I
read ‘Social Epistemology’ at some point last term (see below for
citation), and got a lot from it. The blending of social-normative
elements of epistemology, pragmatism, and virtue epistemology are
particularly interesting. I wish I’d know more about this area when I
was writing my first MA thesis on the epistemic consequences of the
extended mind thesis for our notion of ‘assessment’…but we live and
learn, and I covered a lot of new (for me) ground in that as it was! The
below is a bit of a summary of one interesting bit of the book “Let us
say that an epistemic principle is privileged when it is worthy of
teaching in the schools, used in evaluating research, and seen as
trumping other, possibly conflicting methods.” (Lynch, 2010, p. 275) We
are then asked to imagine an epistemic method game, in which the players
must come up with reasons for selecting some method over another in some
hypothetical world. The game is Rawlsian – thus they cannot presuppose
methods are more reliable for producing true beliefs in the hypothetical
world, nor can they presuppose that one method is better than another
(because they do not know what sort of world this hypothetical world
is), they should suppose that they themselves will end up in this
hypothetical world, but they should not suppose any particular methods
which they – “because of upbringing, education, religion, and so
forth—wish to employ themselves in [the world]” (Lynch, 2010, p. 275).
“Were we to play the method game, it would seem in our self‐interest to
favour privileging those methods that, to the greatest degree possible,
were repeatable, adaptable, public, and widespread” (Lynch, 2010, p.
275). That is, we should be able to use them again, adapt them to
different problems, can be judged in public and not just by the deployer
of the method, and they should actually be useable by people in general
(not some small subset). While they acknowledge that in selecting such
methods, the players also deploy such methods the point of the game is
that the rules do not prohibit this, nor do they state that the players
are in a state of ignorance of epistemic methods. Rather “It is one
where they are asked to decide—using whatever methods they have
available, and acting under the relevant constraints–which methods
should be politically privileged in w. And the methods that are so
privileged are those that will form the content of their subsequent
epistemic standards and principles.” (Lynch, 2010, p. 276). One
significant point of this game is that the reasons given for any
particular method will be practical not theoretic in nature, as an
appeal to self-interest in which practical concerns and a respect for
each other as epistemic agents is important. “If we are to treat each
other as autonomous judgers worthy of equal respect, we must engage in
the process of giving and asking for reasons, even when the question at
hand concerns the reliability of our most basic methods for reaching the
truth.13” (Lynch, 2010, p. 277). Haddock, Adrian, Alan Millar, and
Duncan Pritchard. Social Epistemology. Oxford University Press, 2010.
http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199577477.001.0001/acprof-9780199577477.
Lynch, Michael P. “Epistemic Circularity and Epistemic
Incommensurability.” In Social Epistemology, edited by Adrian Haddock,
Alan Millar, and Duncan Pritchard. Oxford University Press, 2010. 
Lynch,
Michael P. (2010). Epistemic Circularity and Epistemic
Incommensurability Social
Epistemology, edited by Adrian Haddock, Alan Millar, and Duncan
Pritchard. Oxford University Press DOI:
10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199577477.003.0013