The Division of Epistemic Labour
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Geoffrey Brennan
Abstract
The paper mobilizes Adam Smith’s treatment of the division of labour in relation to the production, consumption and exchange of knowledge. One aspect of this mobilization deals with the epistemic demands that exchange makes on its participants. The other deals with increasing returns in the provision of knowledge itself, treating knowledge creation as just another example of specialization and exchange. These two aspects come together in relation to the epistemic demands associated with assessing knowledge quality. These demands differ according to whether the knowledge is embodied in products or whether the knowledge is an object for its own sake. It is argued that disciplines play a critical role as institutions for meeting the epistemic demands that the division of labour creates in the ‘knowledge’ case.
© 2010 by Lucius & Lucius, Stuttgart
Articles in the same Issue
- Scientific Knowledge and Scientific Expertise: Epistemic and Social Conditions of Their Trustworthiness
- Social Objectivity and the Problem of Local Epistemologies
- The Division of Epistemic Labour
- Critical Rationalism and Scientific Competition
- Governance by Numbers. Does It Really Work in Research?
- Withering Academia
Articles in the same Issue
- Scientific Knowledge and Scientific Expertise: Epistemic and Social Conditions of Their Trustworthiness
- Social Objectivity and the Problem of Local Epistemologies
- The Division of Epistemic Labour
- Critical Rationalism and Scientific Competition
- Governance by Numbers. Does It Really Work in Research?
- Withering Academia
