This article uses recent work in philosophy of science and social epistemology to argue for a shift analytic religion from knowledge-centric an centered on understanding. Not only can understanding-centered approach open up new avenues the exploration largely neglected aspects religious life, it also shed light how participation might be epistemically valuable ways that knowledge-centered appro...

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 resul...

Standard epistemology takes it for granted that there is a special kind of value: epistemic value. This claim does not seem to sit well with act utilitarianism, however, since it holds that only welfare is of real value. I first develop a particularly utilitarian sense of “epistemic value”, according to which it is closely analogous to the nature of financial value. I then demonstrate the promi...