we can point to no one who indeed docks the ship. A sub-
task such as determining the relative position of the ship vis-a-vis the dock, however, has a
specific output: the calculated relative position of the ship. While the task of determining it
is a genuinely collective cognitive effort, the position of the ship can be known in principle
by anyone. In this regard, collaborations ultimately produce empirical evidence for

20 Palermos’ motivation for postulating epistemic group agents, as he explicitly states, is to avoid an
impersonal construal of collective knowledge as proposed by Giere (2020, pp. 117). As I argue in the next
section, I agree with him that such a position “significantly departs from mainstream epistemology, which has
always assumed that knowledge is knowledge of a subject S.” However, his proposal (or any other similarly
anti-individualist proposal) equally departs from mainstream epistemology for its rejection of its individualist
framework) and is not necessary to avoid the impersonal knowledge view. Moreover, I believe that
“knowledge without an individual subject” does not fare much better in terms of desirability than
“knowledge without a subject.”
21 For further epistemological problems with this conclusion, see Lackey, 2014.
22 I have to note that Hutchins himself is more sympathetic to the idea of a distributed mind than I am.
 15
scientific propositions, and I doubt that it is an appealing conclusion to say that some
scientific propositions are not known by anyone but a supra-individual entity.

2.2 Impersonal knowledge

To turn to the no-subject account, we can admit that conceiving scientific knowledge as
impersonal knowledge, or knowledge without a subject has some conceptual advantages
and a certain appeal. Scientific knowledge, arguably unlike mundane knowledge-that and
knowledge-how, is at a fundamental level a system of statements that are interwoven via
logical operations and methodological rules. In this respect, scientific knowledge can be
regarded as “objective knowledge” in Popper’s sense (1968) in contradistinction to
“subjective knowledge” which is a mental phenomenon—specifically, a form of belief:23

knowledge or thought in the subjective sense, consisting of a

state of mind or of consciousness or a disposition to behave or to react, and
knowledge in an objective sense, consisting of problems, theories, and argu-
ments as such. Knowledge in this objective sense is totally independent
of anybody’s claim to know; also it is independent of anybody’s belief, or
disposition to assent; or to assert, or to act. Knowledge in the objective sense
is knowledge without a knower: it is knowledge without a knowing subject.

Although Giere does not specify what he means by impersonal knowledge beyond
suggesting that we reformulate knowledge attribution statements in passive form, his
account can lend itself to be interpreted in a way quite similar to Popper’s notion of
objective knowledge (see esp. Giere, 2007). However, the concept of objective knowledge
lacks any reference to acts of thinking and practices of inquiry. For this reason, it does not
tell us by itself anything about the processes of scientific knowledge production, which
establish the empirical justification for the targeted system of statements, or where this
kind of knowledge resides—in individual minds, groups of minds, or in books, articles,
databases? It merely refers to the outcome of an epistemic process, which in turn can be
regarded as mental content as well as a material system of external signs. Thus, the
concept of objective knowledge does not imply any commitment to any epistemic subject
either in its production or its possession. Consequently, we still have to ask the question of
what exactly is collective in collective scientific knowledge, to which we can in principle
give two answers: We can say that it is collectively produced knowledge or that it is

23For a similar point, see Faulkner, 2018. Faulkner further remarks that Popper’s distinction between
objective and subjective knowledge can be likened to the distinction between the justification of a
proposition and the justification of a belief, which does not have the ontological commitment to a third
world of intelligibles as does Popper’s.
 16
collectively possessed knowledge (or both). The way Giere analyzes research collaborations
through the concept of distributed cognition leads us to the first option: Research
collaborations produce objective knowledge (e.g., a scientific finding) by realizing
collectively the complex cognitive processes that are required for its establishment, where
these processes involve combining various kinds of background knowledge (i.e.,
expertise), interacting with various scientific instruments (i.e., epistemic artifacts), and
organizing various cognitive activities into a coherent procedure (e.g., analyzing data,
drawing inferences, comparing calculations).

Collective production of knowledge (through distributed cognition) is also a feature

of Knorr-Cetina’s, Bird’s and Palermos’ analyses. The core difference between these two
perspectives is how they answer the question as to the epistemic subject of the knowledge
thus produced. This question addresses, as I have said, the seat of knowledge. For Giere
we do not need to answer this question; we do not have to assume an epistemic subject
that knows “what comes to be known” (i.e., objective knowledge). For others, the subject
that knows is “the experiment,” “the scientific community,” or “the collaboration”—an
irreducibly collective subject.

