scholarly journals The Social Epistemology of Consensus and Dissent

2019 ◽  
pp. 230-239
Author(s):  
Boaz Miller
Keyword(s):  
Social Epistemology ◽  
The Social

scholarly journals Introduction: Computer Simulations in Social Epistemology

Episteme ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Igor Douven
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Computer Simulations ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Formal Analysis ◽  
Housing Prices ◽  
Racial Groups ◽  
Friendship Networks ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Social ◽  
Methodological Status

Over recent decades, computer simulations have become a common tool among practitioners of the social sciences. They have been utilized to study such diverse phenomena as the integration and segregation of different racial groups, the emergence and evolution of friendship networks, the spread of gossip, fluctuations of housing prices in an area, the transmission of social norms, and many more. Philosophers of science and others interested in the methodological status of these studies have identified a number of distinctive virtues of the use of computer simulations. For instance, it has been generally appreciated that as simulations require the formulation of an explicit algorithm, they foster precision and clarity about whatever conceptual issues are involved in the study. The value of computer simulations as a heuristic tool for developing hypotheses, models, and theories has also been recognized, as has been the fact that they can serve as a substitute for real experiments. This is especially useful in the social domain, given that human beings cannot be freely manipulated at the discretion of the experimenter (for both points, see Hartmann 1996). However, the main virtue of computer simulations is generally believed to be that they are able to deal with the complexities that arise when many elements interact in a highly dynamic system and which often evade an exact formal analysis (see, e.g., Humphreys 1991).

Global Digital Divide, Global Justice, Cultures, and Epistemology

2011 ◽  
pp. 37-50
Author(s):  
Soraj Hongladarom
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Digital Divide ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Internet Access ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Social Good ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Digital Divide

The problem of global digital divide, namely disparity in Internet access and use among the various regions of the world, is a growing concern. Even though, according to some reports, the gap is getting narrower, this does not mean that the problem is disappearing, because the problem does not just consist in getting more people to become “wired,” so to speak. This chapter investigates the various relationships among the global digital divide, global justice, cultures and epistemology. Very briefly stated, not getting access to the Internet constitutes an injustice because the access is a social good that can lead to various other goods. Furthermore, as information technology is a second-order technology, one that operates on meaning bearing symbols, access to the technology is very much an issue of social epistemology, an attempt to find out the optimal way to distribute knowledge across the social and cultural domains.

Social Organization of Science

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Carrier
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
Scientific Communities ◽  
Science Section ◽  
The Social ◽  
Organization Of Science ◽  
Knowledge Claims

The social organization of science as a topic of philosophy of science mostly concerns the question of which kinds of social organization are most beneficial to the epistemic aspirations of science. Section 1 addresses the interaction among scientists for improving epistemic qualities of knowledge claims in contrast to the mere accumulation of contributions from several scientists. Section 2 deals with the principles that are supposed to organize this interaction among scientists such that well-tested and well-confirmed knowledge is produced. Section 3 outlines what is supposed to glue scientific communities together and how society at large is assumed to affect the social organization of these communities. Section 4 attends to social epistemology (i.e., to attempts to explore the influence of social roles and characteristics on the system of scientific knowledge and confirmation practices).

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katrina Hutchison ◽  
Catriona Mackenzie ◽  
Marina Oshana
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Feminist Philosophy ◽  
Relational Autonomy ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
Philosophical Literature ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Theories ◽  
Scant Attention

This introduction distinguishes ways the social dimensions of moral responsibility have been investigated in recent philosophical literature: some theories highlight the interpersonal dimensions of moral responsibility practices; some explicate the interlocutive properties of morally reactive exchanges; while others seek to explain the role of the social environment in scaffolding agency. Despite the rise of social approaches, philosophers have paid scant attention to the implications of inequalities of power for theorizing about moral responsibility. The remainder of the introduction articulates a set of problems posed by contexts of structural injustice for theories of moral responsibility and highlights the relevance of recent work in feminist philosophy on relational autonomy and social epistemology for understanding and addressing these problems. The introduction notes the overlaps and differences between the concepts of autonomy and moral responsibility and offers preliminary reflections on how debates about relational autonomy might bear on social theories of moral responsibility.

