Marcelo Cabral

This paper investigates the concept of epistemic community. Despite its frequent usage, the term lacks a clear and unified characterization. I argue that epistemic communities are essential to understanding how individuals form justified beliefs in contexts of epistemic dependence. Through an extensive review of prominent theorists, I demonstrate that epistemic communities are often used to ground trust, justify testimony, and structure the distribution of epistemic resources and norms. I propose a functional definition: an epistemic community is a group that shares epistemic norms and resources through networks of epistemic dependence. These communities range from local, tight-knit groups to diffuse, societal structures, and can confer either epistemic value or distortion. I show that epistemic communities are not just descriptive units but normative forces in belief formation