Social Epistemology Research Articles

Trust, Distrust, and ‘Medical Gaslighting’

Abstract When are we obligated to believe someone? To what extent are people authorities about their own experiences? What kind of harm might we enact when we doubt? Questions like these lie at the heart of many debates in social and feminist epistemology, and they’re the driving issue behind a key conceptual framework in these debates—gaslighting. But while the concept of gaslighting has provided fruitful insight, it's also proven somewhat difficult to adjudicate, and seems prone to over-application. In what follows, I argue that Katherine Hawley's theory of trust can provide a useful alternative lens for looking at contested testimony. To do this, I focus on a particularly complex—but increasingly popular—application of gaslighting: the physician/patient relationship, and the idea of ‘medical gaslighting’. I argue that, even though patients can experience harm when they are disbelieved, there are nevertheless good reasons for physicians not to trust patients about at least some of their own narratives.

Kleptocracy, authoritarianism and democracy as ideal types of political power

ABSTRACT This article explores kleptocracy, authoritarianism and democracy as sociological ideal types of the exercise of political power. Kleptocracy is theorized as an ideal type which uses coercion as its primary power resource, while both authoritarianism and democracy are based upon authority, defined as a belief in legitimacy. Where authoritarianism and democracy differ is how a belief in legitimacy is obtained. These differences and similarities are explored with reference to the four dimensions of political power, which consist of agency, structure, social epistemology and social ontology.

An integral approach to address Chagas disease

Chagas is a zoonotic disease conditioned by the need to eliminate or control the vector in human settlements before targeting infected individuals. Simultaneously it is necessary to raise awareness of health problems generated by chronic Chagas disease (ChD), for people to participate actively in vector control programs that will then enable the implementation of screening, treatment and follow-up strategies. Therefore, it is essential to engage the participation of the community in holistically designed integral programs to address ChD in all its complexity. This Perspective presents the case of Chagas management programs in the Department of General Taboada, Province of Santiago del Estero, Argentina, to showcase a possible strategy in vector control, diagnosis and treatment programs that integrate ChD into the local public health system and engage community participation. Through this Perspective we argue for the importance of the contribution of social science methodologies and epistemologies in the process of integrating ChD into the public (and primary) health care system.

Knowledge and society: A comprehensive approach to social epistemology

This article proposes an alternative approach to social epistemology – a comprehensive approach. It argues that the dominant approaches to social epistemology, which it identifies as communitarian and veritistic, are inadequate. It observes that the nature of the emphasis that the communitarian approach places on the epistemic community foster mindless tolerance in epistemology, which makes the pursuit of the cognitive goal of truth difficult to attain. It also observes that the veritistic approach that seeks to refocus social epistemology on the pursuit of the cognitive goal of obtaining truth does this at the expense of the affective goals of social epistemology. To overcome the inadequacies of the communitarian and the veritistic approaches and to ensure that social epistemology effectively pursues its cognitive and affective goals, this article offers the comprehensive approach. This approach absorbs the virtues of the communitarian and the veritistic approaches while avoiding their errors. Hence, it thrives on a view of truth that posits an objective and a subjective dimension of truth. The objective dimension ensures that the community only fosters and never impedes social epistemological projects such that social epistemology continues to pursue the cognitive goal of truth. The subjective dimension guarantees that the concern for truth does not lead to the neglect or abandonment of the pursuit of the affective goals of social epistemology. The rationale behind this approach is that for social epistemological projects and practices to remain truly epistemological and social, they must always take into consideration the cognitive and affective features of knowledge and knowers.

Hume's Social Epistemology and the Dialogue Form

Abstract Hume begins his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion by discussing what an ideal dialogue ought to look like. Many considerations that Hume raises coincide with similar concerns in contemporary social epistemology. This paper examines three aspects of Hume's social epistemology: epistemic peerhood, inquiry norms and the possibility of rational persuasion. Interestingly, however, I will argue that the conversation between Philo, Cleanthes and Demea falls short of meeting Hume's articulated standard of what an ideal dialogue ought to look like. From this analysis, I defend the less popular view that Demea's decision to leave the conversation (in Part XI) was entirely reasonable and suggest an explanation for why Hume decided to make Cleanthes the ‘hero’ of the Dialogues.

