Knowledge seems to need the admixture of de facto reliability and epistemic responsibility. But philosophers have had a hard time in attempting to combine them in order to achieve a satisfactory account of knowledge. In this paper I attempt to find a solution by capitalizing on the real and ubiquitous human phenomenon that is the social dispersal of epistemic labour through time. More precisely, the central objective of the paper is to deliver a novel and plausible social account of knowledge-relevant responsibility and to consider the merits of the proposed combination of reliability and responsibility with respect to certain cases of unreflective epistemic subjects.

This paper motivates an account of knowledge as a social kind, fo lowing a cue by Edward Craig, which captures two major insights behind social and feminist epistemologies, in particular our epistemic interdependence concerning knowledge and the role of social re ulative practices in understanding knowledge. This view, which fa ls within a truly social re ulative epistemology (i.e. an epistemology which aims to uide our epistemic conduct and which renders our epistemic reliance on others ubiquitous), does not succumb to epistemic relativism and can accommodate other "traditional" tenets that render it anyway "real epistemology" (given Alvin Goldman's chara erization).The paper proceeds as fo lows. The first section, "Varieties of epistemology" , introduces the two insights related to social and feminist epistemologies and motivates an anti-individualist approach to epistemology and the re ulative project in epistemology. The second section, "Testimonial pra ice and knowledge" , presents the two key components of the Craigian framework and develops a novel pra ical explication of the concept of knowledge related to the testimonial pra ice from which a particular account of knowledge as a social kind is derived. The third section, "Some advantages of the account" , concludes by pointing out some advantages of the resulting account of knowledge. ABSTRACTThis paper motivates an account of knowledge as a social kind, following a cue by Edward Craig, which captures two major insights behind social and feminist epistemologies, in particular our epistemic interdependence concerning knowledge and the role of social regulative practices in understanding knowledge.Keywords: epistemic anti-individualism, regulative epistemology, practical explication, testimony. RESUMOEste artigo motiva um relato do conhecimento como um tipo social, seguindo uma sugestão de Edward Craig, que capta dois grandes pontos de vista das epistemologias sociais e feministas, em particular a nossa interdependência epistêmica em relação ao conhecimento e o papel das práticas reguladoras sociais na compreensão do conhecimento.Palavras-chave: anti-individualismo epistemológico, epistemologia reguladora, explicação prática, testemunho.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract