Group Knowledge Versus Group Rationality: Two Approaches to Social Epistemology

Episteme ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alvin I. Goldman
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Versus Group ◽  
Traditional Epistemology ◽  
Group Knowledge ◽  
Alternative Approaches ◽  
Practical Life

Social epistemology is a many-splendored subject. Different theorists adopt different approaches and the options are quite diverse, often orthogonal to one another. The approach I favor is to examine social practices in terms of their impact on knowledge acquisition (Goldman 1999). This has at least two virtues: it displays continuity with traditional epistemology, which historically focuses on knowledge, and it intersects with the concerns of practical life, which are pervasively affected by what people know or don't know. In making this choice, I am not blind to the allure of alternative approaches. In this paper I explain and motivate the knowledge-centered approach by contrasting it with a newly emerging alternative that has a definite appeal of its own. According to this alternative, the chief dimension of social epistemological interest would be rationality rather than knowledge.

scholarly journals Testimony: A Matter of Social Practices

Proceedings ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 43
Author(s):  
Raffaela Giovagnoli
Keyword(s):  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Traditional Epistemology

Traditional epistemology rests on sources of information and knowledge such as perception, memory, ways of reasoning etc. In social epistemology, we find the primacy of an “indirect” form of information and knowledge, namely “testimony”: a justified belief can be acquired by hearing what others say or write. We focus on the contemporary debate, and in particular, on “communitarian” views.

Social epistemology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandra Tanesini
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Peer Disagreement ◽  
Traditional Epistemology ◽  
Area Of Concern

Social epistemology encompasses the study of the social dimensions of knowledge acquisition and transmission (Palermos and Pritchard 2013), the evaluation of beliefs and belief-forming mechanisms in their social contexts for their truth-related or veritistic features (Goldman 1999; Goldman and Blanchard 2016), and the study of the epistemic significance of other minds (Goldberg 2016a). The relation of social epistemology to traditional epistemology, as pursued in the analytic tradition, is also a matter of debate (Palermos and Pritchard 2013). Philosophers working in critical and cultural studies of science understand social epistemology as an interdisciplinary framework for the study of knowledge from historical, cultural, and sociological perspectives (Fuller 1988). They propose that this approach should supplant traditional epistemology. Philosophers trained within the analytic approach consider social epistemology to mark an expansion of more traditional accounts. It would either be a new branch of epistemology, or offer a new paradigm for its pursuit (Goldman 1999). A useful lens through which to understand some social dimensions of knowledge acquisition and transmission is to think of these dimensions as relations of epistemic dependence. Starting from Descartes, epistemologists have often praised exclusive self-reliance in knowledge acquisition as an ideal. Social epistemology is the study of those ways of gaining and communicating knowledge where the subject is not self-reliant but dependent on other agents or on tools that scaffold or extend her cognitive abilities (Pritchard 2010; Sterelny 2010; Palermos and Prichard 2013). Thus, testimony (Gelfert 2014), expert testimony (Goldman 2011), and peer disagreement (Kelly 2005) have been extensively studied by social epistemologists. Another area of concern for social epistemology is the impact of individuals’ social identities, roles, or locations on their epistemic lives. These impacts are diverse; for example, they affect which experiential knowledge individuals are likely to acquire; their ability to access evidence or information; and the amount of credibility that they are granted as informants (Fricker 2007). This social dimension of knowledge has been long studied by feminist epistemologists, and it has been at the core of lively debates about epistemic injustice (Fricker 2007). Two additional branches of social epistemology study systems and institutions designed to facilitate knowledge transmission acquisition and collectives such as groups or teams as epistemic agents. Researchers working in these areas are concerned with collective and distributed knowledge, with the division of epistemic labor, and with the effects of the Internet on knowledge and understanding. Finally, and most recently, social epistemologists have become concerned with the obverse of knowledge: ignorance. Some of the pioneering work in this area has been carried out by feminist epistemologists and critical race theorists concerned with what they perceive as systemic features of epistemic communities which were instrumental in the widespread preservation of ignorance about a vast array of inconvenient truths (Mills 2007; Tuana 2006).

scholarly journals Testimony: A Matter of Social Practices

Proceedings ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 43
Author(s):  
Raffaela Giovagnoli
Keyword(s):  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Traditional Epistemology

Traditional epistemology rests on sources of information and knowledge such as perception, memory, ways of reasoning etc. In social epistemology, we find the primacy of an “indirect” form of information and knowledge, namely “testimony”: a justified belief can be acquired by hearing what others say or write. We focus on the contemporary debate, and in particular, on “communitarian” views.

