The intended purpose of this Topics Seminar is for the participating student (1) to become familiar with positions taken in the current debates over the specific topic area of the course; (2) to appreciate the arguments for and against the positions; and (3) to develop an independent judgment about the most promising approach in this area.
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Topic of 2020-2021:
Social epistemology is a relatively recent subdiscipline that investigates the epistemic effects of social interactions and social systems. For most of this course we will understand this as complementary and not opposed to more traditional, "individual" epistemology. Social epistemology is a very active field of research that has produced a lot of exciting publications in recent years. Part of its appeal is due to its immediate applicability to pressing societal issues like, for instance, the phenomenon of filter bubbles and echo chambers, the problem of "fake news", or the (apparent) rise of conspiracy theories in political discourse.
In this course we will first examine different ways to characterize social epistemology itself. As the course progresses, we will focus on some of the central topics in social epistemology: testimony, peer disagreement, the problem of identifying experts, epistemic injustice, group justification, and the epistemology of collective agents.
The central reading will be Alvin Goldman and Dennis Whitcomb's anthology "Social Epistemology", but we will also discuss recent publications by authors such as Miranda Fricker, Sanford Goldberg, Jennifer Lackey, or Thi Nguyen."
This course is for students in the RMA Philosophy programme and History & Philosophy of Science; students from other M.A. programmes (such as Applied Ethics), should check with the course coordinator or the RMA Philosophy coordinator (m.bonazzi@uu.nl), before enrolling, to ensure that they have the requisite philosophical background. The entrance requirements for Exchange Students will be checked by International Office and the Programme coördinator. Therefore, you do not have to contact the Programme coördinator yourself.
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