Short description:

The Routledge Handbook of Social Epistemology is an authoritative and comprehensive survey of the most important issues and developments in one of the fastest growing areas of research in contemporary philosophy.

Long description:

Edited by an international team of leading scholars, The Routledge Handbook of Social Epistemology is the first major reference work devoted to this growing field. The Handbook?s 46 chapters, all appearing in print here for the first time, and written by philosophers and social theorists from around the world, are organized into eight main parts:

• Historical Backgrounds











• The Epistemology of Testimony











• Disagreement, Diversity, and Relativism











• Science and Social Epistemology











• The Epistemology of Groups











• Feminist Epistemology











• The Epistemology of Democracy











• Further Horizons for Social Epistemology

With lists of references after each chapter and a comprehensive index, this volume will prove to be the definitive guide to the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of social epistemology.

Table of Contents:

Introduction Part 1: Historical Backgrounds to Social Epistemology On the background of social epistemology; The What, Why, and How of Social Epistemology; The twin roots and branches of social epistemology; The Philosophical Origins of Classical Sociology of Knowledge; Kuhn and the History of Science; The Naturalized Turn in Epistemology: Engineering for Truth-Seeking; Part 2: The Epistemology of Testimony Counterexamples to Testimonial Transmission; Trust and Reputation as Filtering Mechanisms of Knowledge; Socially Distributed Cognition and the Epistemology of Testimony; Assurance views of testimony; Testimonial Knowledge: Understanding the Evidential, Uncovering the Interpersonal; The Epistemology of Expertise; Moral Testimony; Testimony and Grammatical Evidentials; Part 3: Disagreement, Diversity and Relativism Epistemic Disagreement, Diversity and Relativism; The Epistemic Significance of Diversity; Epistemic Relativism; Epistemic Peer Disagreement; Religious Diversity and Disagreement; Epistemology without Borders: Epistemological Thought Experiments and Intuitions in Cross-Cultural Contexts; Part 4: Science and Social Epistemology Overview: on Science and Social Epistemology; The Sociology of Science and Social Constructivism; The Social Epistemology of Consensus and Dissent; Modeling epistemic communities; Feminist Philosophy of Science as Social Epistemology; Part 5: The Epistemology of Groups The Epistemology of Groups; Group Belief and Knowledge; The Reflexive Social Epistemology of Human Rights; Part 6: Feminist Epistemology Feminist Epistemology; Race and Gender and Epistemologies of Ignorance; Implicit Bias and Prejudice; Epistemic Justice and Injustice; Standpoint Then and Now; Sympathetic Knowledge and the Scientific Attitude: Classic Pragmatist Resources for Feminist; Part 7: The Epistemology of Democracy The Epistemology of Democracy: An Overview; Pragmatism and Epistemic Democracy; Epistemic Proceduralism; Jury Theorems; The epistemic role of science and expertise in liberal democracy; The Epistemic Benefits of Democracy: A Critical Assessment; Part 8: Further Horizons for Social Epistemology Social Epistemology, Descriptive and Normative; Epistemic Norms as Social Norms; Educating for Good Questioning as a Democratic Skill; Intellectual Virtues, Critical Thinking, and the Aims of Education; Computational Models in Social Epistemology; Epistemology and Climate Change.