Engaging Antiracism Through Interdisciplinary Teaching

ABSTRACT This article examines the role of interdisciplinarity in strengthening social work’s commitments to antiracism at the macro level. We describe our experiences of designing and implementing an interdisciplinary workshop for undergraduate students focused on the use of public policy to aid in the dismantling of white supremacy. Engaging sociological theories of race and racism supported student learning about the systemic nature of racial inequality and the need to accompany individual-level interventions with structural change. The dialogic benefits of interdisciplinarity are discussed in terms of strengthening macro social work education and forwarding a robust and clearly defined antiracist social work epistemology and praxis. Implications for social work education and practice are discussed.

The digital transformation of knowledge order: a model for the analysis of the epistemic crisis

ABSTRACT In a proclaimed age of ‘post-truth,’ scholars have raised concerns about the spread of false information and the questioning of epistemic authorities. In this paper, we develop an analytical model to capture the digital transformation of knowledge order. Drawing on insights from social epistemology, sociology and history of knowledge, and media history, we identify epistemic practices as basic elements of knowledge order. We then analyze how epistemic practices are organized into an overarching structure of knowledge phases, contexts, roles, and hierarchies. Digital media tend to destabilize the traditional knowledge order. This destabilization is characterized by a more flexible order of phases, a dissolution of boundaries between contexts, an opening of professional roles to new actors, and a flattening of hierarchies.

Husserl's Notion of “Secondary Experience” as an Alternative Basis for Social Epistemology

ABSTRACT The goal of this paper is to put on the map Husserl's discussion of “secondary experience” as an alternative basis for an epistemology of testimony. In current discussions about social epistemology, the majority of scholars characterize testimony as “the transfer of a belief.” On the contrary, in light of Husserl's notion of “secondary experience,” testimony is best characterized as a sharing of experience rather than a transfer of belief. Husserl discusses the notion of “secondary experience” in Appendix XII of Husserliana 15. In this paper I develop a systematic analysis of “secondary experience,” and I integrate Husserl's analysis of testimony in Appendix XII with his other analyses developed in the Cartesian Meditations, manuscripts written in the same period, and Experience and Judgment. In the conclusion of the paper I very briefly argue for the superiority of Husserl's view of testimony over the majority view.

Perspectives on Post-Truth

ABSTRACT This opening piece of the special issue ‘Perspectives on Post-Truth’ aims to accomplish three tasks. First, and foremost, it highlights the issue’s distinctive feature, namely its variegated approach to post-truth. The leading idea in assembling it has been to draw on different methodologies, theoretical approaches, and competences, in order to gain a fine-grained understanding of the post-truth condition and to develop an effective toolkit to address the most pressing challenges it poses to our societies. The underlying conviction is that a variegated approach is required by the multifaceted nature of the post-truth condition. The curious reader willing to venture through the issue will thus be exposed to different perspectives on post-truth: some pieces address it from a traditional epistemological perspective, others explore post-truth from the perspective of social epistemology, and still others adopt a semiotic perspective. In light of this multiplicity of perspectives, the second task of this piece has been to provide a brief thematic overview of the key issues and perspectives in order to illustrate the overall narrative of the project. The third and final task has been to give a detailed synopsis of each contribution so that the reader will know precisely what to expect from it.

On the pursuitworthiness of qualitative methods in empirical philosophy of science

While the pursuitworthiness of philosophical ideas has changed over time, philosophical practice and methodology have not kept pace. The worthiness of a philosophical pursuit includes not only the ideas and objectives one pursues but also the methods with which one pursues them. In this paper, we articulate how empirical approaches benefit philosophy of science, particularly advocating for the use of qualitative methods for understanding the social and normative aspects of scientific inquiry. After situating qualitative methods within empirical philosophy of science, we discuss how to adapt these traditionally sociological methods to empirically inform philosophical questions. Our aim is to normalize and legitimize qualitative methods for philosophical purposes and discuss how they can elucidate descriptive and normative components of scientific practice in a more generalizable non-idealized manner. We contend that qualitative methods are particularly well suited to philosophical interest in the social norms of science, their achievability, and their mutability. Furthermore, unlike more historical case studies in philosophy, qualitative methods enable more confidence in generalizability, albeit limited, from a concrete sample to a larger class. We conclude by addressing anxieties about the distinctness of empirical philosophy of science from social epistemology and from sociology of science.

