I’m grateful for the opportunity to respond to Francesco Censon’s paper, “The Rejected Expert and the Knowledge’s Half-Blood” (2025). In what follows, I will discuss Censon’s concept of Knowledge’s…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Abstract| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
This paper is the fourth stage in my debate with Bálint Békefi on the pages of SERRC (for previous details see Békefi 2024; Tőzsér 2025; Békefi 2025). Although our debate originally unfolded in…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
My response to Colin Koopman’s “Human-Data Coupling: Informational Personhood & Artificial Intelligence Through Gilbert Simondon’s Philosophy of Technology” (2025) begins and ends from a place of admiration, and thus I must extend my gratitude to the editors of Social Epistemology for this invitation and for the opportunity to acknowledge my debt to Koopman’s thinking in the hope of advancing it even further. … [please read below the rest of the article].| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Abstract| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
I have learned a great deal from Karin Kukkonen’s (2024) account of literary works as ‘boundary objects’, including her discussion of how these objects may play a role in facilitating interdisciplinary exchanges. While I find Kukkonen’s argument convincing overall, I have a few qualifications and complications that I would like to formulate in my response to “Designing an Expert-Setting for Interdisciplinary Dialogue: Literary Texts as Boundary Objects.” … [please read below the...| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Abstract | Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
I wish I lived in a world where it was socially not weird to walk up to people and lay out my philosophical commitments like a collection of treasures. Deciphering other people’s commitments, as well as my own, is one of my favorite pastimes. And it seems there are always layers to what people say, even when they are being very earnest. One of my favorite things about being a scholar and a humanist is that, when I earnestly lay out my ideological commitments as best I can, sometimes it isn...| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Abstract| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Professor Schneider’s article “Chatbot Epistemology” (2025) raises several important and timely questions regarding the use of large language models. I shall focus here on the epistemological questions, of which I think there is one that is central: Are chatbots a reliable source of information? … [please read below the rest of the article].| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Benjamin W. McCraw’s article “A Reidian Transcendental Argument Against Skepticism” (2025) constitutes an original and thought-provoking contribution both to Reid scholarship and to the discussion of epistemic skepticism.[1] In the following I will make a few remarks about it, focusing on the discussion of skepticism. I start with a brief historical remark on Reid and Kant (§ 1) before I explain the anti-skeptical argument in some detail (§ 2). A discussion of the premises of the argu...| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
I am grateful for the opportunity to have read Christoph Jäger and Nicholas Shackel’s interesting and creative “Testimonial Authority and Knowledge Transmission” (2025) and to have been invited to pen a reply. As the next time that a reader of a philosophical paper agrees with its author will no doubt be the first, it may be expected that I have some reservations regarding Jäger and Shackel’s paper. And, indeed, despite considerable admiration for it, I do. Jäger and Shackel argue ...| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Dear Talia Mae Bettcher,| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Epistemology has become an important site in the struggle for social justice. Pursuing knowledge is not an innocent process of discovering social facts using certain methodological procedures as…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
On encountering Charles Lassiter’s article (2024a) “Reading the Signs: From Dyadic to Triadic Views for Identifying Experts,” I felt totally in tune with his vision. A few years ago, I too had published an article in the Italian journal Prometeo on the crisis of competence (Censon 2020) which, although it did not have the theoretical breadth of the one written by Lassiter, touched on the same points. … [please read below the rest of the article].| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
“Taking It Not at Face Value: A New Taxonomy for the Beliefs Acquired from Conversational AIs” (2024), written by Japanese scholar Shun Iizuka, deals with the question of trust and belief with regard to the way humans interact with conversational AIs such as ChatGPT. This question has since garnered increasing prominence with the public releases of reasoning models, with DeepSeek releasing their R1 model in January 2025 (Sharma 2025) and OpenAI responding with their o3-mini model just 10 ...| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Let me begin by thanking Alexios Stamatiadis-Bréhier for his insightful discussion (2025), which has helped me think through this material more carefully and explore ways to extend it. In the following, I will first make a few quick clarificatory remarks to minimize the danger of confusion. I then take up what I take to be the most pressing response Stamatiadis-Bréhier offers to my misgivings about the epistemic use of genealogies to debunk conspiracy theories. Lastly, I briefly respond to ...| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
