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Although ecumenical dialogue has highlighted many commonalities between Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox, many issues still remain contentious. One often recurring suspicion is that the Protestant idea of sola scriptura inevitably leads to an individualistic religiosity, neglecting the importance of the divinely guided Christian tradition and Christian church teaching for understanding the Bible. In this article, I relate this critique to the idea of “epistemic egoism”, as defined by Linda Zagzebski, and develop an alternative Protestant social epistemology based on tradition as the “democracy of the dead”, error-corrected by sola scriptura. I test this Protestant theological epistemology against two recent criticisms: (1) the “Conciliar Argument Against Protestantism” (CAAP), arguing that Protestantism fails to provide consistent criteria for valuing conciliar authority as a guide to biblical interpretation, and (2) the “Scriptural Argument Against Dogmatic Protestantism”, arguing that sola scriptura, when understood in light of theological disagreement, ultimately becomes self-refuting in the absence of properly guiding theological authority. I argue, however, that sola scriptura is compatible with assigning an important epistemic role to both tradition and community, and that Protestant principles of theological reasoning can be defended further using recent theories in social epistemology.

The paper problematizes the issue of contradictions of scientific multidimensionality and is devised as a contribution to the topic from the perspective of social epistemology. The paper points to the fact that scientific multidimensionality and interdisciplinarity are some of the unquestionable categories in the defining of contemporary notions of knowledge and science, and that, as such, they inherently possess negative aspects, which must be taken into consideration when reflected on within the current world history. The paper in particular foregrounds the problem of the status of humanities and social sciences which are marked as redundant and practically useless, due to the objective global and political circumstances and the rearguard capitalist logic. Moreover, the paper also discusses the conceptual history and a sort of knowledge stock of the fundamental roots of the modern notion of scientific knowledge, about which we can take more clear positions to contemporary discussions on the topic.

I contend that the history of the development of 20th-century analytic philosophy is characterized by three main phases: (a) the turn towards analysis, (b) the linguistic turn, and (c) the naturalistic turn. In this article, I examine whether the recent interest in sub-disciplines such as (1) social epistemology, (2) social ontology, and the methods of "conceptual engineering" applied in fields like (3) philosophy of language, indicates that the current phase of development in analytic philosophy could be termed (d) the social turn.

The project of veristic social epistemology is based on the evaluation of social practices directed at acquiring knowledge and avoiding error. This research aims to analyse the social and technological dimensions of information processes. A number of practices in the network environment have a significant impact on the cognitive processes of individuals. They give rise to the acquisition of both true and false beliefs, ranging from reliable information practices to unreliable disinformation practices. The prevalence of phenomena such as echo chambers, fake news, clickbait or deepfakes indicates that the condition of the contemporary infosphere is under serious threat. Disinformation processes, reinforced by technological progress, prompt reflection on the reliability of social practices. In addition to the strictly veristic consequences, the importance of the phenomenon of epistemic injustice should also be pointed out.

In the relatively abundant bibliography on archaeological theory and epistemology the impact of archaeological practice on archaeological epistemology has remained somehow less explored despite the fact that in the last three decades archaeology has undergone radical changes in practice. We would like to point to three interconnected trends: an exceptional increase in the amount of archaeological fieldwork, the fact that probably more than 90% of all field projects are in the domain of heritage protection, and that archaeology has become a data-driven discipline, producing new circumstances which challenge the traditional epistemological views and require social epistemological rethinking. This paper aims to explore some social epistemological aspects in current archaeological practice in Slovenia where two rather distinctive groups of archaeological researchers emerged, academic archaeologists and field professionals. The distinction between the two groups has grown since the late 1990s with the introduction of preventive archaeology, changes in legislation in heritage protection, and the development of the commercial sector in archaeology. These changes opened a series of questions on epistemic effects in new circumstances, e.g. how these two groups contribute to archaeological knowledge, how their modes of obtaining knowledge are structured and organized, what social factors condition these modes, and, least but not last, the question of forms of epistemic asymmetries.

