312218 Social epistemology (V) (SoSe 2021)

[Via Zoom; see the 'Lernraum' of this course for details.]

This course is devoted to social epistemology, understood as the study of the social dimensions of knowledge. After a short historical and methodological survey of social epistemology, we shall first review some central developments in classical epistemology of the past decades, in particular Gettier's critique of the standard account of knowledge (as true justified belief) and its aftermath as well as various theories of epistemic justification. We review several arguments for the thesis that logical and probabilistic consistency is a necessary condition for any doxastic system to be counted as a body of knowledge.

The second part of the lecture course formally studies the social preservation of logical consistency. The doctrinal paradox and its relation to voting theory are reviewed and one of the famous impossibility theorems from judgement aggregation is discussed.

The third part of the course formally studies the social preservation of probabilistic consistency. Aletheic and pragmatic arguments for probabilistic consistency are reviewed, and the characterisation of probabilistic opinion pools (a possibility result) is discussed.

The fourth part takes into account the recent interest in procedural, reliabilist accounts of knowledge. Among social epistemic practices the so-called No-Alternatives Argument is particularly intriguing. We shall briefly review the origins of this argument and then discuss the recent formal defense of that argument due to Dawid, Hartmann and Sprenger as well as its philosophical import.

Bibliography

Main sources covered in the lecture course:

• R. Dawid, S. Hartmann and J. Sprenger. The No Alternatives Argument. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 66(1):213-234, 2015.

• F. Dietrich and Ph. Mongin. The premiss-based approach to judgment aggregation. Journal of Economic Theory, 145(2):562-582, 2010.

• E. Gettier. Is justified true belief knowledge? Analysis, 23(6):121-123, 1963.

• K.J. McConway. Marginalization and linear opinion pools. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 76(374):410-414, 1981.

Supplementary reading (covered in part in the lecture course):

• J.L. Bell and A.B. Slomson. Models and ultraproducts. An introduction. North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1969 [Reprint Dover Publ. Mineola NY 2006], Chapters 1-2.

• L. BonJour. The structure of empirical knowledge. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1985, Chapter 5.

• B. de Finetti. Theory of probability: a critical introductory treatment. Vol. 1. John Wiley & Sons, London, New York, Sydney, 1974 [Reprint 2017], Chapters 3-4.

• A. Goldman and C. O'Connor. Social Epistemology. In: Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Spring 2021 Edition. <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/epistemology-social/>

• T.H. Irwin. Aristotle's First Principles. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988, Chapter 6.

• K. Lehrer and T. Paxson. Knowledge: Undefeated justified true belief. Journal of Philosophy, 66(8):225-237, 1969.

• J. Locke. An essay concerning human understanding. Ed. by. P.H. Nidditch. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979, Book IV, Chapters XIV-XVII.