What is social about social epistemics?

Maffie, James

doi:10.1080/02691729108578605

Cited by 19 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 21 publications

(5 reference statements)

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“…Before moving validly to sociological eliminativism, advocates of the strong programme must offer additional arguments supporting the inviability of these other epistemological options. 18 NOTES 1 See Maffie (1991). The view I defend below thus has no quarrel with strong sociology of knowledge's claim that 'society gets into knowledge right at the ground floor' (Bloor, 1982: 305).…”

Section: The Compatibility Of Weak Continuity Naturalism With the Strong Programmementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The view I defend below thus has no quarrel with strong sociology of knowledge's claim that 'society gets into knowledge right at the ground floor' (Bloor, 1982: 305). 2 See Maffie (1990Maffie ( , 1991Maffie ( , 1993Maffie ( , 1995aMaffie ( , 1995b. 3 See Giere (1988Giere ( , 1989, Laudan (1984Laudan ( , 1987Laudan ( , 1990, Quine (1969aQuine ( , 1969bQuine ( , 1974Quine ( , 1975 and Roth (1987).…”

Section: The Compatibility Of Weak Continuity Naturalism With the Strong Programmementioning

confidence: 99%

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Epistemology in the face of strong sociology of knowledge

Maffie

1999

History of the Human Sciences

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Advocates of the strong programme in the sociology of knowledge contend that its four defining tenets entail the elimination and replacement tout court of epistemology by strong sociology of knowledge. I advance a naturalistic conception of both substantive and meta-level epistemological inquiry which fully complies with these four tenets and thereby shows that the strong programme neither entails nor even augurs the demise of epistemology.Key words anthropology of epistemology, epistemology, naturalism, strong programme in the sociology of knowledge I INTRODUCTION 'Epistemology needs history ', declares Elster (1982: 148). It needs history in order to distinguish different causal paths of belief formation, stated from operative reasons, 'hot' from 'cold' cognition, psychodynamics from psychologic, distortion from illusion, and wishful thinking from self-deception. Campbell (1974), Giere (1988), Goldman (1986) and others likewise aver epistemology's need for history. Commonplace epistemic activities such as assessing the epistemic credentials of belief require our attending to the causal genesis or pedigree of belief: how was belief arrived at? What kind of cognitive process contributed to its formation? What sorts of factors causally influenced its fixation?

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Section: The Compatibility Of Weak Continuity Naturalism With the Strong Programmementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Compatibility Of Weak Continuity Naturalism With the Strong Programmementioning

confidence: 99%

Epistemology in the face of strong sociology of knowledge

Maffie

1999

History of the Human Sciences

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“…Indeed, I have expressed the same worry elsewhere (Maffie, 1991). Existing social science has by and large been racist, sexist and classist, and naturalists must therefore conduct their enterprise in alliance with non-racist, feminist and proletarian social sciences.…”

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About face: a reply to Suárez and Fuller

Maffie¹

1999

History of the Human Sciences

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Many thanks to Steve Fuller and Mauricio Suárez for their thoughtful comments, as they have helped me clarify and further my thinking about these matters. Suárez argues anthroepistemology is entangled in the following trilemma. Anthroepistemology is either: (a) a folk epistemology, in which case its denial of Thesis (1) is false because common sense is epistemically continuous with science; or (b) a meta-discipline, in which case it is false because there is no single universal set of epistemic aims. Anthroepistemology avoids (a) and (b) only by (c): reverting to traditional nonnatural epistemology, an option incompatible with anthroepistemology's naturalism.Suárez's argument, however, is unsound as it rests upon misunderstandings of anthroepistemology and epistemology. His first horn supposes that 'anthroepistemology merely describes our everyday cognitive and epistemic practices' and so looks for epistemology in the pre-reflective, uncritical evidential customs of ordinary folk. It does not. Following African philosophers Hountandji (1983) and Oruka (1990), I argue that a folk's myths and worldview -including its unreflective, common-sense judgments about evidence and knowledge -lack the critical self-reflection and systematicity required to constitute what we typically regard as a philosophical theory of knowledge. Just as we need to distinguish doing physics from doing folk physics, I argue we need to distinguish doing epistemology from doing epistemic folklore and psychology (pace the likes of Wittgenstein, Bloor and Michael Williams). Indeed, the latter endeavor seems little more than a systematic ethnologystyle rendering of a culture's folk evidential notions. But the latter is not anthroepistemology. Rather, anthroepistemology looks for epistemology in the self-reflective, theoretical practices of critical thinkers, not the unreflective workaday practices of ordinary cognizers.

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“…Goldman has proposed as an innovation in epistemology, inter alia, the division of epistemic labor between primary, secondary, and tertiary categories, corresponding to natural (hard-wired) processes, learnable algorithms, and socially-sanctioned belief-forming methods. However, we are now in a position to ask what this "balkanization of epistemology" (Maffie, 1991) gains us. The distinction between the first category and the other two is meaningful on the assumption that the good-making features of reliable processes map onto physicocausal states.…”

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Dubious liaisons: A review of Alvin Goldman'sLiaisons:Philosophy meets the cognitive and social sciences

Roth¹

1996

Philosophical Psychology

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What is social about social epistemics?

Cited by 19 publications

References 21 publications

Epistemology in the face of strong sociology of knowledge

Epistemology in the face of strong sociology of knowledge

About face: a reply to Suárez and Fuller

Dubious liaisons: A review of Alvin Goldman'sLiaisons:Philosophy meets the cognitive and social sciences

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