When we use so-called predicates of personal taste to talk about an object, we express our subjective experience of the object. There is no objective truth about whether a given thing is, say, funny. I shall argue that it can make sense to argue about matters of taste anyway because (a) there are good reasons to want to change our interlocutor's relevant experience, and (b) disputes about taste can bring about such a change. These reasons can be moral or political. My argument serves to connect debates in the philosophy of language, social epistemology, and ideology theory in illuminating ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an intersectional, non-identitarian perspective on epistemic violence, taking academic philosophy, and in particular the reinforcement of a philosophical canon, as a case of analysis. Mainstream philosophy has long been reluctant to confront its history of exclusion and the ongoing practices that marginalise some social groups, languages and regions from the legitimised circuits of philosophical knowledge building. The concept of epistemic violence, alongside a range of tools developed in recent years by social epistemology, shed light on the variety and complexity of the practices of epistemic silencing, exclusion and marginalisation that occur in all social interactions, and allow us to assess the specifically epistemic loss that they entail. In recent decades, various initiatives have sought to counteract the exclusion of certain social groups from philosophy, most notably feminist perspectives that aim to highlight some of the contributions made by women to academic philosophical reflection. However, these approaches seem insufficient when we consider the complexity of the phenomenon of epistemic violence and how various factors of social marginalisation intertwine and reinforce each other. An intersectional view shows the inadequacy of taking a single axis without considering how it is co-constituted by other variables that make it internally heterogeneous and hierarchical. It exposes how epistemic violence, but also the and non-intersectional approaches to it, reduce the questions, answers, strategies and narratives that are allowed to flourish in philosophy. Taken together, the concept of epistemic violence and an intersectional perspective reveal how mere »inclusion« is not enough to transform the philosophical canon and enrich the spectrum of perspectives in our discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new and vibrant field of the epistemology of democracy, or the inquiry about the epistemic justification of democracy as a social system of procedures, institutions, and practices, as a cross-disciplinary endeavour, necessarily encounters both epistemologists and political philosophers. Despite possible complaints that this kind of discussion is either insufficiently epistemological or insufficiently political, my approach explicitly aims to harmonize the political and epistemic justification of democracy. In this article, I tackle some fundamental issues concerning the nature of the epistemic justification of democracy and the best theoretical framework for harmonizing political and epistemic values. I also inquire whether the proposed division of epistemic labour and the inclusion of experts can indeed improve the epistemic quality of decision-making without jeopardizing political justification. More specifically, I argue in favour of three theses. First, not only democratic procedures but also the outcomes of democracy, as a social system, need to be epistemically virtuous. Second, democracy’s epistemic virtues are more than just a tool for achieving political goals. Third, an appropriate division of epistemic labour has to overcome the limitations of both individual and collective intelligence.

The article starts with a sketch of Prijić Samaržija’s hybrid theory. After that, it provides an overview of the virtue epistemology theory, to which she attributes a relevant influence on her own position, as well as that of reliability democracy which constitutes her view about democratic legitimacy. Secondly, her proposal is discussed and confronted with a slightly amended version of the leading liberal democratic theory of democratic legitimacy, formulated and defended by John Rawls.

Identifying optimal ways of organizing exploration in particle physics mega-labs is a challenging task that requires a combination of case-based and formal epistemic approaches. Data-driven studies suggest that projects pursued by smaller master-teams (fewer members, fewer sub-teams) are substantially more efficient than larger ones across sciences, including experimental particle physics. Smaller teams also seem to make better project choices than larger, centralized teams. Yet the epistemic requirement of small, decentralized, and diverse teams contradicts the often emphasized and allegedly inescapable logic of discovery that forces physicists pursuing the fundamental levels of the physical world to perform centralized experiments in mega-labs at high energies. We explain, however, that this epistemic requirement could be met, since the nature of theoretical and physical constraints in high energy physics and the technological obstacles stemming from them turn out to be surprisingly open-ended.

