In this interesting installment of the always wonderful PhilosophyTV, Alvin Goldman and Jennifer Lackey discuss the up-and-coming subfield of social epistemology. Their discussion ranges from the history of the subfield to some of its current topics. It is worth watching for argumentation theorists–especially those based in philosophy–because it represents what amounts to a completely different way of thinking about the epistemic import of human interaction–especially disagreement–than one typically finds in argumentation theory. Whereas there might have been a time when those in the informal logic movement could have rightly claimed to be the only group of philosophers working on these sorts of issues, things have changed dramatically in the last 10 years. This, I think, is something those of us who know, love, and believe in informal logic should consider fairly seriously. The growing philosophical consciousness of subfields like social epistemology, the logic of belief revision, and non-monotonic logics in general over the past decade or so has definite methodological implications for the work that we do. At the very least it is a substantial change in a key subset of the audience to which we often address our claims. Might a change in the rhetoric of informal logic be in the offing?
The video is roughly an hour and fifteen minutes long. Enjoy!
RAIL 