While scientific knowledge is in one respect clearly objective knowledge, which can
“reside” in systems of material, external signs (e.g., printed in books), it would be a far-
fetched conclusion to say that it can reside solely in this manner. Can we say that it will still
be known that the universe is expanding even if the world enters another dark age, and
nobody is left who understands physical cosmology? It is reasonable to say, with Popper
(1968), that the following two scenarios would not be the same: There is no living person
who has sufficient knowledge in physical cosmology, but (i) all scientific publications are
preserved in libraries, or (ii) all scientific publications are also destroyed. In the first case it
is highly probable that one day some people who will have trained themselves in physical
cosmology using the materials in the libraries will read the relevant publications and be
able to learn that the universe is expanding. Nevertheless, we can say without much
hesitation that until that happens it would not be known that the universe is expanding.
Thus, it is difficult to say that objective knowledge can exist without furnishing the content
of subjective knowledge.
 17
The no-subject account of collectively produced knowledge leads us, just like the
collective subject account, to the absurd possibility that nobody comes to know what is
established in some of the most successful cases of scientific research, such as the empirical
confirmation of the Higgs boson. I think a much more commonsensical position is to say
that objective knowledge implies subjective knowledge. Tuomela (2004) also hints at such
an implication by saying that “such knowledge is not an abstract entity floating around in
some kind of Platonic ‘third world’. Rather it is knowledge that some actual agent or
agents actually have or have had as contents of their appropriate mental states.” Thus, we
should be able to say that research collaborations produce knowledge in a distributed
manner, but it is the individual scientists that come to know the outcomes of the
distributed cognitive process. Giere actually has a suggestion in a similar direction, though
he does not specify it in a way that would satisfy the epistemologist. He remarks that it is
the individual scientists who evaluate the outcomes and draw conclusions on the basis of
the experiments, and indirectly the lay person through (a chain of) testimony. He
maintains that while this kind of knowledge cannot be produced by individuals, the final
result can be known by individuals in the ordinary sense of the term (2002b, p. 643).
Although Giere’s suggestion is completely in line with one of my two main points, namely
that individuals can come to know collectively produced knowledge, he takes lightly the
challenge posed by distributed knowledge production for epistemology. Giere does not
offer any specification for how the scientists can be said to know the final results of
collaborative experiments, and testimonial knowledge (which he ascribes to all others who
learn about the results) is already not part of the challenge. The individual scientist does
not come to know collectively produced knowledge in any “ordinary” sense of the term.
Let me first explicate the challenge in more detail, and then provide a suggestion for how
to meet it.

The traditional epistemological concept of knowledge, despite all variety in its

analysis, is that of subjective knowledge: a mental phenomenon and more specifically a
particularly valued form of belief. It is generally the qualities of the belief-forming process
that raises it to the level of knowledge, in addition to the qualities of the belief’s content.
From a virtue reliabilist perspective, for instance, a true proposition or a system of true
propositions is not knowledge; it is the belief in a true proposition (or a system thereof)
that is formed via the exercise of a reliable cognitive competence. From an internalist
 18
perspective, it is a true belief which is supported by consciously available good reasons. In
any case, the processes whereby knowledge is produced cannot be divorced from it, as
they are the source of its justification. But this is exactly what happens in distributed
cognitive systems: The agentive constituents of the system might come to entertain true
beliefs by affirming the outcomes (if the distributed process is successful in yielding true
propositions), but they are typically not sufficiently justified in doing so. The problem
with distributed processes of scientific justification for the epistemologist stems thus from
the fact that the traditional individualistic view of knowledge involves epistemic
autonomy: Epistemic subjects can be said to know if they are solely or primarily
responsible in the production of this knowledge.24

When we admit that objective knowledge implies subjective knowledge, the

traditional individualism of epistemology leads us directly to a problem in the case of
distributed cognition, which is often referred as Hardwig’s dilemma: we either have to
postulate a collective epistemic subject who solely has the justification (i.e., scientific
evidence) for accepting a system of propositions (i.e., a scientific claim), or we have to
provide an account of how the individual scientist can be said to know without having the
justification to do so (See Hardwig, 1985, p. 348-9). In either case we ironically end up
going radically against the individualist premise (by denying either the individuality of
the epistemic subject or the requirement for epistemic autonomy). Many authors,
including Hardwig, have opted for taking the first horn of this dilemma and offered
increasingly robust accounts of collective knowledge (e.g., Carter, 2020; de Ridder, 2014;
Faulkner, 2018; Kallestrup, 2016; Palermos, 2020; Pino, 2021). I think exploring the second
(in my opinion more conservative) option is a better strategy in accounting for collectively
produced, individually possessed knowledge. Hardwig was motivated to avoid the
second option, which he called “vicarious” knowing, as he wanted to save the intuition
that “knowing a proposition requires understanding the proposition and possessing the
relevant evidence for its truth” (1985, p. 349). I propose a more nuanced account which
allows that individuals can have sufficient justification non-autonomously, which grounds
my position that scientific knowledge that can be collectively produced and individually
known. Thus, we can indeed reject both horns of Hardwig’s dilemma.

