Some terms are harmful. Take slurs. The use of slurs can promote and sustain connections between concepts and stereotypes that harm innocent people. A slur for African Americans, for example, may be harmful even if that slur does not license… Read More ›
It is highly unusual for philosophers to agree about anything. And yet, philosophers of conspiracy theories seem to have achieved this remarkable feat. For more than a decade, a campaign has been waged against a position called “generalism”. Originally coined… Read More ›
Humanity 8.0 Podcast: Season 3, Episodes 1-6. We open Season 3 of Humanity 8.0 with a 6-episode drop of 3 interviews with four insightful people: • Anne Alombert, Associate Professor in contemporary French philosophy at the University of Paris 8;… Read More ›
2023 marks the twentieth anniversary of my book, Kuhn vs. Popper: The Struggle for the Soul of Science. This introduction to the Farsi translation provides an excellent opportunity to reflect on the significance of their disagreement, considering how the intellectual… Read More ›
Caroline Bollen’s “Towards a Clear and Fair Conceptualization of Empathy” (2023) raises important questions about whether current academic approaches to empathy wrongly imply that neurodivergent people (especially those with autism) are morally inferior. Bollen offers a novel understanding of empathy… Read More ›
The “question of science” consists of many tiny, though rather complicated questions; but defining science, or at least the continuous attempts to characterize science in a unique way, has always had a peculiar socio-cultural implication. The question of what science… Read More ›
Acts of collective creation are varied and plentiful, but they are commonly overlooked and rendered invisible in a contemporary culture invested in sole authorship and individual ownership. Katerina Cizek and William Uricchio draw our attention to this phenomenon by reminding… Read More ›
Volume 12, Issue 8, 1-65, August 2023 ❧ Hewitt, Des. 2023. “Requiem for Expertise.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 12 (8): 1-9. ❧ Walker, Jesse. 2023. “Defining ‘Conspiracy Theory’: A Reply to Lee Basham.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply… Read More ›
Lee Basham’s article is wildly inaccurate.[1] I do not mean that he has marshaled poor arguments against my positions; I mean that the positions he is arguing against are not mine in the first place. He attributes opinions to me… Read More ›
I conducted some of the ‘first generation’ work in analytic philosophy on conspiracy theories (Clarke 2002; 2006; 2007),[1] and then set the topic aside for 14 years.[2] The current scene is quite different from the one I left. One difference… Read More ›