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.

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.

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.

Justificación, educación y libertad

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 79-89
Author(s):  
Mónica Gómez Salazar
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Democratic Society ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Epistemological Pluralism ◽  
Freedom And Responsibility

This paper argues the thesis that education should be understood as a guide that directs the young people towards reflexive and imaginative social practices that allow them to formulate new and varied hypotheses as well as alternative justifications. Based on Dewey, we will expose that a goal such as this is only applicable to members of a democratic society. Next, we present some features of onto-epistemological pluralism in relation to freedom and responsibility. It is concluded that there is no justification that is closer to truth or reality. The relevance of a justified belief with good reasons lies in its practical consequences for specific conditions of existence.

scholarly journals “Indirect” Information: The Debate on Testimony in Social Epistemology and Its Role in the Game of “Giving and Asking for Reasons”

Information ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 101
Author(s):  
Raffaela Giovagnoli
Keyword(s):  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Formal Structure ◽  
Wilfrid Sellars ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
Space Of Reasons ◽  
Indirect Information

We will sketch the debate on testimony in social epistemology by reference to the contemporary debate on reductionism/anti-reductionism, communitarian epistemology and inferentialism. Testimony is a fundamental source of knowledge we share and it is worthy to be considered in the ambit of a dialogical perspective, which requires a description of a formal structure, which entails deontic statuses and deontic attitudes. In particular, we will argue for a social reformulation of the “space of reasons”, which establishes a fruitful relationship with the epistemological view of Wilfrid Sellars.

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 NO KNOWLEDGE REQUIRED

Episteme ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 303-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Reuter ◽  
Peter Brössel
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Knowledge Norm ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Centre Of Gravity ◽  
Knowledge Account ◽  
Exchange Information

ABSTRACTAssertions are the centre of gravity in social epistemology. They are the vehicles we use to exchange information within scientific groups and society as a whole. It is therefore essential to determine under which conditions we are permitted to make an assertion. In this paper we argue and provide empirical evidence for the view that the norm of assertion is justified belief: truth or even knowledge are not required. Our results challenge the knowledge account advocated by, e.g. Williamson (1996), in general, and more specifically, put into question several studies conducted by Turri (2013, 2016) that support a knowledge norm of assertion. Instead, the justified belief account championed by, e.g. Douven (2006), seems to prevail.

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.

scholarly journals A Simulation Approach to Veritistic Social Epistemology

Episteme ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik J. Olsson
Keyword(s):  
Computer Simulation ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Simulation Approach ◽  
Simulation Environment ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Concrete Case ◽  
Large Classes ◽  
Computational Problem ◽  
Veritistic Value

In a seminal book, Alvin I. Goldman outlines a theory for how to evaluate social practices with respect to their “veritistic value”, i.e., their tendency to promote the acquisition of true beliefs (and impede the acquisition of false beliefs) in society. In the same work, Goldman raises a number of serious worries for his account. Two of them concern the possibility of determining the veritistic value of a practice in a concrete case because (1) we often don't know what beliefs are actually true, and (2) even if we did, the task of determining the veritistic value would be computationally extremely difficult. Neither problem is specific to Goldman's theory and both can be expected to arise for just about any account of veritistic value. It is argued here that the first problem does not pose a serious threat to large classes of interesting practices. The bulk of the paper is devoted to the computational problem, which, it is submitted, can be addressed in promising terms by means of computer simulation. In an attempt to add vividness to this proposal, an up-and-running simulation environment (Laputa) is presented and put to some preliminary tests.

The Prophetic Bacon

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 78-86
Author(s):  
Steve Fuller ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Historical Figures ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Level I

This paper is both a reflection on Francis Bacon’s social epistemology and a meta-reflection on how we should be think about historical figures such as Bacon, who are of continuing philosophical, scientific and even political relevance. The impetus for this paper is provided by Daniel Garber’s ‘Bacon’s Metaphysical Method’, which depicts Bacon as making various moves in the scholastic debates of his time. In contrast, I draw two sorts of conclusions: (1) At the historiographical level, I argue against the sort of ‘contextualism’ that artificially constrains the ‘transcendental’ horizons of a thinker such as Bacon, who was clearly addressing not simply his immediate contemporaries but perhaps more importantly, some future readers whose identities he cannot know. What is sometimes called the ‘conversation of mankind’ has just this rather odd communicative character. (2) At the more substantive philosophical level, it is clear that Bacon does not have a conception of knowledge as a kind of (justified) belief at all. On the contrary, knowledge is the product of a process that is largely conducted by humans on humans, very much in the spirit of a judicial inquisition. In this context, humans – no less than the technologies normally found in laboratories – are instruments of knowledge production. Here Bacon presages the c19-c20 ideas of media as the ‘extension of the senses’ and Karl Popper’s World 3.

Foundations and Applications of Social Epistemology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanford C. Goldberg
Keyword(s):  
Research Program ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Epistemic Communities ◽  
Epistemic Dependence ◽  
Epistemic Practices ◽  
Epistemic Agency ◽  
Core Concepts ◽  
Normative Expectations

This book collects twelve recent papers by the author on social epistemology. Roughly half of them propose a research program for social epistemology—including an animating vision, foundational questions, and core concepts—and the other half are applications of this vision to particular topics. The author characterizes the research program itself as the exploration of the epistemic significance of other minds. Such a program will enumerate the various ways in which we depend epistemically on others, it will describe the proper way to evaluate beliefs according to the sort of dependence they exhibit, and it will provide the basis for identifying and characterizing various dysfunctions of our epistemic communities. The book suggests that several core concepts will be helpful as part of this exploration: epistemic dependence (direct and diffuse); entitlements (epistemic as well as those deriving from our social practices); the normative expectations we have of one another as epistemic subjects; and the socio-epistemic practices in which we participate. It goes on to put this program and these concepts into practice by exploring such topics as the epistemic agency exhibited in inquiry, the practices that constitute news coverage, the basis for allegations of what we or others should have known, how reliance on another’s testimony contrasts with reliance on an instrument, our reliance on others as consumers of testimony, and the epistemic upshot of non-epistemic social norms (whether these are moral, political, professional, or relationship-based).

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