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The term culture of knowledge has become a commonplace today and is circulating with a confusing diversity of meanings throughout various disciplines and fields, like Cultural Studies, Science Studies, History of Science, Epistemology, Sociology and History of Knowledge. This paper investigates the origins of the term culture of knowledge and discusses its various meanings, applications, and misconceptions in Cultural Theory, History of Science, Historical Epistemology and History of Knowledge. Finally, Ludwik Fleck’s theory of thought-styles is proposed as an ideal model for describing specific cultures of knowledge.

Metatheoretical dilemmas about the nature of the social world often animate organizational theorists who purport to dissolve pertinent controversies along truth-laden lines of philosophical argumentation. The present paper acknowledges the inescapable uncertainty at this level of discourse to nonetheless resist taking the usual step according to which metatheoretical discourse should be abandoned as unhelpful, if not misleading, metaphysics. However, it also parts from traditional modes of metatheoretical defense to instead try to identify whether metatheoretical frameworks, beyond considerations of any possible cognitive merit in deciphering the nature of the world, may be of any use in making a desirable difference in the world. In developing a pragmatist defense of realist metatheories, we may explicitly value metatheoretical discourse from a novel standpoint and further delineate subtle conceptual relations between metatheory, theory, phenomenological acceptance, action and epistemic ethics.

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The article reflects on the positions concerning teaching philosophies and methods taken by the contributors to this issue of the journal, particularly concerning the didactic method and knowledge transfers in education. Topics considered include the social dimensions of knowledge production, the effect of technological innovations in education, and the psychology of learning.

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Great efforts have been made in recent years to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in the context of lie detection. In the present paper the pros and cons of such an approach are analyzed and critically discussed. Both epistemological and methodical considerations have shown that all attempts to derive mental states from fMRI findings („reverse inference“) are not valid. Consequently, fMRI scans cannot reveal a person’s thoughts and whether (s)he is lying or telling the truth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Scientific procedures are widely expected to be unbiased, in the sense that they do not single out one specific set of claims about which they yield false results more often than about others. This assumed feature of the practices of science can be called procedural objectivity. I argue that attempts to analyze procedural objectivity on the level of individual rationality fail. The appropriate balance of inductive risks for each scientific investigation hinges upon value judgments for which no binding, ‚neutral' standard can be derived from universal principles. I make the case that the perspective of social epistemology offers a much more promising approach to establish a substantial conception of procedural objectivity. I examine two genuinely social elements of the sciences' procedural objectivity. One consists in conventional standards, which are adopted by research communities in order to facilitate epistemic trust and which impose constraints on methodological choices that affect the balance of inductive risks. The other is constituted by the plurality of approaches within research communities and the mechanism of mutual criticism. Procedural objectivity in science thus becomes understandable as a social phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article discusses epistemological aspects of globalization and modernization. The author discusses the social theories of the Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos concerning hermeneutics and multicultural societies. The World-Systems-Theory of the American sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein is also presented.

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Copyright of Swiss Journal of Sociology / Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Soziologie is the property of Sciendo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Swiss Journal of Sociology / Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Soziologie is the property of Sciendo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Swiss Journal of Sociology / Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Soziologie is the property of Sciendo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The first part of this paper contains some biographical details on Werner Stark's emigration and on some stations in his academic career. The following part summarizes the main principles of Stark's sociology of knowledge: a) a social a priori (in analogy to Kant) as a mechanism of selecting perception on the way to the production of knowledge; b) a holistic interaction functionalism in opposition to idealistic and materialistic doctrines for describing the relation between infrastructure and superstructure; c) social consciousness or ideology; his conception of sociology of knowledge as a way to truth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the differences in the concepts of reason and rationality. The author describes at some length the "irrational" ideas of Paul K. Feyerabend, who maintains that the methods of critical rationality employed by science can never be maintained and that differing traditions of inquiry are of equal relative usefulness.

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The article presents a continuation of a discussion of a report on young people in West Germany, focusing specifically on the historical perception of young people. Various levels of cognition are examined with regard to youth and political and social connections as well as various levels of comprehension. Political education at the university level is discussed.

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