Social Epistemology

Have you heard? The Rumour as reliable

by Matthew Dentith

Early version of the paper which is forthcoming in "Rumours and Communication in Asia in the Internet Age," Routledge, 2012

Drawing on work by philosophers CAJ Coady and David Coady on the epistemology of rumours, I develop a theory which... more Drawing on work by philosophers CAJ Coady and David Coady on the epistemology of rumours, I develop a theory which exploits the distinction between rumouring and rumour- mongering for the purpose of explaining why we should treat rumours as a species of justified belief.

Whilst it is true that rumour-mongering, the act of passing on a rumour maliciously, presents a pathology of the normally reliable transmission of rumours, I will argue that rumours themselves have a generally reliable transmission process, that of rumouring, and should be considered to be examples of warranted beliefs.

My argument will also touch on the association of rumours with another class of beliefs that are usually considered to be suspect, conspiracy theories. I will argue that whilst rumours are reliable (as a mechanism for the transmission of justified beliefs) the analysis of the transmission of conspiracy theories requires us to realise they are different to rumours in some important respects.

Emerging Global Epistementalities in Professional Work and Learning: On the Dynamics of Professional Expertise, Changing Societies, and Globalised …

by torill strand

Safe Testimonial Belief and the Transmission of Justification

by Stephen Wright

To be presented at "Subjectivity and the Social World", University of Hull.

Transmission theories of testimonial justification hold that where a listener takes a speaker's word for it that... more Transmission theories of testimonial justification hold that where a listener takes a speaker's word for it that things are as she says they are, the listener's resultant belief is justified by the speaker's justification being transmitted to the listener. Recently, various authors have sought to refute transmission theories by pointing out that a listener's acquired testimonial justification can outstrip a speaker's justification. A common thought is that a listener's belief can be safe, where a speaker's is not. In this paper, I suggest how transmission theorists might be able to respond to these challenges.

Epistemic Foundations of Political Liberalism

by Fabienne Peter

At the core of political liberalism is the claim that political institutions must be publicly justified or justifiable... more At the core of political liberalism is the claim that political institutions must be publicly justified or justifiable to be legitimate. What explains the significance of public justification? The main argument that defenders of political liberalism present is an argument from disagreement: the irreducible pluralism that is characteristic of democratic societies requires a mode of justification that lies in between a narrowly political solution based on actual acceptance and a traditional moral solution based on justification from the third-person perspective. But why should we take disagreements seriously? This – epistemic question – has not received the attention it deserves so far. I argue that the significance of public justification can be explained through the possibility of reasonable disagreement. In a reasonable disagreement, the parties hold mutually incompatible beliefs, but each is justified to hold the belief they do. I show that the epistemology of disagreement provides the appropriate underpinning for political liberalism in the sense that it both explains the possibility of an irreducible pluralism and why there has to be public justification of political institutions.

The Procedural Epistemic Value of Deliberation

by Fabienne Peter

Forthcoming in Synthese

Collective deliberation is fuelled by disagreements and its epistemic value depends, inter alia, on how the... more Collective deliberation is fuelled by disagreements and its epistemic value depends, inter alia, on how the participants respond to each other in disagreements. I use this accountability thesis to argue that deliberation may be valued not just instrumentally but also for its procedural features. The instrumental epistemic value of deliberation depends on whether it leads to more or less accurate beliefs among the participants. The procedural epistemic value of deliberation hinges on the relationships of mutual accountability that characterize appropriately conducted deliberation. I will argue that it only comes into view from the second-person standpoint. I shall explain what the second-person standpoint in the epistemic context entails and how it compares to Stephen Darwall’s interpretation of the second-person standpoint in ethics.

Kant on Testimony

by Axel Gelfert

British Journal for the History of Philosophy Vol. 14 No. 4 (2006) pp. 627-652

Immanuel Kant is often regarded as an exponent of the ‘individualist’ tradition in epistemology, according to which... more Immanuel Kant is often regarded as an exponent of the ‘individualist’ tradition in epistemology, according to which testimony is not a fundamental source of knowledge. The present paper argues that this view is far from accurate. Kant devotes ample space to discussions of testimony and, in his lectures on logic, arrives at a distinct and stable philosophical position regarding testimony. Important elements of this position consist in (a) acknowledging the ineliminability of testimony; (b) realizing that testimony can establish empirical knowledge with certainty; (c) establishing a presumptive principle regarding the acceptance of testimony; (d) arguing for a symmetry between knowledge based on experience and knowledge based on testimony. Rejecting testimony as a fundamental source of knowledge merely on the basis that no theoretically necessary ground for its truth can be given, would, as Kant puts it, indicate ‘a lack of moral interest’. Such ‘incredulity’ would be a form of ‘logical egoism’: it demonstrates an unwillingness or inability to think oneself in the place of others, yet this we must do if we are to trust our own judgements. While Kant strongly endorses testimony as a source of empirical knowledge, he does, however, make one important restriction: ‘Propositions of reason’ (Vernunftwahrheiten), such as universal moral principles, may not be adopted on the basis of testimony. I argue that this distinction, between testimonial knowledge of empirical matters of fact and individual knowledge of propositions of reason, is an important element of Kant’s epistemology of testimony, as it explains how his strong endorsement of testimony as a source of knowledge can be squared with his equally strong demand for intellectual autonomy. Finally, I comment on the overall implications of this account for Kant’s discussion, elsewhere in his work, of the public nature of communication.

