As individuals we know things. The epistemological investigation of knowledge then naturally starts from the assumption that knowledge is some state of an individual's mind with the most common assumption being that knowledge is a species of belief—the justified and true. This individualistic epistemic approach has then been criticised along the following two fronts. First, it has been argued that knowledge can be collectively achieved, and this requires recognizing that an individual's knowing things can depend on a collective knowing things (Hardwig, 1985, 1991; Hutchins, 1995). Second it has been argued that belief is not merely an individual matter because belief can extend beyond an individual's ‘skull and skin’ (Carter et al., 2018; Clark & Chalmers, 1998; Menary, 2010). Knowledge can be collective and belief can be extended, and on the supposition that knowledge is a species of belief, it follows that there can be collective belief and extended knowledge too.¹ Thus both epistemic and metaphysical challenges have been raised to the individualistic assumptions common in epistemology.

This paper hopes to show a connection between these two criticisms of individualistic epistemology. More precisely, it hopes to rehearse a claim previously made that an adequate account of collective knowledge requires a certain non-individualistic conception of knowledge. And this same non-individualistic conception also offers a basis for arguing that knowledge is extended. However, the non-individualistic conception of knowledge in operation here is one that is largely compatible with an individualist approach to epistemology; it involves no more than a commonplace shift in epistemological perspective. Thus, it is proposed that an account can be given of both collective and extended knowledge that does not undermine the individualist epistemological paradigm. Some shift in epistemic theory is required but not the radical shift away from epistemological individualism that has been canvassed.

The paper proceeds as follows. It starts with the recognition that some knowledge is collectively held, and the question this raises is what explains an individual's possession of this collective knowledge? Section one rehearses arguments for a previous answer, (Faulkner, 2006, 2011, 2018). Collective knowledge, it will be claimed in this section, is best understood in terms that roughly equate to Popper's (1972) idea of objective knowledge. An individual's possession of collective knowledge simply requires the right relations to something that is objective knowledge. We can thereby talk of collective knowledge without having to make any reference to a collective knower. This proposal then receives support from the argument that belief is extended because this argument, it will be claimed, requires an objective conception of knowledge. To show this, sections two and three then outline Clark & Chalmers’ (1998) much discussed argument and show how it can conclude only when knowledge is conceived objectively. The conclusion then situates this objective conception of knowledge with respect to individualistic epistemology.

作为个人，我们知道事情。知识的认识论研究自然而然地从知识是个人思想的某种状态的假设开始，最常见的假设是知识是一种信念——合理的和真实的。这种个人主义的认知方法随后在以下两个方面受到批评。首先，有人认为知识可以通过集体获得，这需要认识到个人对事物的认识依赖于集体对事物的认识（Hardwig，1985 年，1991 年；Hutchins，1995 年）。其次，有人认为信仰不仅仅是个人问题，因为信仰可以超越个人的“头骨和皮肤”（Carter 等人，2018 年）; 克拉克和查默斯，1998 年；Menary，2010 年）。知识可以是集体的，信念可以是延展的，假设知识是一种信念，则可以有集体的信念，也可以是延展的知识。¹因此，认识论和形而上学都对认识论中常见的个人主义假设提出了挑战。

本文希望表明这两种对个人主义认识论的批评之间的联系。更准确地说，它希望重申先前提出的一个主张，即对集体知识的充分说明需要某种非个人主义的知识概念。同样的非个人主义概念也为论证知识是可延展的提供了基础。然而，这里运作的非个人主义的知识概念在很大程度上与个人主义的认识论方法相容；它仅涉及认识论观点的常见转变。因此，建议可以在不破坏个人主义认识论范式的情况下对集体知识和扩展知识进行说明。

论文进行如下。它始于对某些知识是集体持有的认识，由此提出的问题是如何解释个人对这种集体知识的拥有？第一节排练了先前答案的论点（Faulkner，2006 年，2011 年，2018 年）。集体知识，将在本节中声明，最好用大致等同于 Popper's ( 1972) 客观知识的概念。个人对集体知识的拥有只需要与客观知识的正确关系。因此，我们可以谈论集体知识，而不必提及集体知识者。然后这个提议得到了信念被扩展的论证的支持，因为这个论证，它将被声称，需要一个客观的知识概念。为了表明这一点，第二和第三部分概述了 Clark & Chalmers ( 1998 ) 大量讨论的论点，并展示了只有当知识被客观地构想时它才能得出结论。然后，结论将这种客观的知识概念置于个人主义认识论的背景下。