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Attempts to identify feminist epistemology by picking out particular topics or projects that supposedly all feminist epistemologists engage, or by focusing on specific claims or theories about knowledge (justification, objectivity) to which all or most feminist epistemologists subscribe, often end up mischaracterizing the field. I argue that what makes feminist epistemology distinctive, a quarter century into its development, is best determined by examining what makes mainstream epistemology still so distinctively non‐feminist. For example, feminist epistemology includes a critical examination of historical and contemporary forms of epistemic subordination and disempowerment that it seeks to bring out from the shadows of traditional theorizing in epistemology, that is, forms of exclusion or distancing of women and other “others” from domains, conceptions, and idealizations of knowledge and of epistemology. This feminist project, though it encompasses quite a range of specific inquiries, is distinctive to the extent that proponents of mainstream projects or perspectives in epistemology remain hostile to, dismissive of, or notably ignorant of it. Mainstream marginalizations and dismissals of feminist work are underwritten by distinctively limited understandings of specific features of epistemological theorizing that come to the fore in an examination of the relationship between feminist and mainstream work in epistemology. These features include: a recognition of the historical situatedness of epistemology; an appreciation of different types of relationships between epistemology and politics; the promotion of epistemological reflexivity; critical re-assessments of starting concepts and questions in epistemology; and recognition of important connections between epistemic normativity and moral or political normativity.

This chapter discusses a wider range of conceptions of social epistemology that range from those that expose traditional epistemology to those that are close to the classical epistemological “canon”. It introduces the concepts of revisionism, preservationism, and the expansionist conception of social epistemology.

How is social epistemology related to mainstream epistemology? Does it retain the traditional character of epistemology while merely giving it a social twist? Or does it advocate a radical socializing enterprise that heads down a very different path? In the latter case it might not merit the label “epistemology” at all. In the former case what exactly are the social twists and how do they relate to the mainstream? Three conceptions of social epistemology are distinguished here: revisionist, preservationist, and expansionist. Revisionism rejects mainstream assumptions, including the objectivity of truth and rationality, and it is plausible to deny it the status of “real” epistemology. Preservationism is in keeping with mainstream epistemology and qualifies as “real” epistemology. It studies epistemic decision-making by individual doxastic agents. What makes it social is its study of doxastic decision-making in light of social evidence. Other preservationist topics include epistemic norms associated with various speech and communicational activities (assertion, debate, argumentation). Expansionistm seeks to enlarge the reach of social epistemology while remaining continuous with the tradition. Its chief topics are the epistemic properties of collective doxastic agents and the influence of alternative social systems on epistemic outcomes. Illustrations of the social-system approach include (i) examination of legal adjudication systems and (ii) epistemic approaches to democracy. In law we can ask which of various trial systems (species of social epistemic systems) tend to generate the most accurate verdicts. In political theory democratic decision-making processes might be defended by appeal to their putative epistemic characteristics, e.g., their reliability.

Philosophers, sociologists of knowledge, and other academics pursue the topic of social epistemology, but often in entirely disparate fashions. “Knowledge” is usually central to social epistemology, but some investigators take “knowledge” to be mere belief or institutionalized belief, whereas others take it to be at least true belief. Radical social epistemologists dismiss traditional epistemology and view their approach as a replacement or successor subject, whereas others see social epistemology as an extension of classical epistemology. Other contrasts include differences on the nature of the “social” and differences on the role, if any, for social constructivism. Social epistemologists often view their field as a normative one, but some concentrate on rationality, others on (e.g., testimonial) justification, and still others on social practices that conduce to knowledge.

This chapter summarizes social epistemology and its taxonomies. It presents a wider range of measures of epistemic appraisal, as well as a framework that classifies the varieties of social epistemology in terms of different “actors” that are also the players of focal interest. The chapter shows that social epistemology is prepared to study individual doxastic agents who “choose” among other doxastic attitudes toward a proposition. The chapter also determines that social epistemology can imagine the existence of collective agents and can study social systems that house institutions and relationship patterns.

This chapter first identifies what is extremely valuable and distinctive in the approach to Ethics Glover takes in Humanity. It then goes on to argue that Glover's approach is incomplete, because it is insufficiently empirical and, more importantly because it lacks a conceptual framework capable of identifying the full range of topics for empirically informed Ethics research. The needed conceptual framework must incorporate social moral epistemology, which focuses on the interaction between the moral‐epistemic virtues and vices of individuals and the moral‐epistemic functions of institutions. Through the use of historical examples of the sort Glover appeals to in Humanity, this chapter shows that work in Ethics must pay more attention to the ethics of believing and to the role that institutions play in the formation of systems of belief.

