Group Belief and the Role of Conversation

In this paper, I examine the role of conversation in the formation of group beliefs against the background of the summativism/non-summativism debate, i.e., the debate about whether group beliefs are a function of the beliefs of individual group members. I address the question of whether it is possible for groups to form collective beliefs without communication between their members and explain how this bears on summative and non-summative views and, in particular, on Gilbert’s joint commitment account. I also discuss the negotiation of collective belief thesis originally put forward by Gilbert and Priest (Gilbert, On social facts. Routledge, London, 1989; Gilbert, Priest, Conversation and collective Belief. In: Capone A, Lo Piparo F, Carapezza M (eds). Perspectives on pragmatics and philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht, 2013), according to which the process of everyday conversation is structured around the negotiation of collective beliefs. I argue that this thesis only makes sense in a non-summative framework, but that when specific non-summative views are combined with it, the relevant non-summative views either become inapplicable or yield the wrong results. I conclude by noting that summativism offers a simpler and more neutral picture of the role of conversation in group belief formation.