This chapter discusses Kuhn’s conception of the history of science by focussing on two respects in which Kuhn is an historicist historian and philosopher of science. I identify two distinct, but related, aspects of historicism in the work of Hegel and show how these are also found in Kuhn’s work. First, Kuhn held tradition to be important for understanding scientific change and that the tradition from which a scientific idea originates must be understood in evaluating that idea. This makes Kuhn (...) a historicist in a sense we may call conservative. Secondly, Kuhn held that there is a pattern to the development of science. In the light of the fact that he held scientific change to be law-like, we can call this second aspect of Kuhn’s historicism determinist. I discuss the relationship of Kuhn’s historicist historiography to the philosophical purposes he had for his history of science, namely to refute a conception of scientific progress as driven towards increasing truth by something like ‘the scientific method’. I argue that while this determinism refutes certain positivist conceptions of scientific change, it also requires internalism—the view that the causes of scientific change come from within science, not from outside. Consequently, Kuhn’s historiography of science contrasts with that implicit in much of post-Kuhnian science studies. (shrink)

Social epistemology may be defined as the conceptual and normative study of the social dimensions of knowledge. It studies the bearing of social relations, interests, roles, and institutions – what I will term “social conditions” – on the conceptual and normative conditions of knowledge. It differs from the sociology of knowledge in being a conceptual and normative, and not primarily empirical, study, and in limning the necessary and not merely the contingent social conditions of (...) knowledge. The central question of social epistemology is whether, and to what extent, the conditions of knowledge include social conditions. Is knowledge a property of knowers in isolation from their social setting (and in what sense of “isolation”), or does it involve a relation between knowers and their social circumstances? This question can take various forms and admit diverse answers, depending on the kinds of knowers, knowledge, and social relations we ask about. (shrink)

This is the second paper in the invited collection. Dieleman provides an overview of the “state-of-the-field” debate between Analytic Social Epistemology, represented by Alvin Goldman, and what Dieleman calls the Sociological Social Epistemology, represented by Steve Fuller. In response to this ongoing debate, this paper has two related and complementary objectives. The first is to show that the debate between analytic and sociological versions of social epistemology is overly simplistic and doesn’t take (...) into account additional positions that are available and, indeed, have been available since social epistemology was introduced in the mid to late 1980s. The second is to uncover and tell a story of how Lorraine Code’s Epistemic Responsibility is one such additional position. Looking to Code's Epistemic Responsibility reveals the artificiality of the debate between analytic and sociological social epistemologists. (shrink)

This book examines the social epistemological issues relating to technology for the sake of providing insights toward public self-awareness and informing matters of education, policy, and public deliberation.

In his new book, Knowledge: The Philosophical Quest in History, Steve Fuller returns to core themes of his program of social epistemology that he first outlined in his 1988 book, Social Epistemology. He develops a new, unorthodox theology and philosophy building upon his testimony in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District in defense of intelligent design, leading to a call for maximal human experimentation. Beginning from the theological premise rooted in the Abrahamic religious tradition that we (...) are created in the image of God, Fuller argues that the spark of the divine within us distinguishes us from animals. I argue that Fuller’s recent work takes us away from key insights of his original work. In contrast, I advocate for a program of social epistemology rooted in evolutionary science rather than intelligent design, emphasize a precautionary and ecological approach rather than a proactionary approach that favors risky human experimentation, and attend to our material and sociological embeddedness rather than a transhumanist repudiation of the body. (shrink)

Social epistemology is an interdisciplinary project that mobilizes the empirical resources of the "sociology of knowledge" for the purposes of informing a normative philosophy of science. Thus, the social epistemologist gives informed advice on how inquiry should be conducted. Because of its prescriptive character, social epistemology is nowadays most naturally seen as a branch of philosophy. This paper is part of a larger project devoted to removing the obstacles that currently prevent philosophers and psychologists from (...) pooling their resources in the cause of social epistemology. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Social Epistemology, as formulated by Steve Fuller, is based on the suggestion that rational knowledge policy must be held accountable to ‘brute facts’ about the nature of our human cognitive pursuits, whatever these may be. One difficulty for Fuller concerns the conception of the social which underwrites social epistemology. I argue that social epistemology conflates the social with human psychological properties that are available for public scrutiny and, accordingly, that social (...) class='Hi'>epistemology is best viewed as a brand of psychologism. Though Fuller's proposal signifies an important step in the ongoing attempt by scholars to eradicate the last traces of Descartes' epistemological device of a disembodiedres cogitans, I conclude that his conception of the social is too weak to serve as the basis for a socially-embedded discipline in anything but name only. (shrink)

