The Idea of Epistemic Community From the Standpoint of Rortian Conversationalism

Abstract

In Knowledge in a Social World1 Alvin Goldman distinguishes between two complementary areas of epistemology: individualistic epistemology and social epistemology. The former focuses on the conditions under which an individual is capable of acquiring knowledge by himself, with no need of interacting with others. The latter examines the conditions of cognitive exchange between individuals, along with the epistemic undertakings carried on by social groups. Meanwhile, in Knowledge by Agreement2 , Martin Kush claims that the first of these areas is a dead philosophical goal, since all knowledge must be understood in communitarian terms. I want to emphasize that, even when these perspectives show a significant difference in focus, both are in need of an account of the concept of epistemic community. It is usually pointed out that the lack of conceptual accuracy regarding it is a characteristic deficit of perspectives that merge epistemology into sociology or politics. Goldman’s acknowledgment of the need of a social epistemology, even when it is located within a general frame that keeps positioning perception (object of study of an individualistic epistemology) as the basis of the cognitive undertaking, accounts for the unavoidability in contemporary epistemology of the urge of answering the question of “what is an epistemic community?”