WHY (SOME) KNOWLEDGE IS the PROPERTY of A COMMUNITY and POSSIBLY NONE of ITS MEMBERS

Mainstream analytic epistemology regards knowledge as the property of individuals, rather than groups. Drawing on insights from the reality of knowledge production and dissemination in the sciences, I argue, from within the analytic framework, that this view is wrong. I defend the thesis of 'knowledge-level justification communalism', which states that at least some knowledge, typically knowledge obtained from expert testimony, is the property of a community and possibly none of its individual members, in that only the community or some members of it collectively possess knowledge-level justification for its individual members' beliefs. I address several objections that individuals, qua individuals, have or are able to acquire knowledge-level justification for all the beliefs they obtain from expert testimony. I argue that the problem I identify with individualism is invariant under any specific account of justification, internalist or externalist.