ABSTRACT Democracy is under siege, and we are challenged with maintaining and caring for it. A part of this is to better understand and critically and curiously examine it. This paper suggests moving towards analysing democracy through its material arrangements, what is coined here as the ‘document-things’ involved in procedures and practices of grounding. It is argued that justifications are incorporated and intertwined with mundane little tools, objects, and material arrangements – which together ground democracy and which carry, uphold, and enact a particular social epistemology. In doing this, the paper takes inspiration from the field of science studies as well as expanding on what Boltanski and Thévenot have called investment in forms towards the tools, objects, and arrangements of democratic procedure. What we might then observe is a form of epistemic capacity intimately linked to such material and procedural elements. Building from the Norwegian case, this paper pursues a close examination of such modes of grounding democracy through document-things and the social epistemology they are made to carry.

ABSTRACT Increased pollution, obesity rates, or the COVID-19 pandemic are only a few examples of the numerous intertwined health-environmental challenges humanity is facing. The severity of these challenges strongly suggests that research in these fields is failing to generate evidence to support decisions and actions that can help address, mitigate or adapt to them. In this article, we look into some of the underlying assumptions underpinning mainstream research in the health and in the environmental sciences; specifically, we focus on the separation between knowledge and action, mechanistic worldviews, and value-neutrality of research. We show that these assumptions underpin what we call a modernist evidence regime that is embedded in certain socio-cultural contexts. When these assumptions are at work in empirical research, interconnected health-environmental challenges cannot be appropriately addressed. We suggest, instead, that to do so we need to move towards a radically pluralist evidence regime. Such a regime sees knowledge and action as inextricably entangled, is based on a complexity-based understanding of the world, embraces the non-neutrality of research, and makes space for multiple methodological approaches.

ABSTRACT Patient-centred care (PCC) is widely promoted as a gold standard in contemporary medicine, emphasising autonomy, shared decision-making, and informational transparency. However, its implementation often assumes a level of epistemic symmetry and emotional capacity that may not align with patients’ lived experiences – especially in contexts of terminal illness. This study draws on 31 post-consultation interviews with patients recently diagnosed with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) to explore how trust is constructed, experienced, or undermined in clinical communication. Using inductive thematic analysis, we identified five key themes: trust as cumulative and relational; honesty and clarity as affective anchors; empathy and the moral significance of small gestures; the mediating role of companions; and communication as a site of narrative repair. Rather than seeking decisional control or informational primacy, many patients articulated a desire for interpretive guidance, emotional containment, and communicative attunement. These findings challenge normative assumptions about patient empowerment and call for a reconceptualisation of PCC as a practice of epistemic and affective responsiveness. Trust, in this view, is not a background condition of care, but its central infrastructure – fragile, temporal, and co-produced in the intersubjective space of the clinical encounter.

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on social structural explanations of injustice and the ontological commitments of theorists who develop them. I first show that theorists can develop structural explanations and social position concepts without committing to a critical social ontology of oppression or to a view of race and gender as constitutively socially constructed kinds. I also develop a pluralist account of social position concepts that can accommodate the full range of social ontological commitments that theorists may hold. Then, I argue that structural explanations of injustice developed from a position of oppression agnosticism are morally and epistemically problematic. They carry a high risk of perpetrating identity-based hermeneutical injustice, and perpetuate an understanding of structural intersectionality that has been widely problematised. Even ethically motivated oppression agnosticism, as an attempt to respond to one’s situated ignorance and to practice epistemic humility, is therefore problematic.

ABSTRACT In this paper, we introduce a novel type of hermeneutical injustice. Traditional renderings of hermeneutical injustice describe situations in which marginalised groups encounter gaps in collective epistemic resources or find that such resources do not address their specific experiences. Conversely, the phenomenon we trace arises when certain concepts are polysemous – they mean something different for different groups. This constitutes a hermeneutical injustice when, along a gradient of power/oppression, the dominant understanding of a particular term impedes marginalised groups from being understood. In this paper, we develop a meaning finitist model to capture the dynamics of polysemy-based hermeneutical injustice. We exemplify the process through the example of ‘detransitioning’. We explore the harms generated by this type of hermeneutical injustice and discuss concept pluralism and concept eliminativism as possible ways to address these harms.

