Cet article analyse la déstabilisation épistémique dont peuvent être victimes un certain genre d'entités collectives. Ce phénomène désigne un type spécifique de limitation que peut subir un groupe dans sa capacité à élaborer et/ou à incarner une position collective d'une manière rationnelle et unifiée, limitation qui a pour effet la remise en cause de son aptitude à constituer un sujet épistémique crédible. Pour ce faire, je distingue tout d'abord différents genres de groupes. Puis, j'explicite la nature de la vie mentale dont sont capables les sujets pluriels finalisés. Je me focalise, ensuite, sur un certain type de sujets pluriels finalisés : les organisations politiques. Après avoir souligné l'intrication de leur identité épistémique et de leur identité sociale, j'introduis le concept de « déstabilisation épistémique ». J'analyse enfin, à travers une illustration, l'un des facteurs possibles d'une telle déstabilisation, à savoir la diffusion de thèmes transversaux dans le débat public, ainsi que ses effets sur l'entité déstabilisée.
Groups matter in our ordinary folk psychology because a part of our social interactions is done with collective entities. In our everyday life, we indeed sometimes ascribe mental states to social groups as a whole or to individuals as members of groups in order to understand and predict their behavior. The aim of this paper is to explore this aspect of social interactions by focusing on the concept of 'collective belief' in a non-summative sense and, more precisely, on collective belief of a specific kind of group: the political party. How can the concept of 'collective belief' help to understand the interactions which involve these kinds of collective entities? After providing an epistemic description of political parties, this paper focuses on the collective belief in a non-summative sense. As Gilbert says, a group believes that p, if its members are jointly committed to believe that p as a body. It is argued, with the help of an example from the political history of France, that this view can enable us to understand the interaction between political parties. More precisely, it can help clarify the way in which a political party uses the rational constraints on the party as a whole and/or the social and epistemic constraints on the behavior of the group's members in order to destabilize or weaken other political parties.
International audience ; Groups matter in our ordinary folk psychology because a part of our social interactions is done with collective entities. In our everyday life, we indeed sometimes ascribe mental states to social groups as a whole or to individuals as members of groups in order to understand and predict their behavior. The aim of this paper is to explore this aspect of social interactions by focusing on the concept of 'collective belief' in a non-summative sense and, more precisely, on collective belief of a specific kind of group: the political party. How can the concept of 'collective belief' help to understand the interactions which involve these kinds of collective entities? After providing an epistemic description of political parties, this paper focuses on the collective belief in a non-summative sense. As Gilbert says, a group believes that p, if its members are jointly committed to believe that p as a body. It is argued, with the help of an example from the political history of France, that this view can enable us to understand the interaction between political parties. More precisely, it can help clarify the way in which a political party uses the rational constraints on the party as a whole and/or the social and epistemic constraints on the behavior of the group's members in order to destabilize or weaken other political parties.
Groups matter in our ordinary folk psychology because a part of our social interactions is done with collective entities. In our everyday life, we indeed sometimes ascribe mental states to social groups as a whole or to individuals as members of groups in order to understand and predict their behavior. The aim of this paper is to explore this aspect of social interactions by focusing on the concept of 'collective belief' in a non-summative sense and, more precisely, on collective belief of a specific kind of group: the political party. How can the concept of 'collective belief' help to understand the interactions which involve these kinds of collective entities? After providing an epistemic description of political parties, this paper focuses on the collective belief in a non-summative sense. As Gilbert says, a group believes that p, if its members are jointly committed to believe that p as a body. It is argued, with the help of an example from the political history of France, that this view can enable us to understand the interaction between political parties. More precisely, it can help clarify the way in which a political party uses the rational constraints on the party as a whole and/or the social and epistemic constraints on the behavior of the group's members in order to destabilize or weaken other political parties.
International audience ; Groups matter in our ordinary folk psychology because a part of our social interactions is done with collective entities. In our everyday life, we indeed sometimes ascribe mental states to social groups as a whole or to individuals as members of groups in order to understand and predict their behavior. The aim of this paper is to explore this aspect of social interactions by focusing on the concept of 'collective belief' in a non-summative sense and, more precisely, on collective belief of a specific kind of group: the political party. How can the concept of 'collective belief' help to understand the interactions which involve these kinds of collective entities? After providing an epistemic description of political parties, this paper focuses on the collective belief in a non-summative sense. As Gilbert says, a group believes that p, if its members are jointly committed to believe that p as a body. It is argued, with the help of an example from the political history of France, that this view can enable us to understand the interaction between political parties. More precisely, it can help clarify the way in which a political party uses the rational constraints on the party as a whole and/or the social and epistemic constraints on the behavior of the group's members in order to destabilize or weaken other political parties.
Social science studies often explain the emergence of collective beliefs by reference to factors that are supposed to be part of the social context. How do these macro-factors shape the beliefs of individuals? How can structural factors provide evidence supporting a given belief? In answering these questions, I propose a link connecting macro-factors and beliefs by introducing the notion of "evidential categorization." I expect to show that our structural explanations of beliefs often contain an analysis of the socially diffused systems of reasons—an important part of what we call the "epistemic context of belief-formation"—for they partially determine our evidential categorizations. Finally, I will show by an example, how structural explanations work if they include these components.