A Critical Exposition of the Social Turn in Epistemology

Abstract

This paper is a critical exposition of the social turn in epistemology. Traditional epistemology has largely focused on how the individual comes to know various subject matter such as knowledge about the world, other minds or some particular subject areas. By so doing, it examines the resources available to the individual in terms of evidence, experience or individual capacities like reasoning capacity that could be brought to bear on questions such as: What can I know? If I do know something, how do I know that I know it? If I fall short of knowledge, how do I know that I do not know anything? What is reasonable or unreasonable for me to belief? This has made traditional epistemology, a highly individualistic enterprise that accounts for knowledge from the angle of a solitary inquirer. Contrary to this approach, recent trends in epistemology have witnessed a paradigm shift from an epistemic solitary inquirer to and epistemic social inquirer. This shift in focus marks the social turn of epistemology as knowledge is not to be analysed as an exclusive property of the individual but with the consciousness of the social determinants of knowledge. Against this backdrop, this paper critically exposes the subject matter of social epistemology in contradistinction with traditional epistemology. In a bid to achieve this aim, the paper briefly juxtaposes the concern of social epistemology with that of traditional epistemology. In addition, it outlines the taxonomy of social epistemology. Furthermore, it articulates the basic approaches to social epistemology. Finally, it evaluates the claims of social epistemology