This text offers a philosophy for the information age. Alvin Goldman explores frontiers by creating a thoroughgoing social epistemology, moving beyond the traditional focus on solitary knowers. Social, cultural and technological changes present challenges to our ways of knowing and understanding, and philosophy must face these challenges. Against the tides of postmodernism and social constructionism, Goldman defends the integrity of truth and shows how to promote it by well-designed forms of social interaction. He urges that social discourse promises more than the mere politics of consensus, and that suitably norm-governed debate and belief-revision can increase veridical knowledge. Goldman's aims are not just philosophical but practical. From science to education, from law to democracy, he shows why and how public institutions should seek knowledge-enhancing practices. He examines how cyberspace and other technologies expand the scope of communication, and warns of the need to safeguard content quality. He scrutinizes the free marketplace of ideas, the adversary system in the law, and media coverage of political campaigns. "An important work of monumental scope. Its central concern is the ways in which social practices and familiar institutions contribute to and undermine the pursuit of knowledge. To that extent it reveals a sensitivity to the animating, if ultimately misdirected and misleading, insight of the postmodernists that we are socially situated beings; at the same time it brilliantly defends the idea that this fact about our situatedness does nothing to undermine the possibility of truth and objective knowledge. This is a book of singular importance to lawyers, political theorists, social and natural scientists as well as to educators and theorists of education. It is a major contribution to all these fields and not just because of its insights into them, but for its accessibility to intelligent practitioners as well. It may well be the most significant interdisciplinary philosophy book of the decade."--Jules Coleman, Yale Law School "Alvin Goldman, the premier epistemologist of the p "An important work of monumental scope. Its central concern is the ways in which social practices and familiar institutions contribute to and undermine the pursuit of knowledge. To that extent it reveals a sensitivity to the animating, if ultimately misdirected and misleading, insight of the postmodernists that we are socially situated beings; at the same time it brilliantly defends the idea that this fact about our situatedness does nothing to undermine the possibility of truth and objective knowledge. This is a book of singular importance to lawyers, political theorists, social and natural scientists as well as to educators and theorists of education. It is a major contribution to all these fields and not just because of its insights into them, but for its accessibility to intelligent practitioners as well. It may well be the most significant interdisciplinary philosophy book of the decade."--Jules Coleman, Yale Law School "Alvin Goldman, the premier epistemologist of the past two decades, has written a pioneering book that will define the field of social epistemology. Scholars will learn from his judicious and lucid proposals, and they will be wrestling for years with the exciting and important problems he raises."--Philip Kitcher "Until the late twentieth century social epistemology was a neglected subject. . . . The scope of Goldman's discussion and the characterstic clarity with which he approaches the issues make this book the first classic in the field."--Philosophy and Phenomenological Research "An important work of monumental scope. Its central concern is the ways in which social practices and familiar institutions contribute to and undermine the pursuit of knowledge. To that extent it reveals a sensitivity to the animating, if ultimately misdirected and misleading, insight of the postmodernists that we are socially situated beings; at the same time it brilliantly defends the idea that this fact about our situatedness does nothing to undermine the possibility of truth and objective knowledge. This is a book of singular importance to lawyers, political theorists, social and natural scientists as well as to educators and theorists of education. It is a major contribution to all these fields and not just because of its insights into them, but for its accessibility to intelligent practitioners as well. It may well be the most significant interdisciplinary philosophy book of the decade."--Jules Coleman, Yale Law School "Alvin Goldman, the premier epistemologist of the past two decades, has written a pioneering book that will define the field of social epistemology. Scholars will learn from his judicious and lucid proposals, and they will be wrestling for years with the exciting and important problems he raises."--Philip Kitcher "Until the late twentieth century social epistemology was a neg