Defending Longino's Social Epistemology

Though critics of traditional epistemology agree that we need to account for the role that social factors play in inquiry, developing a viable social epistemology has proved to be difficult. According to Helen Longino, it is the processes that make inquiry possible that are social, for they require a number of people to sustain them. These processes facilitate inquiry, and ensure that the results of inquiry are more than mere subjective opinions, and thus deserve to be called "knowledge." Here, I explain and defend Longino's epistemology.