The subject of knowledge in collaborative science

The epistemic subject of collective scientific knowledge has been a matter of dispute in recent philosophy of science and epistemology. Following the distributed cognition framework, both collective-subject accounts (most notably by Knorr-Cetina, in Epistemic Cultures, Harvard University Press, 1999) as well as no-subject accounts of collective scientific knowledge (most notably by Giere, Social Epistemology 21:313–320, 2007; in Carruthers, Stich, Siegal (eds), The Cognitive Basis of Science, Cambridge University Press, 2002a) have been offered. Both strategies of accounting for collective knowledge are problematic from the perspective of mainstream epistemology. Postulating genuinely collective epistemic subjects is a high-commitment strategy with little clear benefit. On the other hand, eliminating the epistemic subject radically severs the link between knowledge and knowers. Most importantly, both strategies lead to the undesirable outcome that in some cases of scientific knowledge there might be no individual knower that we can identify. I argue that distributed cognition offers us a fertile framework for analyzing complex socio-technical processes of contemporary scientific knowledge production, but scientific knowledge should nonetheless be located in individual knowers. I distinguish between the production and possession of knowledge, and argue that collective knowledge is collectively produced knowledge, not collectively possessed knowledge. I then propose an account of non-testimonial, expert scientific knowledge which allows for collectively produced knowledge to be known by individuals.

"The freshness of irreverence": learning from ACT UP toward sociopolitical action in science education.

This article explores ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) through a Freirean lens of critical consciousness, dialogue, and transformation. The purpose is to draw from where there have been processes of engagement of sociopolitical action in science and how these spaces can become meaningful entry points to take toward making a "sociopolitical turn" in science education, as well as in science more broadly. Current practices in science education do not adequately prepare educators and students to challenge and interrupt injustices that we are emersed in. ACT UP is a well-studied example of when non-specialists engaged with science and scientific knowledge making to shift power and policy. Paulo Freire's pedagogy was developed alongside social movements. By examining ACT UP through a Freirean lens, I explore themes of relationality, social epistemology, consensus, and dissensus that emerged when a social movement engaged with science to achieve its goal. My intent is to add to the ongoing dialogues of approaching science education as a practice of critical consciousness and liberatory world making.

Regulating Social Media as a Public Good: Limiting Epistemic Segregation

ABSTRACT The rise of social media has correlated with an increase in political polarization, which many perceive as a threat to public discourse and democratic governance. This paper presents a framework, drawing on social epistemology and the economic theory of public goods, to explain how social media can contribute to polarization, making us collectively poorer, even while it provides a preferable media experience for individual consumers. Collective knowledge and consensus is best served by having richly connected networks that are epistemically integrated: individuals with diverse levels of expertise should be relatively well connected to each other. In epistemically segregated networks, by contrast, we have reason to predict collective epistemic failures. Expert knowledge will be isolated from the majority, leading average opinion to be less informed than is socially optimal, and entrenching disagreements. Because social media enables users to very easily adopt homophilous network connections – connections to those with similar opinions, education levels, and social backgrounds – it is likely to have increased epistemic segregation compared to older media platforms. The paper explains the theoretical foundations of these predictions, and sketches regulatory measures – such as taxes – that might be employed to preserve the public good of a well integrated social media network.

Using Web-Based Content to Connect Young People With Real-life Mental Health Support: Qualitative Interview Study.