ABSTRACT Western democracies are experiencing a decline in public confidence, raising questions about their effectiveness and stability. Yet the root causes of this problem and the appropriate mechanisms for its resolution remain poorly understood. Through an extended interview with Josiah Ober, Professor of Classics and Political Science at Stanford University, I show how he diagnoses the problem and articulates a potential approach to address it. In the opening section of the interview, I pose questions that bring out Ober’s definition of democracy as a multi-layered concept, encompassing epistemic, political, and civic dimensions. I then guide the conversation towards his notion of epistemic democracy, elucidating Ober’s interpretation of this model and how he sees classical Athens as its practical embodiment. I then explore with him the relationship between major epistemic developments and the emergence of democracy, highlighting his insights into their mutual interdependence. As the conversation unfolds, Ober highlights the value of epistemic diversity, and he evaluates the challenges confronting contemporary democratic systems, using Athens as a comparative framework to draw lessons for possible solutions. Throughout, in response to my questioning, he identifies the deficiencies of modern democracies—particularly the misalignment between citizens, institutions, and information.

ABSTRACT Concerns over the toxicity of social media have prompted philosophers to develop a new branch of epistemology focused on the epistemic evaluation of cognitive environments: Environmental Epistemology (though we will mostly use the descriptor, ‘Digital Epistemology’). Traditional epistemology is about the evaluation of persons or groups and this overlooks the evaluation of things and systems in their own right. Epistemic environments – spaces, real and digital, where people interact and communicate – are said to be governed by new specific and general epistemic norms to be philosophically investigated. This paper surveys various proposals within Environmental (or Digital) Epistemology with the aim of clarifying what exactly is being proposed, whether is it worth the attention of philosophers, and how this viewpoint might be defended and applied. Our discussion includes critiques of healthy, neutral, and toxic epistemic environments, environmental resources, epistemic health, pollution, hostility, vulnerability, and flooding. While acknowledging that epistemic environments, including digital media, can inhibit our attempts to reason and understand, we are less confident that this emerging viewpoint has been adequately developed and motivated. Current epistemological frameworks – especially Reliabilist – already have the means to address questions about how to epistemically evaluate informational environments.

ABSTRACT A central debate in conspiracy theory research concerns how to conceptualise conspiracy theories in a way that advances our understanding of the phenomena themselves as well as of those who believe in them. This debate remains unresolved, with researchers adopting widely different positions: while some argue for a purely descriptive understanding, others are strongly committed to the view that conspiracy theories are, or can be shown to be, inherently irrational. This paper reconstructs the controversy, arguing that it stems from two distinct scholarly motives: to attain objective knowledge of the phenomena in question versus to defend beliefs and norms that are part of the researcher’s own cultural context. By examining the epistemological and methodological challenges in this field, I highlight how competing frameworks—normative cultural biases versus objective scientific inquiry—shape our understanding of rational belief. When cultural biases influence research, they risk narrowing its scope and undermining the development of a comprehensive understanding of conspiracy theories. Ultimately, even proponents of normative cultural approaches can acknowledge that such perspectives fail to capture the full complexity and significance of these phenomena.

ABSTRACT The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence has brought a host of new epistemological challenges. One particularly pressing question is whether, and to what extent, AI systems can serve as sources of epistemic goods. Can they effectively transmit knowledge or understanding? And if they do not possess these epistemic goods themselves, can they still generate them for human users? This article explores these questions by critically examining the constraints posed by counter-closure principles – epistemological principles that allegedly cast doubt on the epistemic potential of AI. By addressing these principles, I aim to lay the groundwork for a systematic inquiry into the social epistemology of AI.