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<p>Scientific understanding typically involves multiple specialists performing interdependent tasks. According to several social–epistemological accounts, this suggests that scientific communities are collective epistemic subjects. We argue instead that the data does not warrant the postulation of a collective subject. Our position, rather, is fictionalist: we argue that the use of sentences attributing understanding to scientific communities amounts to loose talk which is best construed as indicating how social environments associated with a scientific community promote individual scientists' understanding.</p>

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Do scientific communities understand? A fictionalist account

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年6月24日

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  • Kareem Khalifa,
  • Sanford C. Goldberg

摘要

Scientific understanding typically involves multiple specialists performing interdependent tasks. According to several social–epistemological accounts, this suggests that scientific communities are collective epistemic subjects. We argue instead that the data does not warrant the postulation of a collective subject. Our position, rather, is fictionalist: we argue that the use of sentences attributing understanding to scientific communities amounts to loose talk which is best construed as indicating how social environments associated with a scientific community promote individual scientists' understanding.