Social Epistemology

Since the destructive fundamental critiques of the foundations of rational positivism and the logical negativism during the 1950s and 1960s and their subsequent collapse, several approaches to the explanation and understanding of knowledge, especially scientific knowledge, have emerged. These approaches have focused on two fundamental issues of epistemology: first, explaining how to evaluate epistemic claims, and second, the status or nature of the accepted belief or epistemological claim. In the realm of epistemology - philosophy of science, sociology of science, and history of science - one of the most active and challenging emerging schools is the Edinburgh School of Social Epistemology, which began to develop in the late sixties. Utilizing the views of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the most profound and influential philosopher of the twentieth century, and Thomas Cohen, the most famous and influential contemporary philosopher and historian, the school theorizes the role of empirical evidence, rationality, and social interests or affiliations in evaluating scientific and non-scientific theories, and makes three arguments for epistemological relativism and ontological instrumentalism. Also, this social epistemology makes all the criteria and measures for evaluating knowledge relative and instrumental. Finally, it establishes a relationship between socio-political goals and affiliations, and epistemic claims and how they are evaluated. In this work, all the philosophical arguments of this school have been reconstructed and then critically evaluated. Finally, ways to rid the Edinburgh school of some of its problems have been proposed, and unexplored issues have been identified as areas for research and development.