Minding One's Cognitive Systems: When Does a Group of Minds Constitute a Single Cognitive Unit?

Episteme ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 177-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Rupert
Keyword(s):  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Cognitive Systems ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Tentative Conclusion ◽  
Group Minds ◽  
The Social ◽  
Group Mind ◽  
Number Of Authors

The possibility of group minds or group mental states has been considered by a number of authors addressing issues in social epistemology and related areas (Goldman 2004, Pettit 2003, Gilbert 2004, Hutchins 1995). An appeal to group minds might, in the end, do indispensable explanatory work in the social or cognitive sciences. I am skeptical, though, and this essay lays out some of the reasons for my skepticism. The concerns raised herein constitute challenges to the advocates of group minds (or group mental states), challenges that might be overcome as theoretical and empirical work proceeds. Nevertheless, these hurdles are, I think, genuine and substantive, so much so that my tentative conclusion will not be optimistic. If a group mind is supposed to be a single mental system having two or more minds as proper parts, the prospects for group minds seem dim–or so I will argue.

The Postmodern Condition of Law and Societal “Management of Rules”

2006 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl-Heinz Ladeur
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Joint Venture ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
The Social ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Evolutionary Step ◽  
The Relationship

SummaryThe last decades have witnessed the appearance of some quite new issues relating to the integration of science into legal decision-making. For a better understanding of the relationship between the normative and cognitive aspects of the decision-making procedure under postmodern conditions of uncertainty, it is necessary to reconstruct the “social epistemology” that consists of the hybrid rules for the management of practical knowledge problems used in the past. In the days of the classical liberal legal system, social knowledge was not a free, spontaneously generated public good, either. It was implied in the practical networks of private production which were the source of “experience”. It was one of the major tasks of the liberal state to systematise, generalise and stabilise this new knowledge base of society, which could be used for both private and public purposes. In a second-order remodelling of this earlier “public-private joint venture”, group-based calculations of probability were integrated into the practice of both private and public types of decision-making, for example, in financial markets or in the construction of public insurances. The emerging paradigm of “social epistemology” in postmodernity is characterised by the requirement to draw upon a more open conception of modelling, designing and experimenting, which makes decision-making more process-oriented, more flexible and more reflexive. This new evolutionary step will again have important consequences for the legal system which has to adapt to more a-centric heterarchical modes of knowledge production. This evolution explains the interest in public-private partnerships and calls for a more proactive public approach to knowledge management.

scholarly journals An Appraisal of Alvin Goldman’s Social Epistemology

PREDESTINASI ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Elias Ifeanyi E. Uzoigwe
Keyword(s):  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Missing Link ◽  
Basic Assumptions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Fresh Perspective ◽  
Insight Into

This work is aimed at giving an insight into the issues raised by Goldman in his argument that social epistemology is ‘real epistemology’. Goldman wants to convince the mainstream epistemologists and the philosophical world in general that social epistemology is real epistemology by distinguishing between three forms of social epistemology: revisionist, preservationist, and expansionist. These three forms of social epistemology construed and proposed by Goldman differ in how they relate to the basic assumptions of traditional/classical epistemology. While acknowledging the various authors for their divergent views and contributions to social epistemic discourse, this work holds that though Goldman, more than any other social epistemologist, raised a fresh perspective in social epistemology, yet, there is a missing link in his submission. Goldman’s preservationist social epistemology, which he argued is “real epistemology”, fails to give at least, a spotlight on what this work calls historical social epistemology. This does not in any way downplay Goldman’s giant stride in awakening epistemologists from their slumber which led some scholars to include issues like analytic social epistemology, diagnostic social epistemology, naturalistic social epistemology, and political social epistemology in the epistemic lexicon; and by so doing, expanding the frontiers of the epistemic domain of philosophical enterprise. It is the position of this research that Goldman’s social epistemology elicited a renewed interest in epistemologists and scholars alike in the social dimension of knowledge. This work employs historical, conceptual, contextual, and textual methods of analyses.

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