Institutional Epistemology 2023

Institutional epistemology aims to understand the formal and informal aspects of social knowledge production, as well as the epistemic powers of institutions. The approach extends social epistemology by combining it with the perspectives of philosophy of science, social ontology, and political philosophy. The questions involved are therefore rich and varied, including the following: What is the proper role of deliberation in social groups and institutions? Should all knowledge producing institutions be run democratically? How can institutions prevent and correct epistemic injustices? What unintended consequences are likely to arise from different institutional arrangements? How can the epistemic performance of knowledge institutions such as universities, think tanks and media organisations be improved by careful design? In addition to studying the effects of institutional arrangements to the epistemic state of individuals, institutional epistemology studies the possibility of institutionally organised collective epistemic agents.

Knowledge production, cultivation and dissemination does not take place in an institutional vacuum. In contrast to traditional individual-centric epistemology, instead of analysing concepts of knowledge and justification in the abstract only, institutional epistemology studies epistemic rationality in real-world contexts. In this respect, institutional epistemology overlaps with recent work in feminist philosophy of science and epistemology, and more broadly, in socially engaged philosophy of science and political epistemology.

The workshop is jointly organised by TINT - Centre for Philosophy of Social Science together with the ERC-funded project ‘Competence and Success in Epistemology and Beyond’ at the University of Helsinki, in collaboration with the ‘Social and Cognitive Diversity in Science: An Epistemic Assessment’ project at Tampere University.