Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2022
Philosophy of scientific practice aims to critically evaluate as well as describe scientific inquiry. Epistemic norms are required for such evaluation. Social constructivism is widely thought to oppose this critical project. I argue, however, that one variety of social constructivism, focused on epistemic justification, can be a basis for critical epistemology of scientific practice, while normative accounts that reject this variety of social constructivism (SCj) cannot. Abstract, idealized epistemic norms cannot ground effective critique of our practices. I propose a new approach, placing SCj within a general framework of social action theory. This framework can be used to explicate epistemic norms implicit in our scientific practices.
Many thanks to Colin Allen, Jordi Cat, Hasok Chang, Carla Fehr, Tom Gieryn, Dick Grandy, Jim Griesemer, Noretta Koertge, Lisa Lloyd, Helen Longino, Fred Schmitt, Jutta Schickore, Miriam Solomon, Alison Wylie, Jack Zammito, two anonymous reviewers, and the editors of Philosophy of Science for valuable comments and criticism during the writing of this article. Earlier versions were presented at the University of Western Ontario; Rice University; the University of California, Santa Cruz; the University of California, Davis; and at meetings of the British Society for Philosophy of Science (2008), the Society for the Philosophy of Science in Practice (2009), Center for Philosophy of Science (&HPS1, Pittsburgh, 2007), and the Society for the History of Philosophy of Science (2008); I thank those audiences as well for their questions and criticisms. Funding was provided by a Chancellor's Fellowship and the Louise McNutt Dissertation Year Fellowship from Indiana University, a Dissertation Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation (2006–2007), and a Mosle Research Fellowship from Rice University (2007–2008).
To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.