24See also Palermos, 2016a. Palermos formulates epistemic autonomy in terms of autonomous possession of
justification.
 19
3. A third way: Collectively produced, individually known

The most parsimonious and plausible way to save both subjective knowledge of scientific
propositions and the premise that the proper epistemic subject is the individual goes
through reconsidering the requirement for epistemic autonomy and updating our view of
knowledge to accommodate epistemic dependence. We can then be in a position to
formulate an alternative account of collective scientific knowledge by conceiving research
collaborations as distributed cognitive systems that produce (not possess) knowledge
(section 3.1), which can eventually be possessed (though not produced) by constituent
individuals when certain conditions are met (section 3.2).

3.1 Research collaborations as distributed cognitive systems for production of objective

knowledge

In research collaborations the “output” is not a collective mental state such as belief but a
system of scientific propositions (i.e., a scientific claim) which stand in inferential relations
to the reported data given the documented methodological procedures.25 We can more
particularly say that the distributed cognitive process is one of evidence-generation in
support of collectively made assertions. Thus, as far as we see the product as
“knowledge,” it is not knowledge in the subjective sense but only in the objective, non-
mental sense.26

The construal of a research collaboration as a “cognitive” system means, in line

with Giere, that it is a socio-technological system of various activities that serve the
fulfillment of a cognitive task. A significant portion of these activities are also cognitive in
nature, while the rest can be primarily practical, social or instrumental. The
implementation of a research plan through distributed cognition in research collaborations
does not compel us beyond this to postulate distributed minds or subjects, because, as I

25Cf. Vaesen (2011), who argues that if one rejects distributed knowledge, then the only way to apply the
distributed cognition framework to science is endorse a deflationary view and regard the proper “output” of
distributed cognitive systems in science as information or data. However, this alternative ignores that
research collaborations typically put forward a system of scientific statements, not merely the empirical
results of the research. On this basis, they make collective assertions (e.g., scientific publications) for which
they can be held accountable. If, on the other hand, a distributed cognitive system was to merely produce
data, we would have little reason to regard it as anything else than a giant socio-technical data collector.
26According to Palermos (2020), in the case of epistemic collaborations, the collective cognitive property is

the resulting beliefs’ positive epistemic standing. But we do not have to accept that “positive epistemic
standing” implies a collective agent, since it is not even a cognitive property. For instance, a high “degree of
corroboration” of a scientific claim can ground positive epistemic standing, although it is an objective,
formal property.
 20
argued, the research process as a whole is not a mental, agentive or subjective activity like
belief formation, but a process of knowledge production in the objective sense or, still
more clearly, one of evidence-generation.

The process of evidence-generation, whether in individual research or in a research

collaboration, can be analyzed in terms of its two central objectives: (i) producing evidence
E for scientific claim p, and (ii) producing higher-order evidence E’ for E. Any successful
process of scientific inquiry produces not only first-order evidence that justifies the
acceptance of a scientific claim, but also some satisfactory amount27 of higher-order
evidence that the first-order evidence is genuine (i.e., it is not a fluke or an artifact of the
research procedure) and is not defeated. Higher-order evidence, or evidence of evidence,
is necessary for establishing an evidential connection between the findings and a scientific
claim, and it can range from error or uncertainty estimation, validation of measurement
tools, testing of alternative hypotheses, investigation of potential confounding factors to
analysis of coherence with background knowledge and other well-established theories. In
research collaborations the objectives (i) and (ii) are typically met in a distributed manner.

