Social epistemology refers to a broad set of approaches that can be taken in epistemology (the study of knowledge) that construes human knowledge as a collective achievement. Another way of characterizing social epistemology is as the evaluation of the social dimensions of knowledge or information.

As a field of inquiry in analytic philosophy, social epistemology deals with questions about knowledge in social contexts, meaning those in which knowledge attributions cannot be explained by examining individuals in isolation from one another. The most common topics discussed in contemporary social epistemology are testimony (e.g. "When does a belief that x is true which resulted from being told 'x is true' constitute knowledge?"), peer disagreement (e.g. "When and how should I revise my beliefs in light of other people holding beliefs that contradict mine?"), and group epistemology (e.g. "What does it mean to attribute knowledge to groups rather than individuals, and when are such knowledge attributions appropriate?"). This dialogue included Socrates' argument about whether anyone is capable of examining if another man's claim that he knows something, is true or not. As the exploration of a dependence on authoritative figures constitutes a part of the study of social epistemology, it confirms the existence of the ideology in minds long before it was given its label.

In 1936, Karl Mannheim turned Karl Marx‘s theory of ideology (which interpreted the “social” aspect in epistemology to be of a political or sociological nature) into an analysis of how the human society develops and functions in this respect. Particularly, this Marxist analysis prompted Mannheim to write Ideology and Utopia, which investigated the classical sociology of knowledge and the construct of ideology.

The term “social epistemology” was first coined by the library scientists Margaret Egan. and Jesse Shera in a Library Quarterly paper at the University of Chicago Graduate Library School in the 1950s. The term was used by Robert K. Merton in a 1972 article in the American Journal of Sociology and then by Steven Shapin in 1979. However, it was not until the 1980s that the current sense of “social epistemology” began to emerge.

The rise of social epistemology

In the 1980s, there was a powerful growth of interest amongst philosophers in topics such as epistemic value of testimony, the nature and function of expertise, proper distribution of cognitive labor and resources among individuals in the communities and the status of group reasoning and knowledge.

In 1987, the philosophical journal Synthese published a special issue on social epistemology which included two authors that have since taken the branch of epistemology in two divergent directions: Alvin Goldman and Steve Fuller. Fuller founded a journal called Social Epistemology: A journal of knowledge, culture, and policy in 1987 and published his first book, Social Epistemology, in 1988. Goldman’s Knowledge in a Social World came out in 1999. Goldman advocates for a type of epistemology which is sometimes called “veritistic epistemology” because of its large emphasis on truth. This type of epistemology is sometimes seen to side with “essentialism” as opposed to “multiculturalism”.

Fuller's position supports the conceptualization that social epistemology is a critique of context, particularly in his approach to "knowledge society" and the "university" as integral contexts of modern learning. It is said that this articulated a reformulation of the Duhem-Quine thesis, which covers the underdetermination of theory by data.

Kuhn, Foucault, and the sociology of scientific knowledge

The basic view of knowledge that motivated the emergence of social epistemology as it is perceived today can be traced to the work of Thomas Kuhn and Michel Foucault, which gained acknowledgment at the end of the 1960s. Both brought historical concerns directly to bear on problems long associated with the philosophy of science. Perhaps the most notable issue here was the nature of truth, which both Kuhn and Foucault described as a relative and contingent notion. On this background, ongoing work in the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) and the history and philosophy of science (HPS) was able to assert its epistemological consequences, leading most notably to the establishment of the strong programme at the University of Edinburgh. In terms of the two strands of social epistemology, Fuller is more sensitive and receptive to this historical trajectory (if not always in agreement) than Goldman, whose “veritistic” social epistemology can be reasonably read as a systematic rejection of the more extreme claims associated with Kuhn and Foucault.

Social epistemology as a field

In the standard sense of the term today, social epistemology is a field within analytic philosophy. It focuses on the social aspects of how knowledge is created and disseminated. What precisely these social aspects are, and whether they have beneficial or detrimental effects upon the possibilities to create, acquire and spread knowledge is a subject of continuous debate. The most common topics discussed in contemporary social epistemology are testimony (e.g. "When does a belief that 'x is true' which resulted from being told that 'x is true' constitute knowledge?"), peer disagreement (e.g. "When and how should I revise my beliefs in light of other people holding beliefs that contradict mine?"), and group epistemology (e.g. "What does it mean to attribute knowledge to groups rather than individuals, and when are such knowledge attributions appropriate?"). Of increasing importance is social epistemology developments within transdisciplinarity as manifested by media ecology.

See also

  • Bayesian epistemology
  • Collaborative intelligence
  • Collective intelligence
  • Distributed cognition
  • Double hermeneutic
  • Epistemic democracy
  • Epistemology
  • Feminist epistemology
  • Group cognition
  • Intersubjectivity
  • Knowledge falsification
  • Shared intentionality
  • Situated cognition
  • Sociology of knowledge
  • Social constructionism
  • Social philosophy
  • Reflexivity (social theory)
  • Media ecology

Notes

References

  • Berlin, James A. Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures: Refiguring College English Studies, Indiana: Parlor Press, 2003.
  • Egan, Margaret and Jesse Shera. 1952. "Foundations of a Theory of Bibliography." Library Quarterly 44:125-37.
  • Goldman, Alvin; Blanchard, Thomas (2016-01-01). Zalta, Edward N., ed. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 ed.). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.
  • Goldman, Alvin,. "Social Epistemology". stanford.library.sydney.edu.au. Retrieved 2017-02-22.
  • Longino, Helen. 1990. Science as Social Knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Longino, Helen. 2001. The Fate of Knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Remedios, Francis. 2003. Legitimizing Scientific Knowledge: An Introduction to Steve Fuller’s Social Epistemology. Lexington Books.
  • Rimkutė, Audronė (2014-09-28). "The Problem of Social Knowledge in Contemporary Social Epistemology: Two Approaches". Problemos (in Lithuanian). 0 (65): 4–19. doi:10.15388/Problemos.2004.65.6645. ISSN 1392-1126.
  • Schmitt, Frederick F. 1994. Socializing Epistemology. Rowman & Littlefield.
  • Schmitt, Frederick F.; Scholz, Oliver R. (2010-02-01). "Introduction: The History of Social Epistemology". Episteme. 7 (1): 1–6. doi:10.3366/E174236000900077X. ISSN 1750-0117.
  • Solomon, Miriam. 2001. Social Empricism. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Further reading

  • The journal Social Epistemology