Philosophical Realism: The Challenges for Social Epistemologists

Abstract

Social epistemology assumes a justification as a realist philosophy in both dealing with cognitive and ontological matters, and providing a profound and refined picture of knowledge and reality. Compared to scientific realism, social epistemology’s advantage consists of grasping the variety of conditions and circumstances influencing the cognitive process. Social epistemology also provides limitations for naturalism in offering a genuine philosophical vision of knowledge and reality. From a social epistemological perspective, extreme forms of defending scientific realism are considered especially relevant as such arguments reveal the ideological ladeness of objectivist argumentation.

Keywords:

• Social Epistemology
• Realism
• Ideology
• Knowledge
• Reality
• Relativism
• Objectivism
• Analytical Philosophy
• Context
• Truth
• Justification
• Fact

Acknowledgements

I am greatly indebted to many of my colleagues, with whom we discussed main ideas of this paper, among them to Steve Fuller, Rom Harré and Jim Collier. My gratitude goes also to the discussants and participants at the Special session on social epistemology (World Congress of Philosophy in Athens, August 2013), at my lectures at Valencia University (2014), Zeppelin University (2015) as well as to my students.

Additional information

Funding

The research has been supported by the Russion Science Foundation, [grant number #14-18-02227]; “Social Philosophy of Science. Russian Prospects”.