Focus groups as a group knowledge acquisition technique

1992 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 407-425 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha Grabowski ◽  
Anne P. Massey ◽  
William A. Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Focus Groups ◽  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
Group Knowledge ◽  
Acquisition Technique

scholarly journals Demarginalizing Standpoint Epistemology

Episteme ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Briana Toole
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
Pragmatic Encroachment ◽  
Traditional Epistemology ◽  
Standpoint Epistemology

Abstract Standpoint epistemology, the view that social identity is relevant to knowledge-acquisition, has been consigned to the margins of mainstream philosophy. In part, this is because the principles of standpoint epistemology are taken to be in opposition to those which guide traditional epistemology. One goal of this paper is to tease out the characterization of traditional epistemology that is at odds with standpoint epistemology. The characterization of traditional epistemology that I put forth is one which endorses the thesis of intellectualism, the view that knowledge does not depend on non-epistemic features. I then suggest that two further components – the atomistic view of knowers and aperspectivalism – can be usefully interpreted as supporting features of intellectualism. A further goal of this paper is to show that we ought to resist this characterization of traditional epistemology. I use pragmatic encroachment as a dialectical tool to motivate the denial of intellectualism, and consequently, the denial of both supporting components. I then attempt to show how it is possible to have a view, similar to pragmatic encroachment, that takes social identity, rather than stakes, to be the feature that makes a difference to what a person is in a position to know.

scholarly journals Social epistemology as a new paradigm for journalism and media studies

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-229
Author(s):  
Yigal Godler ◽  
Zvi Reich ◽  
Boaz Miller
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Knowledge Generation ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Strong Orientation

Journalism and media studies lack robust theoretical concepts for studying journalistic knowledge generation. More specifically, conceptual challenges attend the emergence of big data and algorithmic sources of journalistic knowledge. A family of frameworks apt to this challenge is provided by “social epistemology”: a young philosophical field which regards society’s participation in knowledge generation as inevitable. Social epistemology offers the best of both worlds for journalists and media scholars: a thorough familiarity with biases and failures of obtaining knowledge, and a strong orientation toward best practices in the realm of knowledge-acquisition and truth-seeking. This article articulates the lessons of social epistemology for two central nodes of knowledge-acquisition in contemporary journalism: human-mediated knowledge and technology-mediated knowledge.

Group Knowledge Analyzed

Episteme ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raimo Tuomela
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Community ◽  
Third World ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Abstract Entity ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Traditional Epistemology ◽  
Group Knowledge ◽  
The World ◽  
Belief States

One can speak of knowledge in an impersonal sense: It is accepted as knowledge that copper expands when heated, that the capital of Finland is Helsinki, and that no one under 18 years of age is entitled to vote in national elections. Such knowledge is not an abstract entity floating around in some kind of Platonic “third world”. Rather it is knowledge that some actual agent or agents actually have or have had as contents of their appropriate mental states (belief states) and that others on this basis can have as their knowledge. People find out things either by themselves or together, and often what they come to believe about the world is true and more or less well-grounded, thus knowledge much in the sense of traditional epistemology. We may say then that there isknowledge in groupsor communities, e.g. in the scientific community, that such and such is the case, and that in some casesgroups as groups know; and in all these cases there must be or have been actual knowers.

Interactive Interfaces to Detect Conceptual Difference for Group Knowledge Acquisition

1997 ◽  
Vol 30 (25) ◽  
pp. 177-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shogo Nishida ◽  
Tetsuya Yoshida ◽  
Teruyuki Kondo
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
Group Knowledge ◽  
Interactive Interfaces

scholarly journals The foundations of social epistemology

2013 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angelo Corlett
Keyword(s):  
Social Epistemology ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Communication Theory ◽  
Potential Problem ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
The Past ◽  
Traditional Epistemology ◽  
The Social ◽  
Analytical Philosopher ◽  
Applied Epistemology

There is no more prolific analytical philosopher than Alvin I. Goldman when it comes to social epistemology. During the past two decades, he has done more than any other analytical philosopher to set the tone for how social epistemology ought to be conceptualized. However, while Goldman has provided numerous contributions to our understanding of how applied epistemology can assist not only philosophy, but other fields of learning such as the sciences, law, and communication theory, there are concerns with the way he conceptualizes the foundations of social epistemology. One is that he somewhat problematically partitions off social epistemology from traditional analytic epistemology in ways that make the latter, but not the former, naturalistic and reliabilist (on his construal of naturalism and reliabilism). Another difficulty is that he seems not to recognize that social epistemology poses a rather embarrassingly potential problem for traditional epistemology, namely, it exposes traditional epistemology?s excessive individualism. That Goldman seems not to recognize this is evidenced by the fact that in his conceptualization of the foundations of epistemology he retains traditional epistemology as an area of philosophical inquiry on its own terms, without arguing that elements of the social might well have to be taken into account by traditional analyses of human knowledge. Thus, to put it in the terms of another social epistemologist, Steve Fuller, Goldman?s social epistemology is not revisionistic, though Goldman himself insists that it is normative. This leads to a third problem for Goldman?s social epistemology, namely, that it contains no justified true belief analysis of the nature of social knowledge.

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