A research collaboration implements a complex research plan that requires the

effective coordination of various research activities that are globally geared towards a
unitary goal, such as establishing evidence in support of a scientific theory. These activities
or sub-tasks typically require diverse expertise, simultaneous manipulation of multiple
scientific instruments, or data collection at different times and places. Thus, the evidence
towards the truth of a scientific proposition is established in a distributed manner. We can
call the process whereby this first-order evidence is produced the distributed research
process. It is distributed, since producing such complex scientific evidence exceeds the
cognitive ability and capacity of individual researchers and requires a distributed
cognitive system. As an integral part of the research plan, a research collaboration also
engages in various activities for scrutinizing the evidential value of first-order scientific
evidence, whereby it produces higher-order evidence. In a distributed cognitive system,
higher-order evidence is typically also generated in a distributed manner, where different
collaboration members provide diverse kinds of higher-order evidence in accordance with
their expertise. The activities of higher-order evidence-generation constitute collectively a

27 I.e., to a degree that meets the evidential standards of the scientific community or the research field.
 21
distributed higher-order regulative mechanism, which we can call the distributed process of
criticism. The distributed research process and the distributed process of criticism together
constitute the epistemic performance of the research collaboration. Thus, the epistemic
performance of a research collaboration is distributed, while this distributed performance
has a distinct output; namely, first-order and higher-order evidence in support of a
scientific claim. This output constitutes what we referred as objective knowledge.

3.2 Individual collaboration members as the proper subjects of knowledge

Knowledge simpliciter is subjective knowledge, since objective knowledge can be said to

exist only as its content. I have argued so far that research collaborations cannot be said to
possess knowledge. In the following I will argue that individuals can be said to possess
collectively produced knowledge.

Following Sosa’s (2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2015) twofold distinction between animal
and reflective knowledge, we can conceive scientific knowledge of the expert as a species
of reflective knowledge; that is, a case of knowledge which not only implies that one
reaches true beliefs through the exercise of reliable cognitive skills or abilities (i.e.,
epistemic competence), but also that one has a positive judgment regarding the reliability
of the skills or abilities in question. In order to attain reflective knowledge, this judgment
should also manifest competence; namely, a meta-competence for evaluating the reliability
of one’s epistemic performance (Sosa, 2010; 2011). In other words, animal knowledge can
enjoy merely first-order justification, while reflective knowledge requires both first-order
and second-order justification. Generally speaking, while epistemic support for the
proposition p constitutes first-order justification, epistemic support for the reliability of the
processes whereby one’s belief that p is formed constitutes second-order justification.
Evidence for the proper functioning of my visual system constitutes second-order
justification for my perceptual belief that p, good calibration of the astronomer’s telescope
constitutes second-order justification for the accuracy of the measurements made with it,
or my reasons for believing that A’s testimony that p is based on A’s knowledge that p
constitute second-order justification for p.

In individual scientific inquiry, expertise in the relevant field typically enables

scientists to evaluate (i) whether a given body of evidence E confers empirical support to a
scientific proposition p, and (ii) the total available higher-order evidence for E so as to
 22
form a judgment on the reliability of the research process whereby E is generated, hence
on the evidential quality of E. So, in the relevant field of expertise, the individual
scientist’s belief whether p can be justified on both the first and the second order, thus
constitute knowledge.

Collaborative research is typically interdisciplinary. This implies that individual

scientists with relevant field expertise can competently evaluate (i) but not (ii). If a
member of a research collaboration lacks basic cognitive access to the first-order scientific
evidence produced by the collaboration as its output, hence cannot evaluate (i), then that
member of the collaboration is not a candidate for non-testimonial, expert scientific
knowledge of the research question. This can often be the case with collaboration members
who offer technical support, but do not make a significant agential, non-instrumental
contribution to the research process. Such members often also do not have any
commitment to the collective scientific claim, for instance as co-authors of publications. At
best, they would competently suspend judgment on the truth of the scientific claim of the
collaboration. For a scientific investigation to qualify as an interdisciplinary research
collaboration, we have to assume that at least two scientists involved in it qualify as
candidates for non-testimonial, expert scientific knowledge. If there is only one such
candidate, the investigation would be better characterized as an individual research
project.28 Typically, several collaboration members will satisfy the basic cognitive access
condition. Additionally, most collaboration members would have cognitive access to some
higher order evidence in light of their own expertise, but typically none will have the
adequate competence to evaluate (ii) individually. Taking (i) for granted, then, we can say
that in the case of interdisciplinary, collaborative research the individual scientist’s belief
whether p can have first-order justification but will individually have only partial second-
order justification. This is precisely where endorsing epistemic individualism will lead us
to deny non-testimonial, expert knowledge to individual scientists.