This chapter presents some concluding thoughts. It identifies three challenges that remain in the construction of a naturalistic epistemology. First, an effective epistemology needs to continue to discover handy new heuristics that help us reason reliably about significant matters. Second, we need to identify with more effectiveness what is involved in human well-being. A third project essential to the development of a prescriptive, reason-guiding epistemology is social epistemology.

This book brings together a number of diverse strands of contemporary research that have focused on knowledge ascriptions. One such strand is the ‘linguistic turn’ according to which knowledge ascriptions in ordinary language, together with the best linguistic theory of such ascriptions, provide important evidence for epistemological theorizing. Another is the ‘cognitive turn’ in which research in cognitive science is invoked to shed light on the nature of knowledge ascriptions. Finally, recent years have witnessed a ‘social turn’ within which the social functions of knowledge ascriptions are considered in relation to the growing field of social epistemology. This introductory chapter discusses each of these three turns. It then presents an overview of the subsequent chapters.

Epistemologists in the 21st century come from a long tradition in which perception, memory, and testimony were viewed as the sources of knowledge. Of these, perception and memory, however enhanced, abstracted, or elaborated, counted as the most reliable sources, with testimony ranking as a distant, and usually compromised, third. In this chapter's view, social epistemology reverses this ranking, granting a central place to testimony in the production of knowledge, and interrogating assumptions about the replicability and homogeneity of perception and memory. It thus generates a range of issues that had seemed to be hors de question for traditional epistemologists. Drawing on the conceptual framework developed in Ecological Thinking: The Politics of Epistemic Location, this chapter proposes that epistemic inquiry socially reconfigured is more fully naturalized than post-Quinean naturalized epistemology has been. Social epistemology focuses on epistemic practices communally engaged by identifiable knowers in the world (thus not principally in the laboratory); who are situated not just socially, but ethically, politically, demographically, geographically, and ecologically, where aspects of such “situatedness” often count among the conditions that make knowledge possible. The inquiry focuses on testimony and advocacy as practices where these factors are particularly salient, and on ignorance not as a mere lack or failure of knowledge, but as a modality of not-knowing, or knowing inadequately, unjustly, which is itself situationally fostered, inhibited, or eradicated.

This chapter pursues the unfinished agenda of Goldman's epistemological project since underline Knowledge in a Social World: making explicit the connection between his earlier reliabilist approach to epistemology with his more recent veritistic social epistemology.

This chapter uses epistemic game theory to expand on the notion of social norms as choreographer of a correlated equilibrium, and to elucidate the socio-psychological prerequisites for the notion that social norms implement correlated equilibria. The correlated equilibrium is a much more natural equilibrium criterion than the Nash equilibrium, because of a famous theorem of Aumann (1987), who showed that Bayesian rational agents in an epistemic game G with a common subjective prior play a correlated equilibrium of G. Thus, while rationality and common priors do not imply Nash equilibrium, these assumptions do imply correlated equilibrium and social norms act not only as choreographer, but also supply the epistemic conditions for common priors.

This chapter advances the view that social epistemology has important implications for the structure of our educational practices. It argues, first, that educational practices should take social epistemology seriously because the success of the educational enterprise requires an effective response to two of the central problems of social epistemology, namely, the novice-expert problem and the general problem of identifying reliable testimony. It argues, second, that social moral epistemology is especially relevant to education for the following reason: If education is informed by social moral epistemology, it may be able, first, to reduce the risk that individuals’ beliefs will be manipulated by those who mobilize the public in support of wrongful mass violence and, second, to prevent the educational enterprise itself from contributing to the production of false beliefs that tend to support mass violence. The chapter concludes with suggestions for how to adapt Critical Thinking curricula to the findings presented.

This chapter investigates the epistemology of belief that the Bible is divinely inspired. It assumes that most Christians arejustified in believing as much and asks: Whence comes justification for this belief? It considers and rejects the possibility that justification for the belief comes by way of argument from history or natural theology, then considers and rejects the possibility that its justification owes to something like Calvin's ‘internal testimony of the Holy Spirit’. Rather, the chapter argues, for most Christians, justification for belief that the Bible is divinely inspired is akin to the justification enjoyed by beliefs accepted on the basis of testimony from those deemed expert by one's social group.

Social scientists often investigate the social propagation of belief, but social epistemology is interested in the social routes to true (or false) beliefs. One approach to the social propagation of belief is “memetics,” a selectionist account of belief propagation modeled on biological evolution. This chapter examines the prospects for a contagion approach to primitive cases of belief transmission, modeled on emotion transmission. However, if any such approach is to be useful for social epistemology, one must consider the truth‐conduciveness of primitive speech and acceptance dispositions. Building partly on suggestions of Thomas Reid, some possible implications of a contagion, or epidemiological model, are explored.