Special Issues

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.

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

II. Mass Media, Popular Science, and Bad Reporting

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

II. Is Analytic Social Epistemology Sufficiently Socially Oriented?

III. Finding Alternatives to the Fuller/Goldman Debate

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

II. Normative Functionalism and Representation

III. Normative Functionalism and Agency

IV. Normative Functionalism and Reference

V. Normative Functionalism and Rhetoric