Social epistemology is an interdisciplinary project that mobilizes the empirical resources of the "sociology of knowledge" for the purposes of informing a normative philosophy of science. Thus, the social epistemologist gives informed advice on how inquiry should be conducted. Because of its prescriptive character, social epistemology is nowadays most naturally seen as a branch of philosophy. This paper is part of a larger project devoted to removing the obstacles that currently prevent philosophers and psychologists from (...) pooling their resources in the cause of social epistemology. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Offers a vital, unique and agenda-setting perspective for the field of social epistemology – the philosophical basis for prescribing the social means and ends for pursuing knowledge.

This essay argues that the really useful character of reflexivity is that it enables a radical critique of representation and its conventional material and rhetorical practices. It is uniquely able to produce paradox and thus disrupt discourses by undermining authorial privilege. Because Fuller's social epistemology is insensitive to its own reflexive implications, and limits itself to normative questions about knowledge policy, it is too limited — and limiting — to provide a context that can nurture reflexivity.

This book investigates how collaborative scientific practice yields scientific knowledge. At a time when most of today’s scientific knowledge is created in research groups, the author reconsiders the social character of science to address the question of whether collaboratively created knowledge should be considered as collective achievement, and if so, in which sense. Combining philosophical analysis with qualitative empirical inquiry, this book provides a comparative case study of mono- and interdisciplinary research groups, offering insight into the day-to-day practice of (...) scientists. The book includes field observations and interviews with scientists to present an empirically-grounded perspective on much-debated questions concerning research groups’ division of labor, relations of epistemic dependence and trust. (shrink)

Steve Fuller's social epistemology aims to integrate the philosophy of science and sociology of science, and to enhance the ability of these disciplines to contribute to science policy. While applauding the re?vitalizing energy of the enterprise, a sociological perspective requires attention to four key aspects of the programme. First, the character of interdisciplinarity requires careful specification, lest the critical dynamic of social studies of science be compromised by calls to pluralism. Second, social epistemology can (...) and should transcend the traditional epistemological attribution of positions ('positionism') to protagonists. Third, the argumentative dynamic of social studies of science, which enables the successive reconceptualization of ?epistemic? matters, suggests some problems for social epistemology's use of ?sociological results?. Finally, social epistemology requires a more sociologically informed understanding of what in practice counts as normative research, since the current programme trades upon unexamined conceptions of policy audience. (shrink)

Social epistemology balances neoclassic and nonclassic, normative and descriptive, and veritistic and constructionist approaches. Among these approaches exist two terminologically different though (in fact) similar proposals: naturalization and socialization. Both proposals lead to a kind of interdisciplinary imperialism reducing epistemology to a ?positive science? like sociology of knowledge, social history of science, and science and technology studies. I call this attitude the ?strong version? of naturalism. How, then, can we save epistemology without indulging in purely (...) transcendental contemplations while simultaneously securing its connections to the empirical sciences that analyze knowledge in a social context? Can social epistemology be reduced to any one or to a set of special approaches to knowledge as a completely naturalizing program? If not, is social epistemology a kind of philosophical epistemology and what is its differencia specifica? And how is the social epistemology related to special approaches to knowledge? In proposing a ?weak version? of naturalism?an idea of the social epistemology based on interdisciplinary interaction?a reimagining of the concepts of ?interdisciplinarity? and ?context? is required. (shrink)

The main theme of this dissertation is to explore how to establish a better relationship between sociological and philosophical investigations of science; how should epistemological considerations be used in sociological studies of scientific knowledge, and how should sociological findings be used in epistemological studies? To answer these questions, I review both sociological and social epistemological literatures on scientific knowledge, with more emphasis on the latter. On the sociological side, I point out that a large (...) part of SSK literature is, contrary to what some philosophers believe, totally compatible with the idea of scientific rationality. Given that, I propose the 'even stronger' program of SSK that can better utilize the philosophical literature on scientific rationality. ;On the philosophical side, I review works of four philosophers in detail. I classify them into two general categories, the descriptive approach and the normative approach . After critical analyses of each of them, I apply their insights to a concrete case study, namely the issues related with diversification of Post WW II American sociology. These analyses and applications aim to show that all of them have some interesting things to say. One interesting observation in terms of the case study is that the diversity in theory and methodology in American sociology may be a good thing for various philosophical reasons, offered by these authors. ;Finally, the general characteristics of descriptive and normative approaches are compared. Some seeming incompatibilities between two approaches can be resolved by introducing some meta-epistemological notions. Especially the notion of WRE is important in identifying different roles played by two approaches. In any case, a good philosophical analysis cannot ignore sociological findings on actual scientific practices. To say the least, when there are two epistemological views, one of them does better than the other in accounting for actual scientific practices, this is a prima facie reason to prefer the one to the other. (shrink)

In the latter half of the twentieth century, philosophers of science have argued (implicitly and explicitly) that epistemically rational individuals might compose epistemically irrational groups and that, conversely, epistemically rational groups might be composed of epistemically irrational individuals. We call the conjunction of these two claims the Independence Thesis, as they together imply that methodological prescriptions for scientific communities and those for individual scientists might be logically independent of one another. We develop a formal model of scientific inquiry, define four (...) criteria for individual and group epistemic rationality, and then prove that the four definitions diverge, in the sense that individuals will be judged rational when groups are not and vice versa. We conclude by explaining implications of the inconsistency thesis for (i) descriptive history and sociology of science and (ii) normative prescriptions for scientific communities. (shrink)

Shera, the library scientist, is often credited with introducing the term and concept of social epistemology; but his idea is most profitably viewed not as a contribution to epistemology or even to the sociology of knowledge, but rather as the forerunner of a document-focused strain of socio-cognitive psychology influential in the information sciences from the 1970s onwards. In turn, the work of Shera and his colleague Egan is itself reminiscent of the psychological bibliology defined by the documentalists (...) Otlet and Rubakin in the early 20th century. (shrink)

This paper lays the groundwork for normative-yet-naturalistic social epistemology. I start by presenting two scenarios for the history of epistemology since Kant, one in which social epistemology is the natural outcome and the other in which it represents a not entirely satisfactory break with classical theories of knowledge. Next I argue that the current trend toward naturalizing epistemology threatens to destroy the distinctiveness of the sociological approach by presuming that it complements standard psychological (...) and historical approaches. I then try to reassert, in Comtean fashion, the epistemologist's credentials in regulating knowledge production. Finally, I consider how social epistemology may have something exciting and relevant to say about contemporary debates in the theory of knowledge. (shrink)

Following the standard practice in sociology, cultural anthropology and history, sociologists, historians of science and some philosophers of science define scientific communities as groups with shared beliefs, values and practices. In this paper it is argued that in real cases the beliefs of the members of such communities often vary significantly in important ways. This has rather dire implications for the convergence defense against the charge of the excessive subjectivity of subjective Bayesianism because that defense requires that communities of Bayesian (...) inquirers share a significant set of modal beliefs. The important implication is then that given the actual variation in modal beliefs across individuals, either Bayesians cannot claim that actual theories have been objectively confirmed or they must accept that such theories have been confirmed relative only to epistemically insignificant communities. (shrink)

(1995). Positivist discourse and social scientific communities: Towards an epistemological sociology of science. Social Epistemology: Vol. 9, Knowledge (EX) Change, pp. 233-255.