I believe that the force of the collective-subject argument rests on the implicit
intuition that epistemic dependence is not compatible with knowledge.29 Strong anti-
individualist perspectives on collective knowledge, such as those of Bird and Palermos,

28There is no need to dwell on the possibility of there being no candidate for expert scientific knowledge in
the research collaboration, as it would fit only an impersonal, objective knowledge account.
29For a similar interpretation, see Pritchard (2015).
 23
arguably still conceive epistemic justification in traditional individualistic terms. They
seem to assume, namely, that attributing a belief the status of knowledge, or any other
valuable epistemic standing requires that the processes of justification that underly or
support the belief should be autonomous. In other words, they should be the primary
target of epistemic credit or blame. Since no individual scientist in a research collaboration
is not primarily creditable with the success of the distributed research process, there
should be a collective subject or agent who is thus creditable. Thus, epistemic dependence
will lead us to postulate collective subjects only if we assume that knowledge requires
sufficient justification on the basis of autonomous cognitive agency.

From the perspective of a weaker form of anti-individualism, one can be said to

know in a way that is dependent on knowledge-enabling external factors if one’s agency
plays a significant, but not necessarily a primary role in one’s epistemic success.
Pritchard’s (2015) formulation of positive epistemic dependence and his (2010) weak
cognitive ability condition on knowledge give us a suitable conception of knowledge that
commits to weak anti-individualism:

(Positive) Epistemic Dependence: An epistemic subject can come to know that p

by exercising a degree of cognitive agency that is not sufficient for knowing
that p through enabling factors that are external to the subject’s cognitive
agency.

COGAWEAK: One knows that p only if one’s epistemic success is due to a

significant [not necessarily sufficient] degree to one’s manifestation of
relevant cognitive agency.

Sosa already leaves the door open for knowledge-enabling epistemic dependence by
saying that knowledge does not require that the relevant epistemic competence is
exclusively seated in the individual (2007, p. 97; 2011, p. 87-88). Sosa’s account allows for
the case that a subject A comes to know that p through the exercise of a complex social
competence that is partially seated in A. A similar formulation of weak epistemic anti-
individualism can also be found in an earlier work by Palermos (2015), where he argues
 24
that in certain cases knowledge can be creditable to social factors as well as to the
individual.
In the following I will go into the knowledge-enabling external factors and the
weak cognitive ability condition with respect to distributed cognitive systems in science,
which in conjunction give us an account of epistemically dependent expert scientific
knowledge.
3.2.1 First-order justification and reliability of distributed research processes

Any individual’s affirmation of a (set of) scientific proposition(s) asserted by a

research collaboration will have first-order justification if (i) the individual has basic
cognitive access to the evidence provided in support of the scientific proposition(s)
asserted by the research collaboration, and (ii) the distributed research process whereby
the evidence is generated is a reliable one for investigating the scientific proposition(s) in
question. This basic cognitive access comprises the competence to affirm that there is an
evidential connection between the evidence and a (set of) scientific proposition(s). Any
scientist with a common level of expertise in one of the core constituent fields of the
interdisciplinary research would have this competence. The requirement of basic cognitive
access gives us the first constituent of the weak cognitive ability condition on expert
scientific knowledge, and it is typically satisfied by all members of a research collaboration
who make an agential contribution to the research process and are thereby partially
accountable for the collectively made assertion. The reliability of the distributed research
process, on the other hand, constitutes the first of the two knowledge-enabling external
factors we are looking for. Let me elaborate on what is required for a distributed research
process to be reliable in terms of the notion of a complex, system level competence.

The reliability of a distributed research process implies that the individual pieces of
information (including data, results, other testimony) contributed by the members of the
collaboration are true sufficiently often and manifest suitable kinds of scientific expertise,
and they cohere into a unified body of scientific evidence necessary for asserting the
scientific claim put forward by the collaboration. In order to achieve this, (i) the
organization of the distributed cognitive system should realize an efficient division of
scientific labor and reliable flow of information, and (ii) the research process should
manifest theoretical, methodological and experimental virtues such as valid inferential
connections between theory, hypotheses and data, good research design, and proper
 25
choice and application of data analysis tools. The former (i.e., efficient division of scientific
labor and reliable flow of information) pertain to the more general or constitutional
properties of the distributed cognitive system that enable it to investigate certain kinds of
research questions.30 They give us the general epistemic competence of the distributed
cognitive system as a whole to produce epistemically valuable outputs, such as true
empirical propositions, in a certain field. In many research collaborations this general
competence also comprises well-calibrated and suitable scientific-technical infrastructure.
The latter (i.e., theoretical, methodological and experimental virtues) are the kind of
properties one expects to see in the methodology section of a scientific publication and
pertain to the particular research process that sets and implements a specific research plan.
These constitute the manifestation of the general epistemic competence of the distributed
cognitive system in the realization of its particular cognitive goal. The appropriate
manifestation of the epistemic competence of the distributed cognitive system is a
substantial determinant of the evidential quality of the research outputs and the extent of
empirical support they confer to the scientific propositions asserted by the research
collaboration. In the case of epistemic failure, such as false or highly uninformative
empirical findings, both the general epistemic competence of the research collaboration
(e.g., lacking sufficient statistical expertise or employing unreliable scientific instruments)
and its manifestation (e.g., flows in the data collection strategy) can be found responsible
for the failure.

