Notes on Social Epistemology: Essential Readings

The volume Social Epistemology: Essential Readings ¹ edited by Alvin I. Goldman and Dennis Whitcomb introduces the topic of social epistemology by bringing together a variety of previously published issues which belong to it. These different chapters are valuable not as much for the originality of the results that they provide, rather than for illustrating the wide scope of questions embodied social epistemology. Readers who are interested like me in diverse topics such as sociology of science, the cultural brain hypothesis in anthropology, or institutional design in political science, will find that social epistemology may provide useful insights beneficial to each of these matters – which is what makes this introduction exciting to read, and the whole enterprise look attractive. It is in light of the diversity of social epistemology, that Alvin I. Goldman proposes that the topic be split into three categories.

The first kind of social epistemology departs from more “traditional” individualistic epistemology by considering “individual doxastic agents with social evidence”; it is mostly concerned with how knowledge transmitted by others should be incorporated into one’s beliefs. Typically, this line of inquiry encompasses questions such as: on what grounds one may rationally trust testimonies or experts on certain matters they do not know (much) about? How should peers manage conflicting statements about the truth of certain propositions?

The second kind of social epistemology treats social groups such as institutions as epistemic agents themselves, holding their own beliefs. For this reason, it is referred to by Goldman as “collective doxastic agents social epistemology”, or “CDA SE”. A typical issue in that context is the aggregation of conflicting individual beliefs into a single collective judgement. Several contributions address the challenges raised by such a task – for instance, the impossibility for collective judgments to simultaneously fulfill a number of requirements such as their logical consistency is discussed, as well as potential ways out this difficulty. Another interesting issue raised in the volume is under what conditions certain aggregation procedures (such as majority vote) may be more efficient at attaining truth. These questions may be of high relevance for assessing certain kinds of institutional frameworks.

The third kind of social epistemology discussed in the book, which Alvin I. Goldman labels as “system oriented social epistemology”, or “SYSOR SE”, goes one step further. It is concerned with the epistemic outcome of certain institutional designs – for instance, what kind of knowledge a given set of institutional rules may produce? The book addresses diverse examples: the truth-conduciveness of aspects of the judiciary system, a comparison of “deliberating groups” versus “prediction markets”, but also a discussion of the epistemic features of Wikipedia.

Although the book addresses matters that have very broad implications (including regarding the merits of democracy, the reliability of the media, the epistemic flaws or virtues of certain justice systems, etc.), it is of course of high relevance for studies of science. The obvious fundamental reason is that modern science, in particular “Big Science” (as a massive, large-scale social phenomenon) heavily relies on a complex division of labour and therefore is essentially social.

Although there is already quite a record of social studies of science, I find the approach(es) offered by social epistemology quite illuminating in contrast. The reason stems from what is a broad impression which I will not attempt to justify thoroughly. Roughly speaking, “critical” social studies of science sought to demonstrate how social phenomena (e.g. power) challenge certain views of science on which rests its perceived authority. Such work has the effect, arguably justifiably, of diminishing the status of “science” - and as a result it has sometimes been accused of reducing science to the mere pursuit of groups’ interests. I believe that the approach(es) taken on by social epistemology are more positive, by emphasizing the epistemic power of certain processes or institutional arrangements for combining individual knowledge. In that respect the social is not a threat to the significance of knowledge but rather the basis for progress, under conditions which are to be the focus of a fruitful and much needed discussion. For instance, the last chapter of the book “The Communication Structure of Epistemic Communities” (by Kevin J. S.Zollman), illustrates how valuable social epistemology may be to studies of science by providing tools for evaluating the efficiency of certain social networks for learning.

Despite the variety of issues regrouped in the book, the ordering of the chapters emphasizes the potential for continuity between these issues and therefore the unity that underlies social epistemology.