Keywords: Kant, epistemology of testimony, autonomy, epistemic authority, Enlightenment, sources of knowledge

My Thesis Abstract: Extending Cognition in Epistemology: Towards an Individualistic Social Epistemology

by Spyridon Orestis Palermos

Introduction to doctoral dissertation

by Eric T. Kerr

This is the introduction to my doctoral dissertation. It is a work in progress so please do not quote. Please feel welcome to contact me if you are interested in my research and would like to know more.

This dissertation is a contribution to applied social epistemology. That is, it is a philosophical study, based on... more This dissertation is a contribution to applied social epistemology. That is, it is a philosophical study, based on empirical fieldwork research, of social knowledge. I draw on fieldwork research based on drilling and logging techniques in petroleum engineering to analyse the nature of a particular species of knowledge hereto left largely untouched by analytic epistemology – technical knowledge. Technical knowledge is, broadly speaking, knowledge of how to design, produce, and operate a technical artefact. This species of knowledge has not been given proper attention in analytic epistemology despite its prominent place in most cultures. I demonstrate that this knowledge can only be properly accounted for through the lenses of social or ‘anti-individualist’ epistemology and develop an account of technical knowledge strongly influenced by Barry Barnes, Fred Dretske, Martin Kusch, and research in the philosophy of engineering. This account of knowledge is social, rather than individualist, informational, rather than doxastic, and admits what I call extended epistemic systems, rather than constraining the proper attribution of knowledge only to particular human bodies. My thesis delivers a number of central novel theses: I argue that technical knowledge is distinctive and that there is a heuristic value to analysing it as distinct from scientific or ordinary knowledge-how which is often ignored by accounts which point to the convergence of scientific and technological disciplines and think that technical knowledge and the knowledge of engineers is epistemologically uninteresting. I argue that semantic epistemologies such as semantic contextualism and communitarianism ought to follow the implications of their thesis to wit that ‘knows’ (and its cognate terms) should be analysed as semantic ex-pressions. I argue in favour of a meaning finitist approach to this. In order to develop an account of technical knowledge as described above, we will need to know what kinds of things technical artefacts are. Is this knowledge of natural kinds – as scientific knowledge generally is, -- knowledge of social kinds – as sociology generally is – or knowledge of artificial kinds. I argue that technical artefacts are artificial kinds and that knowledge thereof is consequently knowledge of an artificial kind. As argued by Kusch and the Dual Nature Thesis, artificial kinds are kinds which combine the type of reference-talk relevant to natural and social kinds. I analyse reference-talk about another artificial kind – tools – in order to develop an ontology of tools. In the following chapters I consider what kinds of entity can be attributed with possessing technical knowledge. I consider, as a starting point, what tool use is, concluding that, in certain cases, animals as well as some technical artefacts (e.g. computers) can use tools. They can also design and produce tools. Consequently, these are not barriers to including them as bearers of technical knowledge. However, I note that the aforementioned do not, under some accounts, possess beliefs and mental states comparable to those of human knowers. This may prohibit them from truly possessing technical knowledge. Through an argument that focuses on perceptual knowledge, I argue that the bearer of knowledge can extend beyond the boundaries of human bodies. I also argue in favour of an informational approach to knowledge that would include animals and sociotechnical systems (systems comprising of humans and technical artefacts) as bearers of technical knowledge. Finally, the issue of basic sociotechnical systems (e.g. a human using a microscope) knowing raises the possibility of more complex systems knowing (e.g. a team of engineers using tools and computer software). I consider this possibility in the final chapter.

The division of labor in science: the tradeoff between specialisation and diversity

by Rogier De Langhe

Economics is a typical resource for social epistemology and the division of labour is a common theme for economics. As... more Economics is a typical resource for social epistemology and the division of labour is a common theme for economics. As such it should come as no surprise that the present paper turns to economics to formulate a view on the dynamics of scientific communities, with precursors such as Kitcher (1990), Goldman and Shaked (1991) and Hull (1988). But although the approach is similar to theirs, the view defended is different. Mäki (2005) points out that the lessons philosophers draw from economics can go either way depending on the model chosen. Thus, the aims of this paper are (1) to illustrate this flexibility by proposing an alternative model which assumes increasing returns to adoption in science rather than the decreasing returns present in the aforementioned contributions; and (2) to outline the implications of this view for scientific pluralism and institutional design.