In connecting educational theory to a neo-pragmatist social epistemology, we set out to understand education as knowledge practices that yield ‘the cultural world again’ by retelling culture or by making explicit what is implicit in culture. Recent trends in German educational studies towards holistic understanding of education demonstrate that such a holistic, non-representationalist framework is deliberately placed outside the traditional procedure of merely applying knowledge gained in the so-called foundational disciplines such as philosophy, sociology or psychology to the (...) field of education. By constructively relating Brandom's non-representational inferentialism to a re-reading of Mollenhauer's distinction of the presentation and representation of culture in and through education, we try to show that Brandom's philosophy can also be used to point out an inferentialism that is already at work in educational theory. Together, this strengthens a social theoretic account of education that explores how to conceptualise the role of knowledge in educational processes in terms of a holistic epistemology. (shrink)

In connecting educational theory to a neo-pragmatist social epistemology, we set out to understand education as knowledge practices that yield ‘the cultural world again’ by retelling culture or by making explicit what is implicit in culture. Recent trends in German educational studies towards holistic understanding of education demonstrate that such a holistic, non-representationalist framework is deliberately placed outside the traditional procedure of merely applying knowledge gained in the so-called foundational disciplines such as philosophy, sociology or psychology to the (...) field of education. By constructively relating Brandom's non-representational inferentialism to a re-reading of Mollenhauer's distinction of the presentation and representation of culture in and through education, we try to show that Brandom's philosophy can also be used to point out an inferentialism that is already at work in educational theory. Together, this strengthens a social theoretic account of education that explores how to conceptualise the role of knowledge in educational processes in terms of a holistic epistemology. (shrink)

In the age of the `return to the empirical' in which the theoretical disputes of an earlier era seem to have fallen silent, we seek to excavate the intellectual conditions for reviving theoretical debate, for it is upon this recovery that deeper understanding of the nature and purpose of empirical social science depends. We argue against the all too frequent turn to ontology, whereby critical realists have sought an epistemological guarantor of sociological validity. We seek, to the contrary, (...) to crystallize a culturally-based, hermeneutic account of a rational social science. Derived from disputes within the sociology of culture, on the one hand, and the long-standing concerns of interpretive philosophy, on the other, we offer a cultural-sociological approach to epistemology. We view the production of truth in social science as a reading of a meaningful social world, and as a performance of truth-claims that is constrained by evidence, but whose success depends on other contextual factors. We conclude that the rationality of social science can be achieved only by forgoing ontology. Theories are abstractions of investigators' meanings that allow the interpretation of social meanings in turn, whether those are actions, relations, or structures. Successful explanations are those that intertwine these meaning structures of investigators and actors in an effective way. (shrink)

Changes of theories are major events in science. Two main types of questions may be asked about them: i) how do scientists choose new theories?, and ii) how is consensus formed? Generally, philosophers do not distinguish these two questions. Kuhn, on the contrary, offers very different answers to each of these questions. Theory-choice, on the one hand, is explained through the application of epistemic criteria, such as accuracy and consistency; nonetheless, because these values do not prescribe a single choice, consensus (...) formation, on the other hand, is explained through a series of socio-epistemic mechanisms, namely: scientific pedagogy, diffusion and production of knowledge within the community, and restructuring of the scientific field. These mechanisms are the basis of Kuhn’s social epistemology, in that they are not restricted to sociology nor epistemology, encompassing both social interactions and epistemic evaluations of theories. Keywords: Thomas Kuhn, consensus formation, social epistemology. (shrink)

In this paper I focus on the Hungarian intellectual and politician Paul Szende’s sociologically oriented epistemology. I trace the influences of physiology, psychology, economy, evolutionary theory of his day on his sociological theory of abstractive knowledge, and discuss the close connection between physiological, social, and economic aspects in the early sociology of knowledge. My discussion continues with an examination of Szende’s differentiation between two economic effects within social epistemology: on the one hand the ‘economy of (...) thought’ in the tradition of Ernst Mach, with its physiological, organic, and integrative functioning of knowledge; on the other hand, the socio-economic effects of social selection, exclusion, and societal antagonism. Besides the Marxist and more specifically the Austro-Marxist environment of Szende’s writings, I trace the influence of the economic theory of Italian economist Achille Loria on Szende’s understanding of the antagonistic nature of the transformation of knowledge. The paper is set at the intersection of philosophy of science and history of science. It relates epistemological issues to historical, social, and scientific developments in Szende’s day and thus combines a philosophical analysis of Szende’s sociological theory of knowledge with historical research into the natural, social, and economic sciences of his time. (shrink)

