Knowledge-First Social Epistemology

This highly ambitious project proposes a new research programme for 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.

However, there is little agreement concerning the best methodological approach to social epistemological issues.

Individualism puts the individual first; it asks: ‘What are the epistemic responsibilities of individuals in social settings?’ Its main weakness is that it is too demanding to be empirically plausible: according to Individualism, the individual has to do most of the work in separating reliable from unreliable sources.

In contrast, Socialism puts the social factor first; it asks: ‘How does the social environment need to be for individuals to acquire justified beliefs?’ On this view, individuals need to do more or less epistemic work, depending on the social norms in force at the context.

Socialism is too permissive, in that it licences socially accepted but epistemically irresponsible behaviour.KNOWLEDGELAB develops a novel methodology for social epistemology, one that puts knowledge first; it starts with the function of social epistemic interactions, i.e. that of generating knowledge.

It asks: ‘How should we proceed in social epistemic interactions in order to generate knowledge?’ KNOWLEDGELAB employs this novel methodology in the service of the epistemology of testimony, disagreement and groups, and develops the first integrated account of the epistemology of mass media in the literature.

This framework is highly relevant in the context of a globalized society, replete with both easy-access information and misinformation: it is more important than ever to know what separates trustworthy sources of information from untrustworthy ones.