Systems-oriented social epistemology

Abstract

Social epistemology comprises three primary branches: individual agents utilizing social evidence, collective entities performing judgment aggregation, and systems-oriented social epistemology (SYSOR). SYSOR adopts a consequentialist framework to evaluate social institutions, such as legal systems, scientific communities, and digital media platforms, based on their epistemic outcomes, including truth-promotion and error-minimization. By analyzing these systems as “epistemic engines,” it is possible to compare the reliability of diverse institutional arrangements, such as adversarial versus inquisitorial legal procedures or traditional journalism versus the blogosphere. This approach utilizes both formal mathematical modeling, including computer simulations of opinion dynamics, and empirical assessments of reliability in practices like forensic science and mass collaboration. While individual-level social epistemology addresses testimony and peer disagreement, SYSOR focuses on the structural and procedural rules that shape cognitive labor and information flow within a society. The analysis further clarifies the relationship between objective and relativistic norms by introducing iterative objective justification as a means of reconciling local cultural standards with external epistemic values. The result is a robust framework for applied epistemology capable of evaluating and refining the social mechanisms of knowledge production. – AI-generated abstract.