ABSTRACT
This paper aims to convince the reader that a large number of important and long-standing disagreements typically understood as between individuals are actually disagreements between collectives. (So far, so good, but the bad news will come.) More pointedly, in many long-standing disagreements where one disagreeing party claims p, and the other party claims not-p, the parties are collectives. This might be confusing, because it is individuals who assert these beliefs, but collectives who actually hold them. Hence, I must make clear that S asserting the belief that-p does not imply that it is S who believes p. Rather, the assertion might imply that some group of which S is a member believes p (but not S herself). One last time for clarity: often, the bearers of beliefs p and not-p (the bearers of disagreeing beliefs) are not individuals, nor an aggregate of individuals; instead, the bearers of the beliefs are collectives. Of course, it may or may not hold that the group members, in addition to the group, also believe p. This includes the group member who asserts p. Agents might assert p in a group setting even if they do not personally believe p. Another way to think of it is that, often, individual assertions that p are meant to express a group belief in particular, regardless of whether the individual also believes p.