Young people experience high rates of mental health problems but make insufficient use of the formal services available to them. As young people are heavy users of the internet, there may be an untapped potential to use web-based content to encourage this hard-to-reach population to make better use of face-to-face mental health services. However, owing to the vast range of content available and the complexities in how young people engage with it, it is difficult to know what web-based content is most likely to resonate with this age group and facilitate their engagement with professional support. This study aimed to identify the types of web-based content young people identified as more likely to prompt youth engagement with mental health services. This study used a qualitative design conducted within a social constructionist epistemology that recognized the importance of youth empowerment in mental health. Digital interviews using WhatsApp instant messenger were conducted with 37 young people aged 16-23 years who participated as "expert informants" on the priorities and practices of youth in web-based spaces. The data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis to identify the types of web-based content that participants believed would encourage young people to reach out to a face-to-face mental health service for support. The analysis generated 3 main themes related to the research question. First, participants noted that a lack of information about available services and how they worked prevented young people from engaging with face-to-face mental health services. They proposed web-based content that provided clear information about relevant mental health services and how to access them. They also suggested the use of both text and video to provide young people with greater insight into how face-to-face counseling might work. Second, participants recommended content dedicated to combating misconceptions about mental health and negative portrayals of mental health services and professionals that are prevalent in their web-based spaces. They suggested content that challenged the stigma surrounding mental health and help seeking and highlighted the value of mental health services. Finally, participants suggested that young people would be more likely to respond to "relatable" digital stories of using mental health services, recounted in the context of a personal connection with someone they trusted. This study offers recommendations for professionals and service providers on how to better engage young people with real-life mental health support using web-based content. Web-based content can be used to challenge some of the barriers that continue to prevent young people from accessing face-to-face mental health services and underlines the importance of including young people's voices in the design of web-based mental health content.

Knowledge transfer in educational institutions in light of social epistemology

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0in;border:none;mso-padding-alt:31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt;
 mso-border-shadow:yes">The field of social epistemology has been producing new
 discourses about knowledge generation and transfer while not forgetting the
 social aspects of them. One of its contributions is the acknowledgment of
 epistemic agents other than some lone subject in transferring and generating
 knowledge. For many centuries, people have been receiving knowledge through
 educational institutions. Social epistemology now allows us to reexamine the
 epistemology of education, primarily since education is usually made up of
 testimonial knowledge<span style="color: rgb(74, 74, 74); background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">—</span>knowledge that is “transferred” by teachers to students simply
 by the account of the teacher’s position as the educator. Philosophy of
 education, up until recently, has been concerned with types of education
 ideally pursued by students. However, social epistemology has turned our
 attention to aspects beyond normativity and set about the questioning of the
 nature of knowledge in education in the first place. We will see how, using
 social epistemology as a framework, new approaches to inquire about education
 and the transfer of knowledge can be determined. This paper will examine the
 changes in which we understand knowledge transfer done by educational
 institutions, particularly schools, considering the advances made in the field
 of social epistemology. The hopes of the exploration carried out in this paper
 are to reassess the way we go about the philosophy of education and to ignite
 further discussions concerning social epistemology and its impact on education.<o:p></o:p></p>

Knowledge transfer in educational institutions in light of social epistemology

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0in;border:none;mso-padding-alt:31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt;
 mso-border-shadow:yes">The field of social epistemology has been producing new
 discourses about knowledge generation and transfer while not forgetting the
 social aspects of them. One of its contributions is the acknowledgment of
 epistemic agents other than some lone subject in transferring and generating
 knowledge. For many centuries, people have been receiving knowledge through
 educational institutions. Social epistemology now allows us to reexamine the
 epistemology of education, primarily since education is usually made up of
 testimonial knowledge<span style="color: rgb(74, 74, 74); background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">—</span>knowledge that is “transferred” by teachers to students simply
 by the account of the teacher’s position as the educator. Philosophy of
 education, up until recently, has been concerned with types of education
 ideally pursued by students. However, social epistemology has turned our
 attention to aspects beyond normativity and set about the questioning of the
 nature of knowledge in education in the first place. We will see how, using
 social epistemology as a framework, new approaches to inquire about education
 and the transfer of knowledge can be determined. This paper will examine the
 changes in which we understand knowledge transfer done by educational
 institutions, particularly schools, considering the advances made in the field
 of social epistemology. The hopes of the exploration carried out in this paper
 are to reassess the way we go about the philosophy of education and to ignite
 further discussions concerning social epistemology and its impact on education.<o:p></o:p></p>

Uticaj koncepta socijalne epistemologije na metateoriju bibliotekarstva

This paper will consider the formation of the theoretical-methodological concept of social epistemology as an attempt to determine the scientific status of librarianship in the conditions of the scientific-technological revolution and under the influence of the sociological ideas of the Chicago School. The emergence of the first computers, new information media and electronic networks was accompanied by the fear that the book would be overcome and that librarianship would be a superfluous and anachronous activity. Jesse Hauk Shera, the founder and leading supporter of social epistemology tried to offer it as an alternative to the classical theory of librarianship. The analysis of Shera's and other relevant works offers insights about this concept, although conceived within theoretical librarianship, not being complementary to traditional professional specifics. Although today social epistemology is accepted as a philosophical theory of cognition, in the context of librarianship and information science, it has not solved the problem of the scientific and professional identity in the conditions of modified technological reality.

Talk-Story: Performing an Indigenous Research Methodology With Hesitant Non-Indigenous Participants to Learn Previously Silenced Knowledge

This article aims to broaden joint performances of talk-story, a form of Indigenous Research Methodology, to give voice to non-indigenous participants who presuppose misrepresentation in qualitative research. Indigenous Research Methodologies emerged to challenge axiological concerns with Western Research Methodologies, which participants perceive to disregard, oppress, and exploit those they claim to represent. Founded on the principle of relational accountability, Indigenous Research Methodologies place learning co-created knowledges and social epistemologies at the center of the study, promoting the publication of authentic explanations and representations that empower participants. In response to grounded theories emerging from talk-story with non-indigenous members of the global surfing tribe, describing their anger and powerlessness against cultural studies researchers who deceive and misrepresent them in a perceived culture war, I explain how non-indigenous researchers and disempowered populations can jointly perform talk-story to co-create depictions that survive participant scrutiny. However, I caution that influential gatekeepers will execute Western a priori assertions and cultural imperialism to silence opposing voices and epistemologies empowered by talk-story. Nonetheless, my article aims to contribute towards promoting performances of talk-story methodology by explaining how an indigenous paradigm enables analytical processes to be shared, thus exposing insights participants perceive to be silenced by Western Research Methodologies.

The Epistemological Asymmetry of Framing “Woman” via US Women's Rights Pioneers

AbstractNineteenth-century US social activist contemporaries Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Sojourner Truth are memorialized as women's rights pioneers. White activists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony cemented a generational canon. Black activist Sojourner Truth anticipated the eventual crystallization of intersectionality. These figures’ historical proximity underscores the high epistemological and political stakes of claiming gendered categories, namely via “woman” as a mark of aggrievement. I link concepts of intersectionality, epistemic agency, epistemic resources, and social movement framing to examine how “woman” is asymmetrically categorized. To this end, I perform a textual analysis of memorialized documents: “Declaration of Sentiments” (1848) by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States” (1876) by Susan B. Anthony, and “Ain't I a Woman?” (1851) by Sojourner Truth. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony frame “woman” as a single-axis and vertical category, ultimately deferring to the seeming preeminence of the US nation-state. By contrast, Sojourner Truth frames “woman” as a multi-axis and horizontal category by synthesizing her feminist consciousness, lived experience of enslavement, and personal religiosity. This article revisits key memorialized events by utilizing a conceptual toolkit that interlaces feminist and social epistemology with social movement theory.

Change, connection and community: A qualitative exploration of farmers' mental health

Western Australia is a geographically diverse area and major contributor to Australia's agricultural production, however the specific challenges and resources associated with farmers' mental health have not been examined. Farmers face significant challenges such as variability in weather, unpredictable commodity markets, and increasing isolation as rural community populations decline. This qualitative research study adopted a social constructionist epistemology to explore the main risk and protective factors for the mental health of farmers in Western Australia. Sixteen farmers (37% female; 28–64 years old, M = 41.75 years) and thirteen service providers (38% female, 27–64 years of age M = 47.23) participated in semi-structured interviews. Through inductive thematic analysis the findings suggest that the main risk factors contributing to poor mental health of farmers included rate of change, family business, declining communities, drinking culture and weather variability. Our findings indicate that communication and connection with others and taking time away from farming were important protective factors for farmers' mental health. However, different aspects of some factors comprised both mental health risks and protections. These findings highlight mental health as a significant concern in rural areas and that building community awareness and initiatives around mental health are vital to support farming communities.