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Social epistemology refers to a broad set of approaches that can be taken in
epistemology Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Epi ...
(the study of
knowledge Knowledge can be defined as awareness of facts or as practical skills, and may also refer to familiarity with objects or situations. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is often defined as true belief that is distin ...
) 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 Analytic philosophy is a branch and tradition of philosophy using analysis, popular in the Western world and particularly the Anglosphere, which began around the turn of the 20th century in the contemporary era in the United Kingdom, United ...
, 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 In law and in religion, testimony is a solemn attestation as to the truth of a matter. Etymology The words "testimony" and "testify" both derive from the Latin word ''testis'', referring to the notion of a disinterested third-party witness. ...
(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?"). Social epistemology also examines the social justification of belief. One of the enduring difficulties with defining "social epistemology" that arises is the attempt to determine what the word "knowledge" means in this context. There is also a challenge in arriving at a definition of "social" which satisfies academics from different disciplines. Social epistemologists may exist working in many of the disciplines of the humanities and
social sciences Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of so ...
, most commonly in
philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. ...
and
sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation an ...
. In addition to marking a distinct movement in traditional and analytic
epistemology Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Epi ...
, social epistemology is associated with the interdisciplinary field of
science and technology studies Science and technology studies (STS) is an interdisciplinary field that examines the creation, development, and consequences of science and technology in their historical, cultural, and social contexts. History Like most interdisciplinary fie ...
(STS).


History of the term

The consideration of social dimensions of knowledge in relation to philosophy started in 380 B.C.E with Plato’s dialogue:
Charmides Charmides (; grc-gre, Χαρμίδης), son of Glaucon, was an Athenian statesman who flourished during the 5th century BC.Debra Nails, ''The People of Plato'' (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002), 90–94. An uncle of Plato, Charmides appears i ...
. This dialogue included Socrates' thought on whether a man is capable of examining if another man's claim that he knows something is true or not. In it he questions the degree of certainty an unprofessional in a field can have towards a person’s claim to be a specialist in that same field. Charmides also explored the tendency of the utopian vision of social relations to degenerate into dystopian fantasy. 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 Karl Mannheim (born Károly Manheim, 27 March 1893 – 9 January 1947) was an influential Hungarian sociologist during the first half of the 20th century. He is a key figure in classical sociology, as well as one of the founders of the sociolo ...
turned
Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
‘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 Jesse Hauk Shera (December 8, 1903 – March 8, 1982) was an American librarian and information scientist who pioneered the use of information technology in libraries and played a role in the expansion of its use in other areas throughout ...
in the 1950s. The term was used by
Robert K. Merton Robert King Merton (born Meyer Robert Schkolnick; July 4, 1910 – February 23, 2003) was an American sociologist who is considered a founding father of modern sociology, and a major contributor to the subfield of criminology. He served as th ...
in a 1972 article in the
American Journal of Sociology The ''American Journal of Sociology'' is a peer-reviewed bi-monthly academic journal that publishes original research and book reviews in the field of sociology and related social sciences. It was founded in 1895 as the first journal in its disc ...
and then by
Steven Shapin Steven Shapin (born 1943) is an American historian and sociologist of science. He is the Franklin L. Ford Research Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University. He is considered one of the earliest scholars on the sociology of scienti ...
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 Alvin Ira Goldman (born 1938) is an American philosopher who is Emeritus Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Rutgers University in New Jersey and a leading figure in epistemology. Education and career 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”. But Goldman has argued that this association between veritistic epistemology and essentialism is not necessary. He describes Social Epistemology as knowledge derived from one’s interactions with another person, group or society. Goldman looks into one of the two strategies of the socialization of epistemology. This strategy includes the evaluation of social factors that impact knowledge formed on true belief. In contrast, Fuller takes preference for the second strategy that defines knowledge influenced by social factors as collectively accepted belief. The difference between the two can be simplified with exemplars e.g.: the first strategy means analyzing how your degree of wealth (a social factor) influences what information you determine to be valid whilst the second strategy occurs when an evaluation is done on wealth’s influence upon your knowledge acquired from the beliefs of the society in which you find yourself. 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 Duheim-Quine thesis, which covers the underdetermination of theory by data. It explains that the problem of context will assume this form: :knowledge is determined by its context". In 2012, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of ‘‘Social Epistemology’’, Fuller reflected upon the history and the prospects of the field, including the need for social epistemology to re-connect with the larger issues of knowledge production first identified by
Charles Sanders Peirce Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician and scientist who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism". Educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for ...
as ‘’cognitive economy’’ and nowadays often pursued by
library and information science Library and information science(s) or studies (LIS) is an interdisciplinary field of study that deals generally with organization, access, collection, and protection/regulation of information, whether in physical (e.g. art, legal proceedings, et ...
. As for the “analytic social epistemology”, to which Goldman has been a significant contributor, Fuller concludes that it has “failed to make significant progress owing, in part, to a minimal understanding of actual knowledge practices, a minimised role for philosophers in ongoing inquiry, and a focus on maintaining the status quo of epistemology as a field.”


