Our starting point in “Universities as Anarchic Knowledge Institutions” (2024) is that research universities can appear to be inefficient organisations, in need of management reforms and strategic streamlining from outside forces. Despite appearances, we argue that this image usually holds only if we try to view research universities through the prism of some other type of organisation, like a business corporation. Historically, this is a relatively new idea: as Krücken and Meier (2006) ...| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Säde Hormio and Samuli Reijula have formulated a rather novel defense of a certain form of academic freedom,[1] arguing that the threat of dysfunctional inefficiency posed by intramural squabbling and…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Our globe discovers its hidden virtues,[1] not only in heroes andarchangels, but in gossips and nurses (Emerson 1909, 12). We continue a dialogue with Karen Adkins following her review of Kathryn…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
The main thrust of my reflections in “The Contemporary Research University: Freedom and Force” (2024) can be summarized as follows. The epistemological intuition behind the justification for academic autonomy for faculty offered in Hormio and Reijula’s “Universities as Anarchic Knowledge Institutions” (2023) is sound: “as a rule, plurality of thought is more likely to generate new ideas and solutions than cognitive monism” (Rider 2024). In my critical remarks, however, I implici...| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Sarah Wright’s essay, “Defending Autonomy as a Criterion for Epistemic Value” (2024), is a defense and suggested elaboration of Catherine Elgin’s work (cf. Elgin 2013). For Elgin, epistemic autonomy should be thought of, on analogy with Kantian autonomy generally, as a value and a constraint on a whole domain of human agency. Epistemic autonomy consists in believing for reasons one can reflectively endorse, and reflective endorsement requires recognizing the legitimacy of those reason...| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Critical Replies are engagements with articles recently published in Social Epistemology.| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective