Philosophy Self-Study 2026, 08 - Knowledge in a Social World

Knowledge in a Social World by Alvin I. Goldman is a pretty modern take on epistemology, focusing on the modern forms of knowledge proliferation and addressing modern forms of epistemology. Specifically, this author seems to have a lot to say about the postmodern philosophy, which before had refuted much of traditional epistemology. I haven't read many postmodernists, so I couldn't say whether Goldman reflects their arguments well. The first chapter of this book is dedicated fully to that counter-refutation. He names six postmodern arguments against "absolute knowledge" or "knowability".

The argument from social construction claims that truth is a collective agreement, so a social construct, and that "truth" is a concurrance to a statement, not an inherent quality. There's a few counter-examples Goldman names, but I'm not too sure they address the scope in which the argument is deployed orginally.

The idea that language is the originator of knowledge is perhaps a product of its time. Postmodernism emerged in a time of reverence for the arts and the written word, which led to a lot of very weird ideas about the material world. I think also coincided with a resurgence of popular interpretations of religious beliefs and normalization of several metaphysical ideas that would be absorbed into the collective conscience. I would allow myself to rephrase this claim into language shaping the understanding of any truth fundamentally, but not as language originating it.

The unknowability criticism feels closely related to nihilism, somehow. It argues that objective truth, in its transcendence nature, is unknowable. If from that should follow that the concept is impractical in its application, that is probably not a healthy way to think about it. I think the idea of an unknowable truth isn't immediately terrible, because that is somewhat the foundation of the scientific process, or the way that we do physics nowadays. Goldman seems to coincide with the idea that there are realms in which there is little point in pursuing "strong knowledge", but that isn't an argument to do away with epistemology entirely.

The refutation of the Denial of Epistemic Privilege seemed a little incoherent to me, but that is probably mostly, because I also felt like the argument it tackles is also incoherent. It's very possible that I'm simply lacking the vocabulary. It seems, on a cursory reading, that it simply rejects epistomology as a source of argumentation, partially because of the points made previously. Arguments like these feel a little lacking somehow, even though they claim to follow directly from previous statements. It's perhaps the absolute tone of such arguments that don't sit right with me.

The argument from domination is where the author's interpretation might split a little from the way it was originally meant to be used. The Argument from Domination claims that much of collective (or social) "knowledge" was used to justify domination or were in themselves instruments of domination. I've seen this in action often enough for it to ring somewhat true, even though it seems unconstructive to argue on those grounds for the rejection of truth-based statements in any argument. This is primarily how it's read in the responses, and at least one of them would theoretically move in a good direction.

The argument from bias is the last of the postmodern criticisms listed in the first chapter, which is a somewhat common idea when trying to describe the essence of truth, that is, that each expression of belief is at least slightly "tainted" by the speaker's bias, and that thus, objective truth is unattainable. Goldman argues in contrast, that belief and speech are two different things, and as such, the logic chain is wrong. I would assume that perhaps there are more steps argued here by the postmodernists, to make the argument somewhat less prone to this simple form of nullification. More epistomologically interesting to me is the question of whether the fact that ones bias might coincide with the objective truth. This immediately places the belief in question into the space of justified true belief, but perhaps not for entirely good reasons, and whether it should then keep the status of "strong belief" is valid, I think.