In today’s America the persistence of crushing poverty in the midst of staggering affluence no longer incites the righteous jeremiads it once did. Resigned acceptance of this paradox is fueled by a sense that poverty lies beyond the moral and technical scope of government remediation. The failure of experts to reach agreement on the causes of poverty merely exacerbates our despair. Are the causes internal to the poor – reflecting their more or less voluntary choices? Or do they emanate from (...) structures beyond their control? If both of these explanations are true, poverty experts will need to shift their focus to a hitherto under-theorized concept: coercion. I defend this claim by appealing to distinct areas of philosophical inquiry: social epistemology and moral theory. Poverty knowledge is directly related to both of these inquiries. The aim of poverty knowledge is clearly moral: to reduce suffering and to empower the weak. While the former aim is grounded in utilitarian thinking, the latter aim is grounded in the social contractarian insight that poverty is unjustly coercive, imposing excessive limits on the opportunities and choices of the poor that render them vulnerable to domination by others. Equally obvious is the social nature of poverty knowledge. All knowledge depends on the reliable testimony of others. Poverty knowledge not only ostensibly offers us the most reliable, scientific beliefs about the causes and effects of poverty, thereby determining how we morally judge the poor and their poverty, but it reciprocally bases its understanding of poverty on what the poor themselves have to say about it. What unites both social epistemology and moral theory – at least the social contract variants I will be examining here – is concern about the limits and possibilities of rational choice. As poverty knowledge came of age in the fifties and sixties, it absorbed the language of rational choice prevalent in economics, especially the Keynesian economics whose moral underpinnings can be found in Rawlsian social contract theory. Echoing a different economic theory supported by a different, more libertarian, brand of social contract theory, poverty expertise in the eighties continued to use an abstract model of rational choice. I submit that, in both early and later epochs of poverty expertise, reliance on rational choice reasoning prevented poverty experts from appreciating the coercive impact of poverty on the poor. Social epistemology explains this failure by demonstrating the poverty of rational choice thinking and its mistaken reliance on inflated commonsense expectations about the capacity of individuals to calculate their long-term interests, free from the distortions of social bias. Social epistemology not only exhibits the dangers of not relying on expert testimony, but it also exhibits the dangers of relying on an unreliable source of expert testimony that has removed itself from its human subject matter. In order for poverty experts to become more reliable educators about poverty’s coercive impact on the poor they must return to their discipline’s social epistemological roots. Only a more descriptive and explanatory sociology can narrate a comprehensive story about how the lived experience of poverty relates to the larger social system. The social contractarian model best suited to underwriting this kind of poverty knowledge, I submit, is the discourse theoretic model that has been championed by Jürgen Habermas. When applied as a pedagogical method of dialog and not as a social contractarian model of rational normative consent, discourse theory highlights the unique epistemological advantages of empathetic understanding that are so essential to dispelling stereotypes about the poor. Dispelling these stereotypes is the first step toward respecting the poor as free agents who are nonetheless forced to make suboptimal choices. My defense of these claims proceeds as follows: Part One argues that poverty expertise rightly deserves the opprobrium critics have heaped on it. The charge – leveled by progressives and conservatives alike - that such expertise is ideological is true to the extent that poverty knowledge has all-too-easily accommodated the political aims of the agency that has funded it: the federal government. The shift from the war on poverty to the war on the poor – and the resulting shift from blaming poverty on economic structures to blaming it on the culture of poverty – would not have been possible without an increased emphasis on data gathering aimed at measuring poverty rather than describing it. Part Two assesses the consequences of turning away from qualitative research to statistical analysis: the coercive nature of poverty becomes invisible beneath the surface of aggregate individual choices. The failure to grasp how voluntary choices, ostensibly based on rational, self-interested calculations, can be coerced by social structures - and thereby lead to sub-optimizing behavior – invites the conclusion that the poor have only themselves to blame for their misery. Part Three suggests that this pathologization of the poor directly controverts the major aim of poverty research: to empower the poor as free and equal parties to the social contract. I argue that the different varieties of social contract theory that have justified poverty expertise over the last forty years – the welfarist model pioneered by Rawls and the market-based model defended by Nozick – embrace the same rational choice models favored by poverty experts and so conspire with the latter in neglecting important dimensions of poverty-related coercion. While the welfarist model conceals the coercive nature of bureaucratically administered entitlement programs and top-down urban renewal policies, the market-based model conceals the coercive nature of economic class structures. The discourse-theoretic alternative proposed by Habermas endorses a populist, democratic response to the overly abstract rational choice assumptions embedded in these other models. Despite this advance over its counterparts, the chief advantage of discourse theory for poverty knowledge, I submit, resides less in its proposed procedure of rational collective choice than in its heuristic as a dialogical method of social learning. I demonstrate this claim in Part Four, where I turn to the social epistemological insights of Allen Buchanan. Social epistemology offers a much needed corrective to theories of knowledge that rely on the reasoning capacities of isolated individuals. By stressing the connection between moral response and social belief, on one hand, and the dependence of social belief on epistemic authorities, on the other, social epistemologists suggest ways in which we can learn to distinguish reliable from unreliable authorities and become aware of our own error-prone cognitive proclivities. Their insights need to be supplemented by moral epistemologists who stress the affective dimension of knowledge, above all, the role that empathy plays in understanding the plight of others. Drawing from victim narratives, Diana Meyers shows that switching between first-person experiences of one's own and third-person reconstructions of others' experiences is essential to appreciating the gravity of human rights violations and the seriousness of human rights claims. It goes without saying that such empathy is just as essential to understanding the plight of the poor. Meyers mainly has in mind empathetic understanding that has been facilitated by third-person observation and literary encounter, but the importance of visceral and corporeal representation suggests that face-to-face dialog may sometimes be a more effective way to facilitate empathetic understanding. (shrink)

