On occasion, although not quite annually, the SERRC features Special Issues. Each issue explores topics of interest to our contributors and readers, and links often to corresponding projects—books in our “Collective Studies in Knowledge and Society” series (published by Rowman and Littlefield International), issues of Social Epistemology—on which we work. Special Issues comprise a significant undertaking that includes fully realized, publicly reviewed scholarship—scholarship that one finds traditionally in edited book volumes. Please examine and feel free to use and share these resources with proper attribution.
- Special Issue 4: “Social Epistemology and Technology”, edited by Frank Scalambrino, 2017
- Special Issue 3: “Mass Media, Knowledge, and Ethics”, edited by Patrick J. Reider, 2014
- Special Issue 2: “On the Future Direction of Social Epistemology”, edited by Patrick J. Reider, 2013
- Special Issue 1: “Normative Functionalism and the Pittsburgh School”, edited by Patrick J. Reider, 2013
Special Issue 4: “Social Epistemology and Technology”, edited by Frank Scalambrino, 2017
In our fourth special issue, contributors share their perspectives on how technology changes what it means to be human and to be a member of a human society. These articles speak to issues raised in Frank Scalambrino’s edited book Social Epistemology and Technology: Toward Public Self-Awareness Regarding Technological Mediation.
- “In Defense of Posthuman Dignity”
- “The Enframing of the Self as a Problem: Heidegger and Marcel on Modern Technology’s Relation to the Person”
- “Our Filtered Lives: The Tension Between Citizenship and Instru-mentality”
- “Employees as Sims? The Conflict Between Dignity and Efficiency”
- “The Value of Privacy for Social Relationships”
- “The Progress and Technology of City Life”
- “Funes, Digitized: Borges as a Guide to Fractured Digital Identities”
- “Material Carriers of Thought”
- “Trust and Transhumanism: An Analysis of the Boundaries of Zero-Knowledge Proof and Technologically Mediated Authentication”
- “How Technology Influences Relations to Self and Others: Changing Conceptions of Humans and Humanity”
- “A Man for All Seasons, Including Ours: Thomas More as the Patron Saint of Social Media”
Nick Bostrom, Oxford University, UK
Zachary Willcutt, Boston College, US
Rebecca Lowery, University of Texas at Dallas, US
Frank Scalambrino, University of Akron, US
Francesca Malloggi, University of Amsterdam, NL
Robyn Toler, University of Dallas, US
Joshua Hackett, Purdue University, US
Lyudmila A Markova, Russian Academy of Sciences, RU
Jason M. Pittman, Capitol Technology University, US
Frank Scalambrino, University of Akron, US
Steve Fuller, Warwick University, UK
Special Issue 3: “Mass Media, Knowledge, and Ethics”, edited by Patrick J. Reider, 2014
Our third special issue finds multinational contributors sharing their perspective on epistemic claims and the moral implications of how one should present them via mass media. Though the individual responses vary, they fall under two headings: 1) New Media and Social Justice, and 2) Mass Media, Popular Science, and Bad Reporting.
I. New Media and Social Justice
- Considering Online News Comments: Are We Really So Irrational and Hate Filled?
- Hashtag Feminism and Twitter Activism in India
Maureen Linker, University of Michigan-Dearborn, US
Elizabeth Losh, University of California, San Diego, US
II. Mass Media, Popular Science, and Bad Reporting
- Science and Scientism in Popular Science Writing
- From Science in the Papers to Science in the News
Jeroen de Ridder, VU University Amsterdamm, NL
Carlos Elías Pérez, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, ES and Jesús Zamora Bonilla, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, ES
Special Issue 2: “On the Future Direction of Social Epistemology”, edited by Patrick J. Reider, 2013
In our second special issue, we addresses the future direction of social epistemology.
Social epistemology takes as a matter of course the significance of, and need to examine closely, the social, collective dimensions of knowledge. Yet, social epistemology remains “associated with a broad set of approaches” about which “little consensus” exists regarding the definition and scope of the field’s ostensible objects of inquiry — the ‘social’ and ‘knowledge’.
In the 25th anniversary issue of Social Epistemology, Steve Fuller published “Social Epistemology: A Quarter-Century Itinerary.” The article offers, in part, both a criticism of “analytic social epistemology” (the approach to social epistemology associated with Alvin Goldman’s work) and a set of four questions serving as a guide to social epistemology’s future research agenda. Using Fuller’s article as a touchstone in their arguments, the contributors to this special issue help forward, and assure the vitality of, the endeavor we realize collectively as social epistemology.
I. The Varieties of Social Epistemology
- Two Kinds of Social Epistemology
Finn Collin, University of Copenhagen, DK
II. Is Analytic Social Epistemology Sufficiently Socially Oriented?
- “Analytic Social Epistemology” and the Epistemic Significance of Other Minds
- Secrets, Errors and Mathematics: Reconsidering the Role of Groups in Social Epistemology
Sanford C. Goldberg, Northwestern University, US
Miika Vähämaa, University of Helsinki, FI
III. Finding Alternatives to the Fuller/Goldman Debate
- Two-Stage Reliabilism, Virtue Reliabilism, Dualism and the Problem of Sufficiency
- The Social Dimension of Dialectical Truth: Hegel’s Idea of Objective Spirit
- Extended Knowledge and Social Epistemology
Paul Faulkner, University of Sheffield, UK
Angelica Nuzzo, Brooklyn College (CUNY), US
Orestis Palermos and Duncan Pritchard, University of Edinburgh, UK
Special Issue 1: “Normative Functionalism and the Pittsburgh School”, edited by Patrick J. Reider, 2013
In our first special issue, we address divergent views concerning the implication, scope, and cogency of the Pittsburgh School’s (i.e., Sellars, Brandom, and McDowell) application of ‘normative functionalism’.
I. An Introduction to the Pittsburgh School and Normative Functionalism
- Normative Functionalism
- Normative Functionalism in the Pittsburgh School
Chauncey Maher, Dickinson College, US
Patrick J. Reider, University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, US
II. Normative Functionalism and Representation
- The Pittsburgh School, the Given and Knowledge
- Sellars on Perception, Science, and Realism: A Critical Response
- Sellars, Realism, and Kantian Thinking
[A critical response to “Sellars on Perception, Science, and Realism: A Critical Response”] - Sellars and Knowing the Thing-In-Itself
[A response to “Sellars, Realism, and Kantian Thinking”] - Tales of the Mighty Tautologists?
Tom Rockmore, Duquesne University, US
Patrick Reider, University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, US
Willem A. deVries, University of New Hampshire, US
Patrick J. Reider, University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, US
Frank Scalambrino, University of Dallas, US
III. Normative Functionalism and Agency
- A Response to a Question Regarding “Normative Functionalism”
- Normative Functionalism about Intentional Action
- Normative Functionalism and its Pragmatist Roots
- Norms and Causes: Loosing the Bonds of Deontic Constraint
Joseph Margolis, Temple University, US
Chauncey Maher, Dickinson College, US
Dave Beisecker, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, US
James Swindal, Duquesne University, US
IV. Normative Functionalism and Reference
- Rigid Designation and Natural Kind Terms, Pittsburgh Style
Michael P. Wolf, Washington and Jefferson College, US
V. Normative Functionalism and Rhetoric
- Having “A Whole Battery of Concepts”: Thinking Rhetorically About the Norms of Reason
John Lyne, University of Pittsburgh, US