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 Thomas Samuel Kuhn (; July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American philosopher of science whose 1962 book '' The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'' was influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term ''paradig ...
and
Michel Foucault Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and ho ...
, 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 Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultim ...
. Perhaps the most notable issue here was the nature of
truth Truth is the property of being in accord with fact or reality.Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionarytruth 2005 In everyday language, truth is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise correspond to it, such as belief ...
, which both Kuhn and Foucault described as a relative and contingent notion. On this background, ongoing work in the
sociology of scientific knowledge The sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) is the study of science as a social activity, especially dealing with "the social conditions and effects of science, and with the social structures and processes of scientific activity." The sociolog ...
(SSK) and the
history and philosophy of science The history and philosophy of science (HPS) is an academic discipline that encompasses the philosophy of science and the history of science. Although many scholars in the field are trained primarily as either historians or as philosophers, there ...
(HPS) was able to assert its epistemological consequences, leading most notably to the establishment of the strong programme at the
University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 1 ...
. 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 Analytic philosophy is a branch and tradition of philosophy using analysis, popular in the Western world and particularly the Anglosphere, which began around the turn of the 20th century in the contemporary era in the United Kingdom, United ...
. The field of social epistemology 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 In law and in religion, testimony is a solemn attestation as to the truth of a matter. Etymology The words "testimony" and "testify" both derive from the Latin word ''testis'', referring to the notion of a disinterested third-party witness. ...
(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?"). Within the field, "the social" is approached in two complementary and not mutually exclusive ways: "the social" character of knowledge can either be approached through inquiries in ''inter-individual'' epistemic relations or through inquiries focusing on epistemic ''communities''. The inter-individual approach typically focuses on issues such as testimony, epistemic trust as a form of trust placed by one individual in another, epistemic dependence, epistemic authority, etc. The community approach typically focuses on issues such as community standards of justification, community procedures of critique, diversity, epistemic justice, and collective knowledge. Social epistemology as a field within analytic philosophy has close ties to, and often overlaps with
philosophy of science Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultim ...
. While parts of the field engage in abstract, normative considerations of knowledge creation and dissemination, other parts of the field are "naturalized epistemology" in the sense that they draw on empirically gained insights---which could mean
natural science Natural science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and repeatab ...
research from, e.g.,
cognitive psychology Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...
, be that qualitative or
quantitative Quantitative may refer to: * Quantitative research, scientific investigation of quantitative properties * Quantitative analysis (disambiguation) * Quantitative verse, a metrical system in poetry * Statistics, also known as quantitative analysis ...
social science Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of s ...
research. (For the notion of "naturalized epistemology" see
Willard Van Orman Quine Willard Van Orman Quine (; known to his friends as "Van"; June 25, 1908 – December 25, 2000) was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition, recognized as "one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century" ...
.) And while parts of the field are concerned with analytic considerations of rather general character, case-based and domain-specific inquiries in, e.g., knowledge creation in collaborative scientific practice, knowledge exchange on online platforms or knowledge gained in learning institutions play an increasing role. Important academic journals for social epistemology as a field within analytic philosophy are, e.g., ''
Episteme In philosophy, episteme (; french: épistémè) is a term that refers to a principle system of understanding (i.e., knowledge), such as scientific knowledge or practical knowledge. The term comes from the Ancient Greek verb grc, ἐπῐ́ ...
'', '' Social Epistemology'', and '' Synthese''. However, major works within this field are also published in journals that predominantly address philosophers of science and psychology or in interdisciplinary journals which focus on particular domains of inquiry (such as, e.g., ''
Ethics and Information Technology ''Ethics and Information Technology'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering the intersection between moral philosophy and the field of information and communications technology. It was established in 1999 by Jeroen van den Hove ...
'').


Major philosophers who influenced social epistemology

#
Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
in Charmides Dialogue #
John Locke John Locke (; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "father of liberalism". Considered one of ...
in Problem of Testimony #
David Hume David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" '' Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment ph ...
in Problem of Testimony #
Thomas Reid Thomas Reid (; 7 May ( O.S. 26 April) 1710 – 7 October 1796) was a religiously trained Scottish philosopher. He was the founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense and played an integral role in the Scottish Enlightenment. In 1783 he wa ...
in Problem of Testimony #
Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
in interrelating Ideology and Knowledge. #* used by
Karl Mannheim Karl Mannheim (born Károly Manheim, 27 March 1893 – 9 January 1947) was an influential Hungarian sociologist during the first half of the 20th century. He is a key figure in classical sociology, as well as one of the founders of the sociolo ...
who concentrated on the social conditioning of knowledge with the reasoning that a knowledge claim's validity is restricted by the social conditions with regard to which the claim was initially made.


Present and future concerns

In both stages, both varieties of social epistemology remain largely "academic" or "theoretical" projects. Yet both emphasize the social significance of knowledge and therefore the cultural value of social epistemology itself. A range of journals publishing social epistemology welcome papers that include a policy dimension. More practical applications of social epistemology can be found in the areas of
library science Library science (often termed library studies, bibliothecography, and library economy) is an interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary field that applies the practices, perspectives, and tools of management, information technology, education, an ...
,
academic publishing Academic publishing is the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in academic journal articles, books or theses. The part of academic written output that is not formally pub ...
, guidelines for scientific authorship and collaboration, knowledge policy and debates over the role of the Internet in knowledge transmission and creation. Social epistemology is still considered a relatively new addition to philosophy, with its problems and theories still fresh and in rapid movement. Of increasing importance is social epistemology developments within transdisciplinarity as manifested by media ecology.


See also

*
Bayesian epistemology Bayesian epistemology is a formal approach to various topics in epistemology that has its roots in Thomas Bayes' work in the field of probability theory. One advantage of its formal method in contrast to traditional epistemology is that its conc ...
*
Epistemology Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Epi ...
* Feminist epistemology *
Sociology of knowledge The sociology of knowledge is the study of the relationship between human thought and the social context within which it arises, and the effects that prevailing ideas have on societies. It is not a specialized area of sociology. Instead, it deal ...
*
Social constructionism Social constructionism is a theory in sociology, social ontology, and communication theory which proposes that certain ideas about physical reality arise from collaborative consensus, instead of pure observation of said reality. The theor ...
*
Social philosophy Social philosophy examines questions about the foundations of social institutions, social behavior, and interpretations of society in terms of ethical values rather than empirical relations. Social philosophers emphasize understanding the social ...
*
Reflexivity (social theory) In epistemology, and more specifically, the sociology of knowledge, reflexivity refers to circular relationships between cause and effect, especially as embedded in human belief structures. A reflexive relationship is bidirectional with both the ...
*
Media ecology Media ecology theory is the study of media, technology, and communication and how they affect human environments. The theoretical concepts were proposed by Marshall McLuhan in 1964, while the term ''media ecology'' was first formally introduced b ...


Notes


References

* Berlin, James A. ''Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures: Refiguring College English Studies'', Indiana: Parlor Press, 2003. * Egan, Margaret and
Jesse Shera Jesse Hauk Shera (December 8, 1903 – March 8, 1982) was an American librarian and information scientist who pioneered the use of information technology in libraries and played a role in the expansion of its use in other areas throughout ...
. 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

* "What Is Social Epistemology? A Smorgasbord of projects", in ''Pathways to Knowledge: Private and Public'', Oxford University Press, Pg:182-204, * "Relativism, Rationalism and the Sociology of Knowledge", Barry Barnes and David Bloor, in ''Rationality and Relativism'', Pg:22 * ''Social Epistemology'', Steve Fuller, Indiana University Press, p. 3.


External links

* * *
The journal ''Social Epistemology''
{{Science and technology studies Interdisciplinary subfields of sociology Epistemology Philosophy of science Social philosophy