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 5: “Trust in a Social and Digital World,” edited by Mark Alfano and Colin Klein, 2019-2020
• 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 5: “Trust in a Social and Digital World,” edited by Mark Alfano and Colin Klein, 2019-2020

Mark Alfano and Colin Klein, in conversation with the contributors to our fifth special issue, seek to encourage a wider dialogue on “establishing which epistemic virtues are needed by agents who navigate epistemic networks such as the Internet.” Alfano and Klein suggest that establishing these virtues “requires developing a philosophical model of secure trust that takes such networks into account” and that also “requires investigating the structure and information flows of contemporary online communities.”

• “Trust in a Social and Digital World,” Mark Alfano, Australian Catholic University, AU, and Delft University of Technology, NL, and Colin Klein, Australian National University, AU
• “Fake News, Conspiracy, and Intellectual Vice,” Marco Meyer, University of York, UK
• “Beyond Testimony: When Online Information Sharing is not Testifying,” Emily Sullivan, Delft University of Technology, NL
• “Vices of Distrust,” J. Adam Carter, University of Glasgow, UK and Daniella Meehan, University of Glasgow, UK
• “Richly Trustworthy Allies,” William Tuckwell, University of Melbourne, AU
• “The Trouble With ‘Fake News’,” David Coady, University of Tasmania, AU
• “Algorithm-Based Illusions of Understanding,” Jeroen de Ridder, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, NL
• “Is Conspiracy Theorising Irrational?” Neil Levy, Macquarie University, AU, and University of Oxford, UK
• “So What if ‘Fake News’ is Fake News?” Jeroen de Ridder, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, NL
• “What Evolutionary Biology Can Tell Us About Cooperation (and Trust) in Online Networks,” Toby Handfield, Monash University, AU
• “What Rationality? A Comment on Levy’s ‘Is Conspiracy Theorising Irrational?’” Stephan Lewandowsky, University of Bristol, UK, and University of Western Australia, AU, Anastasia Kozyreva, Max-Planck Insitute for Human Development, DE, and James Ladyman, University of Bristol, UK
• “When Is it Right to be Wrong? A Response to Lewandowsky, Kozyreva and Ladyman,” Neil Levy, Macquarie University, AU, and University of Oxford, UK
• “Intellectual Vice and Social Networks?” Cailin O’Connor, University of California, Irvine, US

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,” Nick Bostrom, Oxford University, UK
• “The Enframing of the Self as a Problem: Heidegger and Marcel on Modern Technology’s Relation to the Person,” Zachary Willcutt, Boston College, US
• “Our Filtered Lives: The Tension Between Citizenship and Instru-mentality,” Rebecca Lowery, University of Texas at Dallas, US
• “Employees as Sims? The Conflict Between Dignity and Efficiency,” Frank Scalambrino, University of Akron, US
• “The Value of Privacy for Social Relationships,” Francesca Malloggi, University of Amsterdam, NL
• “The Progress and Technology of City Life,” Robyn Toler, University of Dallas, US
• “Funes, Digitized: Borges as a Guide to Fractured Digital Identities,” Joshua Hackett, Purdue University, US
• “Material Carriers of Thought,” Lyudmila A Markova, Russian Academy of Sciences, RU
• “Trust and Transhumanism: An Analysis of the Boundaries of Zero-Knowledge Proof and Technologically Mediated Authentication,” Jason M. Pittman, Capitol Technology University, US
• “How Technology Influences Relations to Self and Others: Changing Conceptions of Humans and Humanity,” Frank Scalambrino, University of Akron, US
• “A Man for All Seasons, Including Ours: Thomas More as the Patron Saint of Social Media,” 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?” Maureen Linker, University of Michigan-Dearborn, US
• “Hashtag Feminism and Twitter Activism in India,” Elizabeth Losh, University of California, San Diego, US

II. Mass Media, Popular Science, and Bad Reporting

• “Science and Scientism in Popular Science Writing,” Jeroen de Ridder, VU University Amsterdamm, NL
• “From Science in the Papers to Science in the News,”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,” Sanford C. Goldberg, Northwestern University, US
• “Secrets, Errors and Mathematics: Reconsidering the Role of Groups in Social Epistemology,” 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,” Paul Faulkner, University of Sheffield, UK
• “The Social Dimension of Dialectical Truth: Hegel’s Idea of Objective Spirit,”
  Angelica Nuzzo, Brooklyn College (CUNY), US
• “Extended Knowledge and Social Epistemology,” 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,” Chauncey Maher, Dickinson College, US
• “Normative Functionalism in the Pittsburgh School,” Patrick J. Reider, University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, US

II. Normative Functionalism and Representation

• “The Pittsburgh School, the Given and Knowledge,” Tom Rockmore, Duquesne University, US
• “Sellars on Perception, Science, and Realism: A Critical Response,” Patrick Reider, University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, US
• “Sellars, Realism, and Kantian Thinking,” [A critical response to “Sellars on Perception, Science, and Realism: A Critical Response”], Willem A. deVries, University of New Hampshire, US
• “Sellars and Knowing the Thing-In-Itself,”[A response to “Sellars, Realism, and Kantian Thinking”],
  Patrick J. Reider, University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, US
• “Tales of the Mighty Tautologists?” Frank Scalambrino, University of Dallas, US

III. Normative Functionalism and Agency

• “A Response to a Question Regarding “Normative Functionalism,” Joseph Margolis, Temple University, US
• “Normative Functionalism about Intentional Action” Chauncey Maher, Dickinson College, US
• “Normative Functionalism and its Pragmatist Roots,” Dave Beisecker, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, US
• “Norms and Causes: Loosing the Bonds of Deontic Constraint,”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