In “Rethinking Conspiracy Theories: Method First! A Reply to Shields”, Sanja Dembić pushes back against elements of my article “Rethinking Conspiracy Theories” (2022). Dembić starts her reply by giving a clear and accurate reconstruction of my main argument. I present a novel critique of generalism—the view that conspiracy theories are epistemically defective by their very nature. (To indicate that this is the relevant meaning, I’ll continue with Quassim Cassam’s convention of...| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Abstract| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
I thank Kurtis Hagen for his reply (2025). It is valuable for people with very different perspectives like us to candidly lay out our disagreements. While Hagen makes several points that merit…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
When Tony Blair says, “But honestly, I mean, conspiracy theories,” he appears to be encouraging the dismissal of the theory in question simply by suggesting that it counts as a conspiracy theory.| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Abstract| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Abstract| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
I am very grateful to Kurtis Hagen (2024) for pressing me on this topic. Working through his criticisms helped me to refine, modify, and improve my thoughts about where particularist allegations…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Blake Roeber and I are arguing at cross-purposes, and it’s at least partly my fault. He complains that my defence of the rationality of ordinary people, including their rationality when it comes to answering political questions (however we understand ‘political’), is irrelevant to his concern which is their reliability (Roeber 2024a). He points out that rationality doesn’t entail reliability. It’s plausible, however, that if we’re not reliable in the domain of politics, we can’t...| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Abstract Can AI developers be held epistemically responsible for the processing of their AI systems when these systems are epistemically opaque? And can explainable AI (XAI) provide public…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
In Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, Dennett (2013) offers some advice when criticizing others’ views. He says, “You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
This is the first in a series of three essays in which I address the following issues: (1) The pros and cons of the so-called “minimalist” definition of conspiracy theories…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
This [2019] year-end reflection will return to the state of social epistemology and how it might go forward in light of the post-truth condition. Its point of departure is threefold.| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
I want to start by thanking Professor Levy for his illuminating discussion (2024) of my book. Levy is an excellent philosopher, who consistently notices things that other people miss, and it’s an honor to have him write about my work. … [please read below the rest of the article].| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Author Information: Ayesha Hardison, University of Kansas, hardison@ku.edu Hardison, Ayesha. “Theorizing Jane Crow, Theorizing Literary Fragments.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 7…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Steve Fuller (2024) conducted a comparative analysis of Western and Chinese philosophy and civilization from a Western perspective. His focus was on identifying differences between the two civilizations at their foundational starting points, with a goal of fostering mutual understanding, rather than viewing China as merely “the other” of the West. Some of his observations align with core aspects of Chinese philosophy and civilization. In the following, I will respond to Fuller’s interpr...| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
I recently wrote a paper—“Caveat Auditor: Epistemic Trust and Conflicts of Interest” (2022)—arguing that a testifier’s incentives are epistemically relevant to our trust in them. People often have incentives to testify in ways that are at odds with the truth or their evidence, and sometimes they even have incentives to get you to believe what’s false or evidentially baseless. Those incentives are typically more important than a testifier’s expertise or knowledge. If you had to c...| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
In this review, I will briefly summarize arguments by Diego Parente and Luciano Mascaró in their recent article…| 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
Adam Green maintains that there is a need “for a virtue term that pertains to developing and maintaining a perspective that is epistemically independent of the groups to which one belongs” (Green 2024…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Nursing Epistemology: Then, and Now Healthcare organizations like universities are highly dynamic organizations “made up of multiple, complex, and overlapping subgroups with variably shared…| 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
Abstract It has been argued that our currently most satisfactory social epistemology of science can’t account for science that is based on artificial intelligence (AI) because this social epistemology…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
[Y]et we underestimate the power of Africa to renew contemporary social theory at our expense—Achille Mbembe, 2010. I n “Overcoming Eurocentrism: Exploring Ethiopian Modernity Through Entangled…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
A few months ago, during the question and answer session of one of her talks, I had the chance to ask noted feminist philosopher of science Helen Longino her thoughts on why there is not as much…| 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