Together with the condition of a basic cognitive access to the research outcomes,
this system-level or distributed epistemic competence and its appropriate manifestation
constitute complete first-order justification for affirming the (set of) scientific
proposition(s) put forward by a research collaboration.

30Itis possible to draw an analogy here to Hardwig’s (1991) analysis of trust in a testifier in terms of trust in
the epistemic and moral character of the testifier. The epistemic character of the testifier can be replaced by
the efficient division of scientific labor in a research collaboration, and the moral character can be replaced
by successful (i.e., sufficiently free from error and noise) internal communication. However, instead of trust I
prefer to speak of justification, in the reliabilist sense, since a research collaboration has to plan, implement
and constantly monitor the performance of its epistemic and social organization.
 26
3.2.2 Distributed second-order justification and reliability of criticism

The objective reliability of the research process, namely the epistemic competence of the
distributed cognitive system31 to produce objective knowledge is only a necessary condition
for acquiring subjective scientific knowledge through reliance on the distributed research
process. A further requirement is that one can positively evaluate the epistemic
competence of the distributed cognitive system and its successful exercise, hence the
reliability of the distributed research process. This evaluation gives us second-order
justification for affirming the (set of) scientific proposition(s) put forward by a research
collaboration. In the scientific context, second-order justification concerns all assessments
of reliability regarding the data, methods, instruments, or the track-record of other experts
as informants. The whole body of such assessments, which we called the process of
criticism, constitute second-order justification that the resulting (set of) scientific
proposition(s) are the outcome of a reliable process of scientific justification. In research
collaborations the process of criticism is necessarily distributed, because the total higher
order evidence is a highly heterogeneous set in regard to the expertise required to
establish it.

The distributed process of criticism itself can be reliable to differing extents in

providing credible assessments of the reliability of the distributed research process. The
reliability of the distributed process of criticism implies that the collaboration actively
monitors various sources of error and has the necessary social and technological means at
its disposal to detect and fix errors when they are present. Using Sosa’s terminology, we
can call the reliability of the process of criticism the meta-competence of the distributed
cognitive system for evaluating the reliability of its first-level epistemic performance,
which is partially seated in all collaboration members. A reliable socially distributed
process of criticism would be organized so as to make use of available expertise and
resources in the most efficient and effective way and can do so by relying on the already
established social organization of a research collaboration. In HEP experiments the
distributed process of criticism involves horizontally organized cross-checking and
monitoring tasks, validation mechanisms such as sister experiments (e.g., ATLAS and

31WhileI extend Sosa’s notion of epistemic virtue (i.e., competence or reliable skill) to distributed cognitive
systems, I do not extend either of his two levels or grades of knowledge beyond the individual agentive
components of the system (cf. Carter, 2020; Kallestrup, 2016; Palermos, 2020).
 27
CMS) as well as vertically organized review processes realized by nested work groups,
panels and committees. Together with the high transparency and ongoing record-keeping
of all aspects of the research process, the distributed process of criticism gives the
collaboration members second-order justification to affirm the findings and conclusions.
Individual members of a collaboration do not have to scrutinize all aspects of the research
process when this task of scientific scrutiny or criticism can be realized as a reliable
distributed process.

Following Pritchard’s formulation of positive epistemic dependence, the reliability

of the distributed process of criticism thus gives us the other enabling external factor we
were looking for.

3.2.3 Epistemically dependent knowledge

The reliability of the distributed research process and the reliability of the
distributed process of criticism together co-determine whether the affirmation of an
individual researcher of the scientific proposition(s) put forward by the collaboration (if
true) counts as knowledge. In Sosa’s (2011) terms, the proper explanation of the epistemic
success of an individual researcher’s judgment that p features the epistemic competence of
the distributed cognitive system for empirically investigating whether p, and its meta-
competence for evaluating the reliability of this empirical investigation, both of which are
partially seated in the individual researcher.

