Social Epistemology
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Abstract
Epistemology is the study of knowledge and related phenomena, such as attitudes (e.g., belief, understanding, trust), attributes of these attitudes (e.g., justification, warrant, reliability), and traits (e.g., intellectual humility, open-mindedness, intellectual courage, and their opposed vices such as intellectual arrogance and intellectual servility). Social epistemology is thus the study of knowledge and related phenomena as they play out in social interactions. These interactions occur at timescales that range from direct, face-to-face chatting, to asynchronous joint inquiry over the course of months, years of formal schooling, and the transmission of cumulative cultural knowledge across generations. They also occur on social scales ranging from dyads to triads to groups whose members we can track (approximately 150) to large, anonymous institutions and societies. As groups increase in size, their members may specialize into roles, and the geometry of the network by which these members are interconnected becomes highly consequential.
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