Does knowledge circulate?

Fleck, reliabilism, and the social status of knowledge

Abstract

The claim that scientific knowledge cannot be exhaustively analyzed as an individual mental state has gained prominence in recent social epistemology. This paper advances that claim by examining empirical cases and engaging critically with a recent proposal to reconcile the two dominant contemporary accounts of epistemic justification—reliabilism and evidentialism. I argue for a conception of knowledge as a socially embedded epistemic state, one that aligns with ordinary intuitions in cases where individuals lack the justificatory access demanded by the classical account of knowledge as justified true belief. Drawing on Ludwik Fleck’s theory of thought collectives, I examine shifting positions regarding the effectiveness of cloth masks during the COVID-19 pandemic to illustrate how scientific knowledge is historically situated, dynamically maintained, and circulates bidirectionally between esoteric and exoteric communities. The discussion concludes with exploratory remarks on the metaphysical dependence of individual knowledge states on their collective counterparts.