The Social Epistemology of Alvin Goldman and others

Far from dismissing academic epistemology, I have been spending a lot of time with it lately, to the point of attending a graduate workshop on social epistemology after doing much preparatory reading.  Social epistemology as practiced by Alvin Goldman and his colleagues squarely faces the fact that we know all but a tiny amount of what we know through the testimony of others, and through our ability to distinguish reliable and unreliable sources of information.
  Goldman in particular goes well beyond the usual bounds of academic philosophy.  He writes

Portions of [my] work forge links between philosophy and empirical science, especially psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and the social sciences. My recent publications in cognitive science  ... might best be characterized as theoretical science rather than philosophy of science.

He has also written on truth seeking in the courtroom, and on how lessons from social epistemology might be applied to democracy and education.  He seems at least as likely as any philosopher I know of to make a real connection between philosophy and practical life.

For a very long time philosophy has been among the most reclusive branches of knowledge.  To see a branch of philosophy reach out so vigorously even to as different a branch as the hard sciences, to say nothing of being engaged with the courtroom, and even presenting arguments by way of computer simulations is, I think, a very promising development.