In a world of appalling social inequalities people are becoming more aware of the multiple dimensions of injustice, whether social, political, cultural, sexual, ethnic, religious, historical, or ecological. Rarely acknowledged is another vital dimension: cognitive injustice, the failure to recognize the different ways of knowing by which people across the globe run their lives and provide meaning to their existence. This book shows why cognitive injustice underlies all the other dimensions; global social justice is not possible without (...) global cognitive justice. Santos s argument unfolds in two inquiries. No matter how internally diverse, Western Modernity provided the knowledge underlying the long cycle of colonialism followed by global capitalism. These historical processes profoundly devalued and marginalized the knowledge and wisdom that had been in existence in the global South. Today, working against epistemicide is imperative in order to recover and valorize the epistemological diversity of the world. Such recovery and valorization is the book s second inquiry and is based on four key analytical tools: sociology of absences, sociology of emergences, ecology of knowledges, and intercultural translation. The transformation of the world s epistemological diversity into an empowering instrument against hegemonic globalization points to a new kind of bottom-up cosmopolitanism. It would promote a wide conversation of humankind, celebrating conviviality, solidarity, and life against the logic of market-ridden greed and individualism and the destruction of life to which world populations large and small are condemned by the dominant forces of globalization. --Provided by publisher. (shrink)

This work aims to foster interest in the links between a particular theoretical and conceptual development of sociological science in Italy and the debate surrounding the history of scientific subjects, here called the epistemological history of various disciplines. The author sets out to trace the points of view emerging from Italian epistemological sociology between the early twentieth and twenty-first centuries and related to the debate on the historical and philosophical sciences. The intention resides in revealing the distinctive characteristics of (...) the latter, their internal (logical and methodological) rather than external (historical and social) factors, while investigating the task of the new historians of science confronted with the changes caused by various knowledge and forms of technological know-how. The text provides the contemporary scientific community with a new route to follow when seeking to rationally establish and write the history of sociology. The addressees are, more than anything else, the new generation of scholars of the history of science. (shrink)

