ABSTRACT
different competing explanations of the epistemology of cognitive behavior and the metaphysics of group features delineate two axes along which we can devise several ways to model group polarization from a philosophical perspective. The first axis classifies the views in terms of whether they adopt weak reductionism about group features and the corresponding reductive model of group polarization—or else non-reductionism about group features and the corresponding non-reductive model of group polarization. The second axis sorts the views into the virtue/vice or else the heuristic/bias models of collective cognitive behavior. In this way, by pairing both coordinate axes, we can come up with four general models for thinking about group polarization in philosophical terms. The resulting models, which we describe in this chapter and critically discuss in subsequent chapters, are:
The Reductive Virtue/Vice Model: group polarization as a summation of individual epistemic virtues or vices.
The Collective Heuristic/Bias Model: group polarization as an irreducibly collective heuristic or bias.
The Reductive Heuristic/Bias Model: group polarization as a summation of individual heuristics or biases.
The Collective Virtue/Vice Model: group polarization as an irreducibly collective epistemic virtue or vice.
