
INES - Institutional Epistemology Workshop 18.-19.6.2025
18–19 June 2025, University of Helsinki, Finland
The workshop is held in Porthania building at the University of Helsinki (Yliopistonkatu 3), room P673.
Invited speakers:
Helen Beebee (University of Leeds)
Jessica Brown (St. Andrews)
Kevin Zollman (Carnegie Mellon University)
Programme committee:
Samuli Reijula (University of Helsinki)
Säde Hormio (University of Helsinki)
Raul Hakli (University of Helsinki)
Webpage: blogs.helsinki.fi/institutional-epistemology/
Registeration: https://forms.office.com/e/P4wFAFvAau
Keynotes will be streamed online.
The workshop is jointly organised by the project Modeling the republic of science: Collaborative problem solving and collective rationality in scientific inquiry, funded by the Research Council of Finland (2020-2025, PI: Reijula), the project The role of knowledge in collective responsibility for systemic harms, funded by the Research Council of Finland (2023-2027, PI: Hormio), and TINT – Centre for Philosophy of Social Science at the University of Helsinki.
Institutional epistemology
Institutional epistemology aims to understand the formal and informal aspects of social knowledge production, as well as the epistemic powers of institutions. The approach extends social epistemology by combining it with the perspectives of philosophy of science, social ontology, and political philosophy. Social knowledge production does not happen in an institutional vacuum. Focusing on the institutional rules and practices of epistemic institutions aims to uncover both the intended but also the unintended consequences of such practices. As social epistemologists have long argued, the boundary between social and cognitive is not clear. Institutional epistemology tries to take that point seriously.
The questions involved in institutional epistemology are rich and varied, including the following: What is the proper role of deliberation in social groups and institutions? Should all knowledge producing institutions be run democratically? How can institutions prevent and correct epistemic injustices? What are the institutional preconditions of epistemic catastrophes – can collective irrationality be mitigated by good institutional design? How can the epistemic performance of knowledge institutions such as universities, think tanks and media organisations be improved by careful design? In addition to studying the effects of institutional arrangements to the epistemic state of individuals, institutional epistemology studies the possibility of institutionally organised collective epistemic agents.
In addition to analysing concepts of knowledge and justification in the abstract, institutional epistemology studies epistemic rationality in real-world contexts. In this respect, institutional epistemology overlaps with recent work in feminist philosophy of science and epistemology, and more broadly, in socially engaged philosophy of science and political epistemology.