Like the positivists, Fuller is concerned to demarcate and systematically evaluate scientific claims and practices. Fuller corrects and reforms the positivist enterprise in light of his sociological naturalism. What Fuller's analysis brings to the fore is how the naturalization of epistemology makes the power?knowledge relation into an epistemological issue. Yet, in his writings. Fuller is radically divided with respect to how to react to this fact. Specifically, Fuller vacillates between, on the one hand, a concern for democratizing norms (...) and, on the other hand, a Machiavellian impulse for the maximization of the norms of knowledge production. I argue that his commitment to being both a democratizer and a Machiavellian is inconsistent, and, moreover, that his argument for democratizing normative pursuits rules out, in fact, his more Machiavellian proclivities regarding how most efficiently to realize the norms of knowledge production. (shrink)

A conception of social epistemology is articulated with links to studies of science and opinion in such disciplines as history, sociology, and political science. The conception is evaluative, though, rather than purely descriptive. Three types of evaluative approaches are examined but rejected: relativism, consensualism, and expertism. A fourth, truth-linked, approach to intellectual evaluation is then advocated: social procedures should be appraised by their propensity to foster true belief. Standards of evaluation in social epistemics would be much (...) the same as those in individual epistemics, only the objects of evaluation would be interpersonal patterns of judgment and communication, and institutional practices that bear on opinion formation. (shrink)

The main purpose of this paper is to explore Pierre Bourdieu’s conception of social science. To this end, the paper sheds light on the main epistemological presuppositions that undergird Bourdieu’s defence of reflexive sociology as a scientific endeavour. The predominant view in the literature is that, in most of his writings,Bourdieu has a tendency to embrace a positivist conception of social science. When examining Bourdieu’s conception of social science in more detail, however, it becomes clear that the (...) assumption that he remains trapped in a positivist paradigm does not do justice to the complexity of his multifaceted account of social science. In order to illustrate the complexity of Bourdieu’s conception of social science, the following analysis scrutinises ten epistemological tensions which can be found in Bourdieu’s writings on the nature of knowledge production. In view of these epistemological tensions, a more fine-grained picture emerges which demonstrates that Bourdieu invites,and indeed compels, us to reflect upon the complexity of the various tension-laden tasks posed by the pursuit of a critical social science. (shrink)

The fertility of contemporary social theory is matched only by its problematic relationship to its past. The future of social theory therefore lies with a renegotiation of that relationship. I begin by unearthing the theological origins of theorizing and its secularization as epistemology in the 19th century. I then provide an account of the recent renaissance in social theory - epitomized by the various `structure-agency' debates - that reveals its intellectual kinship to scholastic theology. I diagnose (...) this scholasticism in terms of sociology's current social exigencies and conclude that the historiography of sociology implicit in scholasticism needs to be overturned so that social theorists may come to recover the concrete social contexts that historically have called forth the need to theorize. (shrink)

Un discurso sobre las ciencias -- Hacia una epistemología de la ceguera : por qué razón las nuevas formas de "adecuación ceremonial" no regulan ni emancipan? -- Hacia una sociología de las ausencias y una sociología de las emergencias -- Más allá del pensamiento abismal : de las líneas globales a una ecología de saberes -- El fin de los descubrimientos imperiales -- Nuestra América : reinventando un paradigma subalterno de reconocimiento y redistribución -- Entre Próspero y Caliban : colonialismo, (...) poscolonialismo e inter-identidad -- De lo posmoderno a lo poscolonial y más allá de uno y de otro. (shrink)

Epistemology, I will argue, is of crucial importance to the sociology of knowledge— not just by way of definition of the phenomenon under study, but also because approaches to the sociology of knowledge rely on too-often implicit epistemological stances. I will make this argument through a series of categorizations: first, I will classify the field of epistemology into its three main forms; second, I will classify the sociology of knowledge into epistemological categories; third, I will classify the sociology (...) of science into these same categories. All the while, I will be making an argument for an empirical epistemology and "agnostic" studies of knowledge. This article does not cover the field of epistemology exhaustively, but tries to offer an orderly overview of classic positions for the benefit of social scientists. (shrink)

