One of the central problems in social epistemology is to know under what conditions are social agents justified to believe in the reliability of a speaker presenting a given idea. At issue is a specific misrepresentation: a system of reasons provided in support of an idea may be nothing but a rationalization. Must social epistemology take this possibility into account? If only the objective value of reasons is important, then is it epistemically relevant that the reasons provided by the speaker are not causes of his beliefs ?