In a recent special issue of Social Epistemology (2024, 38:3), a diverse set of authors discuss epistemic autonomy,[1] its place as a virtue, and related uses and abuses of epistemic agency. In this response essay, I will develop a perspective on epistemic autonomy the importance of which is, I think, underlined by these essays taken as a set. The upshot of the essay being this. There is a need for a virtue term that pertains to developing and maintaining a perspective that is epistemically i...| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Lisa Herzog’s wonderful book Citizen Knowledge: Markets, Experts, and the Infrastructure of Democracy (Herzog 2023), examines how democratic market societies should deal with the tension that can…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
The philosophical literature on the internet and social media continues to grow rapidly and in many exciting directions. In her ‘Censorship Bubbles Vs Hate Bubbles’, Wendy Xin (2023) brings together…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Author Information: Kristie Dotson, Michigan State University, dotsonk@msu.edu Dotson, Kristie. “Abolishing Jane Crow.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 7, no. 7 (2018): 1-8.| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Forgive me, philosophers, for I have sinned epistemically. It has been many years since my last confession. To start, I forgot to update my priors a few times. I haven’t always followed research on…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
I was surprised by your letter of appreciation because … whew, that paper was risky. And it gets nowhere without an extreme reliance on a ton of folks.| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Dear Claire,| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
In “A Reply to Fasil Merawi’s ‘Overcoming Eurocentrism’” (2024), Alexandra Hofmänner develops an analysis of my article “Overcoming Eurocentrism: Exploring Ethiopian Modernity Through Entangled…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
In his “Classical Logic and the Gender Binary” (2024), Axel Barceló replies to some of Franci Mangraviti’s claims in their “The Contribution of Logic to Epistemic Injustice” (2023b). One of Mangraviti’s central affirmations is that “logic-based epistemic injustice is in principle possible—epistemic resources have logical aspects, and there are many ways in which said aspects could end up associated with certain groups” (5). Barceló agrees that epistemic resources have logi...| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
I would like to thank the editors for the opportunity to respond to this piece, and Wendy Xin for writing such a thought-provoking article. To summarise Xin’s main argument: there is an epistemic cost…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Hermeneutical injustice occurs when our epistemic environment systematically fails to provide the tools we need to make sense of our own experiences. I claim that an instance of hermeneutical…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
In 2023, M R. X. Dentith edited a special issue—”Conspiracy Theory Theory”—of Social Epistemology (37:4). SERRC readers are familiar with Dentith’s philosophical work on conspiracy theory theory—work…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
In 2023, M R. X. Dentith edited a special issue—”Conspiracy Theory Theory”—of Social Epistemology (37:4). SERRC readers are familiar with Dentith’s philosophical work on conspiracy theory theory—work…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
In his review, Uwe Peters (2024) challenges my claim that we currently have no satisfactory social epistemology of AI-based science. He argues that the situation is not as dire as I take it to be…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
For many philosophers, it doesn’t seem right to say that we are mainly in the business of trying to describe our concepts. We are, at our best, trying to improve them. ‘Conceptual engineering’ describes this vision of philosophical practice. It is not hard to see its appeal. This metaphilosophical orientation gives us a clear mission that caters to what many take to be our distinct skill set: a combination of conceptual analysis and normative argument. … [please read below the rest of...| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
I thank Simon Susen for the opportunity for further engagement on his important contribution. If I can humbly claim to have at least partially inspired him to ask the immensely generative questions he…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
The pollution of our epistemic environments is a pressing problem. The largest share of our belief system is assembled through interactions with other agents mediated by digital epistemic environments…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Abstract The recognition problem—or, the difficulty of non-experts to appropriately distinguish experts from cleverly disguised fakes—is a perennial problem in expertise studies. And the more we learn…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
I am not a philosopher. Nor in my own publications have I intentionally followed any of the professional canons of philosophical reasoning or philosophical genres.[1] Nonetheless…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
In the paper “Towards a Clear and Fair Conceptualization of Empathy” (2023a), Caroline Bollen sets up a proposal for an anti-discriminatory and explicitly normative notion of empathy. In a reply, Colin Marshall (2023) raised four challenges to her argument—to which Bollen (2023b) responded. We (Bollen and Marshall) continued this discussion in conversation over Zoom, which resulted in this collaborative concluding discussion. … [please read below the rest of the article].| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
