Social epistemology

The first study, e. g., examines how beliefs might differ from culturally different academic institutions. Undergraduate students were sampled from SFU in Canada and UNLV in the USA. The results revealed that SFU students espoused more constructivist epistemic beliefs, that is, they were more likely to be critical of authority and less likely to believe that knowledge is fixed in a timeless Platonic world.

 

[ ... ]

 

Social epistemology is a relatively new and booming field of research. It studies the social dimension of the pursuit of acquiring true beliefs and requires philosophical as well as sociological and economical expertise. Promising new models and ongoing research should help educators, policy makers and diplomats.

 

For example, there is a workshop on Formal Modeling in Social Epistemology at Tilburg University, The Netherlands on 9 - 10 October 2008. The announcement for that workshop details the topics for discussion: The insights gained in social epistemology are not only of theoretical interest -- they also improve our understanding of social and political processes as the field includes the analysis of group deliberation and group decision making. Surprisingly, little work has yet been done on the epistemic properties of group deliberation, belief aggregation and decision-making procedures.

 

Review - Knowing, Knowledge and Beliefs
Epistemological Studies across Diverse Cultures
by Myint Swe Khine (Editor)
Springer, 2008
Review by Bob Lane, MA

 

~ Source ~