Both of the two knowledge-enabling external factors, the reliability of the

distributed research process and the reliability of the distributed process of criticism,
require that the social process of criticism is spatiotemporally connected to the research
process. Complex distributed research processes require constant monitoring and
calibration in order to be and remain reliable. The social process of criticism accordingly
should fulfil the functions of both evaluating and maintaining the reliability of research,
but without a spatiotemporal connection it cannot fulfil the latter.

The weak cognitive ability condition on knowledge as applicable to non-

testimonial, expert scientific knowledge is met when (i) the individual researcher has basic
cognitive access to the evidential connection between the empirical findings and the (set
of) scientific proposition(s) put forward by the collaboration, and (ii) make an agential
epistemic contribution to the distributed process of research and/or its criticism, and (iii)
 28
the outcomes of distributed process of criticism are available to them. When these three
conditions are met, the cognitive agencies of individual researchers play a significant part
in the explanation of their knowledge.

The cognitive ability condition can be differentially satisfied by different epistemic

subjects. The requirement of cognitive access (i) is what essentially distinguishes expert
from lay scientific knowledge. The requirement of agential epistemic contribution (ii) is what
essentially distinguishes non-testimonial from testimonial scientific knowledge from a
virtue-epistemological perspective. If an individual researcher makes a significant
agential, non-instrumental epistemic contribution to the research process and/or its
criticism, then the individual epistemic competence of the researcher plays a part in the
explanation of the epistemic success of her epistemically dependent belief-forming
process. When such contribution is lacking, individual competence will feature in the
explanation of the existence and arguably the rationality of individual belief but not in the
explanation of its success (see also Kallestrup, 2016). This makes the members of a research
collaboration the primary candidates for the possession of collaboratively produced
knowledge, but this is not to say that external experts cannot qualify. Even if contribution
to the research process itself will be more or less confined to the actual members of the
research collaboration, all scientists with relevant expertise will have cognitive access to
some part of the higher-order evidence. For instance, an external expert reviewing the
published evidence can notice an error or inconsistency in the results or notice a potential
defeater such as a possible confounding factor in light of her own background knowledge.
Thereby she can be even in a better position than some collaboration members to judge the
reliability of the research process. The requirement of availability (iii), on the other hand, is
dictated by the nature of reflective knowledge itself. For a subject A to come to know that
p by relying on the research process X, X should not only be objectively reliable, but also A
should be well-informed of the evidence of its reliability. However, it is a quite realistic
research scenario that the reliability of a certain method, instrument or some other aspect
of the research procedure cannot be conclusively assessed at the time it is conducted, but
technological or theoretical developments enable a conclusive positive assessment at a
much later date. In such cases the researchers would not be in a position to know their
scientific conclusions, though they may have good reasons to tentatively accept them and
pursue their research project.
 29
When both the two knowledge-enabling external factors and the weak cognitive
ability condition on expert scientific knowledge obtain, the individual researcher will have
a reliable judgment about the reliability of the scientific justification for the propositions
they come to affirm.32 Thus we can combine the two knowledge-enabling external factors
and the weak cognitive ability condition under an account of non-testimonial, expert
scientific knowledge that is collectively produced and justified:

Collectively produced individual knowledge: An epistemic subject A can come to

know that p by relying on the distributed cognitive process X of which
evidence E for p is the outcome only if (i) X is a reliable process for
establishing the evidence that would be sufficient for knowing that p, (ii)
there is a reliable distributed process of criticism Y for evaluating and
maintaining the reliability of X that is spatiotemporally connected to X and
available to A, (iii) A has basic cognitive access to the to the evidential
connection between E and p, and (iv) A makes a significant agential
contribution to X and/or Y.

Abandoning the requirement of epistemic autonomy for knowledge will yield a

substantial gain. We can avoid the possibility that no human being learns even from our
most successful research collaborations by granting that individual knowledge can be
collectively produced and justified; that is, through efficient and reliable social
mechanisms for scrutinizing the reliability of the complex body of evidence produced by a
research collective. The resulting knowledge will not be “vicarious,” as Hardwig (1985)
worried, but non-testimonial, expert scientific knowledge. It will, instead, be suitable to
anchor chains of testimonial knowledge. On the other hand, if we deny knowledge even to
the researchers who make significant epistemic contributions to a distributed research
process, non-contributing scientists who are working in the same discipline, let alone other
scientists and lay people, can in no way be said to have any adequate justification to accept
the results and thus to be in a position to know. This would place distributed cognitive
systems in rather unfit position as social mechanisms for scientific knowledge generation.

