An Interactionist Account of Collective Epistemic Virtue

Marco Meyer

The Collective Ethics Seminar: Online Presentation – 24 November 2025 – 15.15 – 16.45 CET / 09.15 – 10.45 EST

Marco Meyer - An Interactionist Account of Collective Epistemic Virtue

On Monday 24 November 2025, Marco Meyer (University of Hamburg) will give a presentation in the Collective Ethics Seminar entitled ‘An Interactionist Account of Collective Epistemic Virtue’.


Abstract: Debates in collective ethics often assume that collective epistemic virtue is either reducible to the epistemic virtues of the members of the collective; results from their interactions; or emerges sui generis. I argue that epistemic culture is an important site of collective epistemic virtue because it shapes the epistemic character of organizational members. Based on three waves of survey data from German police recruits, I show that perceived organisational humility predicts growth in individual humility over time. Moreover, epistemic culture indirectly strengthens recruits' attitudes towards democracy mediated by its impact on their epistemic virtue. Yet the interaction between epistemic culture and epistemic virtue is not straightforward. The study suggests that some recruits are subject to "critical disenchantment": recruits who perceive a sharper decline in epistemic culture subsequently exhibit greater gains in epistemic virtues themselves. I consider reactive differentiation, dissent activation, and burdened-virtue as candidate mechanisms and discuss identification challenges. The upshot is an interactionist picture in which top-down cultural influence coexists with bottom-up countervailing responses. I conclude with normative implications for collective epistemic stewardship: organizations have duties to sustain epistemic cultures that reliably foster epistemic virtue and democratic goods, while recognizing that phenomena like critical disenchantment complicate organisational design, since perceived failure can sometimes catalyse individual virtue development.

The online seminar is open for all to attend. The session starts at 15.15 CET / 09.15 EST. You can join the session via the following link: https://univienna.zoom.us/j/62736288881?pwd=SndEdTNoNlZtSzJqcmpabm5NaWIyUT09


The other remaining speakers this semester are Frank Hindriks and Åsa Burman. For more information about the seminar, please see https://social.univie.ac.at/events/collective-ethics-seminar/.

We hope to see you at the seminar!

Kind regards,

Gunnar Björnsson (Stockholm University), Olle Blomberg (University of Gothenburg), and Niels de Haan (University of Vienna)