Social epistemology - Definition and Overview

Social epistemology can be split into two broad camps: the radical and the non-radical. 1) The non-radical is essentially the study of what significant contributions are made by various social mechanisms to our gaining of knowledge or other epistemically valuable qualities (e.g., justified or rational belief).

One central topic in social epistemology is "testimony," construed broadly i.e. the habit we have of learning from other people. One central question in social epistemology is: assuming that we are very often justified in believing something based on the testimony of other people, where does this justification come from, and in particular, does it necessarily come from observations we have made regarding other people's reliability?

2) The radical aims at a new conception of knowledge: knowledge as a "collectively accepted system of belief" (Relativism, Rationality and Sociality of Knowledge, Barry Barnes and David Bloor, p. 22). Many followers of this radical conception see the real role of epistemology as providing a sociological account of how actual communities knowledge-production systems work, rather then providing a normative account.

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