While social epistemology is a diverse field, much of it still understands knowledge as an individual status—albeit an individual status that crucially depends on various social factors (such as testimony). Further, the literature on group knowledge until now has primarily focused on limited, specialized groups that may be said to know this or that as a group. I wish to argue, to the contrary, that all knowledge attributions ascribe a collective status; and that this follows more or less directly from an essential function of entitlement-ascriptions: Ascriptions of knowledge and entitlement serve a primarily social function in that they facilitate coordination by maintaining consensus around true beliefs, true theories, and truth-producing methodologies. This conclusion will shed light on ways in which traditional theories of knowledge (such as foundationalism and coherentism) fail to capture a central function of our epistemic practice.

中文翻译：

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作为集体地位的知识

虽然社会认识论是一个多元化的领域，但它的大部分内容仍然将知识理解为一种个人状态——尽管这种个人状态在很大程度上取决于各种社会因素（例如证词）。此外，到目前为止，关于群体知识的文献主要集中在有限的、专门的群体上，这些群体可以说作为一个群体知道这个或那个。相反，我想争辩说，所有知识属性都归于集体地位；这或多或少直接源于权利归属的基本功能：知识和权利的归属主要服务于社会功能，因为它们促进了协调围绕真实信念、真实理论和产生真理的方法论保持共识。这一结论将阐明传统知识理论（如基础主义和连贯主义）未能抓住我们认知实践的核心功能的方式。