Since Protagoras' classic “man is the measure of all things,” claims of relativism and counter-claims have been tendered. The nineteenth century saw Durkheim, Levy-Bruhl, Westermarck, Pareto, Marx, and others, suggesting that institutions, customs, moral codes, and the like, are “relative” both to the culture and to the time. At the crest of this wave of “relativism” surged a vicious claim: that truth and knowledge itself were merely functions of particular conditions. The “validity” of knowledge was said to be at the (...) whim of historic, social factors. Not only is no theory really true; no particular statement is ever so. Not only is no theory or statement really true; no theory of knowledge has thus far ever been free from the bias of its genesis. There have been no absolute insights for epistemology. Or so, at least, it was claimed. (shrink)

This book, first published in 1975, is an examination of the theoretical foundation of the sociology of art and literature and an in-depth study in the sociology of knowledge. In discussing and clarifying some of the important philosophical issues in this field, the constant underlying reference is to the creative and artistic-expressive areas of knowledge ¿ so that the better understanding of the social nature and genesis of all knowledge may point the way towards a similar comprehension of art (...) and society. (shrink)

(1997). The situated social scientist: Reflexivity and perspective in the sociology of knowledge. Social Epistemology: Vol. 11, New Directions in the Sociology of Knowledge, pp. 193-202.

The Sociology of Intellectual Life outlines a social theory of knowledge for the 21st century. Steve Fuller deals directly with a world in which it is no longer taken for granted that universities and academics are the best places and people to embody the life of the mind. While Fuller defends academic privilege, he takes very seriously the historic divergences between academics and intellectuals, attending especially to the different features of knowledge production that they value."--BOOK JACKET.

Volume "Social-Constructionist Epistemology" brings into the readers' attention the most important developments that were made around the transmodernity paradigm. During its eight chapters we intend to emphasize the close connection between areas such as: communication and semiotics, transmodernity, scientific authorship, epistemology, social constructionism, philosophy, ethics, quantum metaphysics, and appreciative inquiry. This paper is based on identifying the cultural models and cognitive patterns that make possible the comprehensive opening, in the meaning of rethinking ethics in terms of (...) transmodern paradigm. The base of this research is represented by a methodology that we called fractal constructionism. This concept is a paradigm taken from the sociology of communication, which tells us that reality is a construct "made by symbolic interacting of maps of the world of various individuals." In this sense, the idea of fractal implies a fundamental structural element and a generating law. The human being is "designed" to succeed and his success is produced thanks to the evolution of world, and most of all, thanks to development, creativity and understanding. (shrink)

This paper presents a program of action for the philosophy of regulatory science, based on a general theory of social epistemology. Two candidates are considered. The first one, offered by Alvin Goldman, is not fit for our purposes because it is focused on a veritism incompatible with non‐epistemic aims of regulatory science. The second, championed by Steve Fuller, sociologically investigates the existing means of producing knowledge, to modify them with the goal of obtaining democratic aims through action on (...) a legislative meta‐level. The program has been built upon this procedure, instantiated by the identification, characterization, and modification of epistemic policies. (shrink)

In recent years methodological debates in the social sciences have increasingly focused on issues relating to epistemology. Realism and Sociology makes an original contribution to the debate, charting a middle ground between postmodernism and positivism.

Epistemology had to come to terms with “the social” on two different occasions. The first was represented by the dispute about the epistemological status of the “social” sciences, and in this case the already well established epistemology of the natural sciences seemed to have the right to dictate the conditions for a discipline to be a science. But the social sciences could successfully vindicate the legitimacy of their specific criteria for scientificity. More recently, the impact (...) of social factors on the construction of our knowledge (including scientific knowledge) has reversed, in a certain sense, the old position and promoted social inquiry to the role of a criterion for evaluating the purport of cognitive (including scientific) statements. But this has undermined the traditional characteristics of objectivity and rigor that seem constitutive of science. Moreover, in order to establish the real extent to which social conditionings have an impact on scientific knowledge one must credit sociology with a sound ground of reliability, and this is not possible without a preliminary “epistemological” assessment. These are some of the topics discussed in this book, both theoretically and with reference to concrete cases. (shrink)