ABSTRACT
In ordinary speech we frequently commit ourselves to statements that might be taken to attribute beliefs to social groups—e.g. “The Ford Corporation believes the Pinto is safe.” Yet many have found it implausible to treat these statements as closely analogous to superficially similar statements attributing beliefs to individuals. It is natural to resist the suggestion that groups are single entities, unities, subjects, or agents possessing a mental attitude of belief, as individuals are regarded as subjects or agents possessing the attitude of belief. To preserve the truth of statements about group belief, we understand them as disguised statements about individual beliefs, rather than as attributing a state of belief to a single entity. Quinton adopts such a view and generalizes it to all statements about group mental attitudes: ‘To ascribe mental predicates to a group is always an indirect way of ascribing such predicates to its members. With such mental states as beliefs … the ascriptions are of what I have called a summative kind’ (Quinton 1975: 9; see also Gellner 1956). Cohen follows Quinton in treating attributions of group beliefs in this summative way, though he interprets an attribution of an acceptance to a group as non-summative, attributing a single attitude to the whole group understood as a unity (Cohen 1989: 383; for discussion of the distinction between belief and acceptance, see below). We may formulate the simple summative account of group belief proposed here in this way:
A group G believes p just in case each member of G believes p (alternatively: most members, or enough members, of G believe p).
