In David Henderson, Peter Graham, Miranda Fricker & Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Social Epistemology. New York: Routledge. pp. 228-237 (2019)
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This paper reviews current debates in social epistemology about the relations between knowledge and consensus. These relations are philosophically interesting on their own, but also have practical consequences, as consensus takes an increasingly significant role in informing public decision making. The paper addresses the following questions. When is a consensus attributable to an epistemic community? Under what conditions may we legitimately infer that a consensual view is knowledge-based or otherwise epistemically justified? Should consensus be the aim of scientific inquiry, and if so, what kind of consensus? How should dissent be handled? It is argued that a legitimate inference that a theory is correct from the fact that there is a scientific consensus on it requires taking into consideration both cognitive properties of the theory as well as social properties of the consensus. The last section of the paper reviews computational models of consensus formation.
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Keywords | social epistemology consensus dissent science and values expert testimony |
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References found in this work BETA
Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues From Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming.Naomi Oreskes & Erik M. Conway - 2010 - Bloomsbury Press.
Science and Values: The Aims of Science and Their Role in Scientific Debate.Larry Laudan - 1984 - University of California Press.
Science and Values: The Aims of Science and Their Role in Scientific Debate.Larry Laudan - 1984 - University of California Press.
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Citations of this work BETA
Why Trust Raoult? How Social Indicators Inform the Reputations of Experts.T. Y. Branch, Gloria Origgi & Tiffany Morisseau - 2022 - Social Epistemology 36 (3):299-316.
Expert Reports by Large Multidisciplinary Groups: The Case of the International Panel on Climate Change.Isabelle Drouet, Daniel Andler, Anouk Barberousse & Julie Jebeile - 2021 - Synthese (5-6):14491-14508.
Pursuit and Inquisitive Reasons.Will Fleisher - 2022 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 94:17-30.
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