A Unified Approach to the Organization of Cognitive Labor

by Rogier De Langhe

This paper received the PSA Graduate Student Essay Award 2009; to appear in Philosophy of Science

Craigian Contextualism and Radical Scepticism

by Robin McKenna

Draft only.

'Frederick L. Will’s Pragmatic Realism: An Introduction'.

by Kenneth R Westphal

Westphal -- Abstracts: Hegel, Theoretical Philosophy

by Kenneth R Westphal

When is Consensus Knowledge Based? Distinguishing Shared Knowledge from Mere Agreement

by Boaz Miller

Forthcoming in Synthese

Scientific consensus is widely deferred to in public debates as a social indicator of the ‎existence of knowledge.... more Scientific consensus is widely deferred to in public debates as a social indicator of the ‎existence of knowledge. However, it is far from clear that such deference to consensus is ‎always justified. The existence of agreement in a community of researchers is a contingent ‎fact, and researchers may reach a consensus for all kinds of reasons, such as fighting a ‎common foe or sharing a common bias. Scientific consensus, by itself, does not necessarily ‎indicate the existence of shared knowledge among the members of the consensus ‎community. I address the question of under what conditions it is likely that a consensus is in ‎fact knowledge based. I argue that a consensus is likely to be knowledge based when ‎knowledge is the best explanation of the consensus, and I identify three conditions – social ‎calibration, apparent consilience of evidence, and social diversity, for knowledge being the ‎best explanation of a consensus. ‎

CFP Special Issue of Foundations of Science on social epistemology and philosophy of the humanities

by Jeroen Van Bouwel

CFP: 'Science versus Society? Social epistemology meets the philosophy of the humanities.' (Special issue Foundations of Science)

by Laszlo Kosolosky

"CE QUI CHANGE ET LE DÉJÀ FAIT" Diachronie et synchronie dans les sciences sociales et historiques

by Bastien Bosa

Published in: Revue européenne des sciences sociales no 49-2 – p.169-196

Résumé. Cet article propose une réflexion sur la place de la diachronie et de la synchronie dans la recherche... more Résumé. Cet article propose une réflexion sur la place de la diachronie et de la synchronie dans la recherche sociale, en partant de l’une des contradictions indépassables pour toute appréhension du temps. Celui-ci peut être pensé sous l’angle de la concomitance (dont chacun a fait l’expérience et qui revient à penser le temps comme une « succession de présents différents ») ou sous l’angle des processus (c’est-à-dire de la modification permanente des conditions de l’expérience en fonction d’une différentiation entre passé, présent et futur). Nous nous interrogerons sur ce que signifie travailler dans la diachronie ou dans la synchronie, en soulignant notamment la difficulté à distinguer clairement les deux approches : de nombreuses recherches habituellement pensées comme diachroniques ne le sont peut-être pas et, réciproquement, des approches pensées comme synchroniques s’articulent presque nécessairement avec une pensée des processus.

Abstract. This article proposes a reflection on the place of the synchrony-diachrony distinction in social research. The understanding of time is structured by a recurring contradiction: time can be thought of in terms of “concomitant experiences” (time appears in that perspective as a “succession of different presents”) or in terms of “processes” (insisting on the permanent modifications of social life on the basis of a differentiation between past, present and future). I will try to present as clearly as possible diachronic and synchronic approaches, before stressing the difficulty to separate them: some researches usually thought of as diachronic might include other dimensions, while conversely, investigations presented as synchronic almost necessarily articulate processual perspectives.

‎‘Trust Me – I’m a Public Intellectual’: Margaret Atwood’s and David Suzuki’s Social ‎Epistemologies of Climate Science

by Boaz Miller

Forthcoming in Public Intellectuals, edited by Michael Keren. Calgary, AB: University of Calgary ‎Press.‎

Margaret Atwood and David Suzuki are two of the most prominent Canadian public ‎intellectuals ‎involved in the global... more Margaret Atwood and David Suzuki are two of the most prominent Canadian public ‎intellectuals ‎involved in the global warming debate. They both argue that anthropogenic global ‎warming is ‎occurring, warn against its grave consequences, and urge governments and the ‎public to take ‎immediate, decisive, extensive, and profound measures to prevent it. They differ, ‎however, in the ‎reasons and evidence they provide in support of their position. While Suzuki ‎stresses the ‎scientific evidence in favour of the global warming theory and the scientific ‎consensus around it, ‎Atwood is suspicious of the objectivity of science, and draws on an ‎idiosyncratic neo-Malthusian ‎theory of human development. Their implicit views ‎about the cognitive authority of science may ‎be identified with Critical Contextual Empiricism ‎and Feminist Standpoint Epistemology, ‎respectively, both of which face difficulties with ‎providing solid grounds for the position they ‎advocate.‎ ‎

The Social Virtues: Two Accounts

by Sanford Goldberg

The Epistemology of Silence

by Sanford Goldberg