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Traditional, Formal, and Social Epistemology

 

The Penn Philosophy Department has a strong and active tradition of research in many areas of epistemology. Members of the Department work on, and teach on, a diverse range of topics in this area, including traditional, formal, and social epistemology.

Michael Weisberg, Daniel J. Singer, and Cristina Bicchieri, as well as a number of affiliated faculty and scholars, use agent-based computer models to ask questions about how social structures affect collective beliefs, a question in social epistemology. 

Epistemologists at Penn also tend to cross traditional boundaries of where epistemology ends. Errol Lord, Jennifer Morton, and Daniel J. Singer research the foundations of epistemology at the intersection of metaethics.

Other philosophers at Penn also focus on questions in political, social, and feminist epistemology. Daniele Lorenzini, for instance, has written on epistemic injustice. Jennifer Morton has worked on the norms of belief in non-ideal social conditions, like scarcity. Daniel J. Singer is currently focusing on knowledge and information in complex systems, like corporations. And Ege Yumuşak is interested in ideology and political epistemology. 

With all of these resources and approaches to epistemological questions, Penn prides itself on being a good and open place to research epistemology.