Knowledge-First Social Epistemology

This course introduces students to state of the art research in social epistemology. Social epistemology investigates the epistemic effects of social interactions: e.g., how we gain knowledge from social sources (others’ testimony, the media), how we should respond to disagreement, how groups (scientific teams, organisations) can know. It is among the most thriving areas in contemporary philosophy. Results in social epistemology have wide, direct impact on: (1) scientific practice (e.g. concerning academic publishing, guidelines for scientific authorship and collaboration, knowledge policy an…