32 In Sosa’s (2015) terms, this would amount to a fully apt epistemic performance.
 30
Conceiving collective scientific knowledge as collectively produced objective
knowledge allows us to accommodate truly distributed cognitive processes of scientific
justification, and the concept of socially extended knowledge allows us to retain the
commonsensical intuition that objective knowledge implies subjective knowledge. Thus,
collective scientific knowledge fruitfully prompts us to reconsider processes of scientific
justification without necessarily leading to a dilemma regarding its epistemic subject.

4. Whereto? Collective epistemology of science without collective subjects

The account I presented may be said to rule out collective knowledge in an irreducible or
strong sense. But such a conclusion does not radically shrink the subject matter of a
collective epistemology of science. While I defended here a rather conservative view of the
epistemic subject in collaborative research, there is a plethora of directly related issues on
which a break with the tradition opens novel, fertile avenues of thought.

My account is potentially compatible with any non-deflationist view of group

assertion, group testimony, or group justification. Actually, my two reliabilist conditions
for collectively produced knowledge, the reliability of the distributed research process and
the reliability of the distributed process of criticism, partly sketch out an account of the
justification of assertions made by research collaborations. Intimately related to this is the
question of group accountability, which has implications for how we approach issues such
as authorship, credit, scientific integrity in regard to research collaborations. However, we
conceive group knowledge, group accountability in regard to research collaborations
presents a huge task for both theoretical and empirical research (see e.g., Huebner &
Bright, 2020; Winsberg, Huebner & Kukla, 2014).

Secondly, I believe that the phenomenon of distributed cognition compels us to

develop a non-individualist concept of epistemic competence, and this is a highly fertile
topic on its own. This point is also at the heart of several virtue-epistemological
perspectives of collective scientific knowledge. But beyond a non-individualist view of
epistemic competence, many virtue epistemologists also postulate genuinely collective
epistemic subjects in accounting for collective scientific inquiry (e.g., Carter, 2020;
Kallestrup, 2016; Palermos, 2020). This strongly anti-individualist position is an attractive
option for the virtue epistemologist, arguably because then she does not need to be
apologetic in developing a virtue perspective in collective epistemology. By adopting a
 31
strongly anti-individualist stance, the virtue epistemologist does not need to care about
the problem of how to individuate competences. She can apply largely the same
epistemological toolset in all knowledge situations independently of the particular
configuration of epistemic subjects. But this attractiveness comes at a cost: If we make the
collective level isomorphic to the individual, we are not really solving anything but just
increasing metaphysical commitments. We should instead respect the complexity of
collective epistemic processes and be able to recognize the qualitative differences in
virtues belonging to distinct levels, which brings me to my last point.

I believe that a collective epistemology of science will be the most fruitful when it
investigates how collectives qualitatively differ from individuals rather than how they
resemble individuals. Such an epistemological investigation cannot be done with the
notions crafted originally for individualist epistemology. If we once more take virtue
epistemology as an example, a collective virtue epistemology of science can make a
substantial contribution by investigating how individual, group and scientific community
level epistemic virtues differ, and how an epistemic virtue at one level may complement,
contribute to, or hinder the realization of one at another level. Some examples of
community-level (or epistemic system-level, see Goldman, 2011) epistemic virtues can be
cognitive diversity (Kitcher, 1993), organized skepticism (Merton, 1973), openness
(Vicente-Saez, R., & Martinez-Fuentes, C., 2018) or communalism (Merton, 1973), none of
which are sufficiently meaningful properties at the individual level. On the other hand,
scientific groups and communities cannot manifest epistemic virtues such as intelligence,
open-mindedness, scientific integrity, inquisitiveness or intellectual humility—except
metaphorically. A multi-level approach can also greatly benefit the study of epistemic
vices in the scientific context. To illustrate, scientific misconduct such as data fabrication or
questionable research practices such as data dredging and selective reporting of results or
studies may arise not only due to individual factors such as lack of scientific integrity but
also due to factors that belong to the structure of the scientific community, for instance
through publication bias (Sterling, 1959; Sutton, 2009) or misaligned incentives (Heesen,
2018). Thus, I think that collective epistemology of science would do better if it
complements individual epistemology rather than modelling itself on it, and such a
collective epistemology of science can do without collective epistemic subjects.
 32
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