The two-part article by Brian Martin contains two main points. The first is his argument of Conspiracy Theory Attribution (CTA) as a method of denigration, which I have little to disagree with. The second is the example given of the… Read More ›
In “Bad Social Science,” (2019) I pointed to the phenomenon of non-specialists in the social science domain making claims that fall very far short of what social scientists consider best practice. I identified “several facets of bad social science: ad… Read More ›
Author Information: Alan Sokal, New York University, sokal@nyu.edu. Sokal, Alan. “A Dialogue on a Paradigm Case of Bad Science: Comment on Brian Martin.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 8, no. 5 (2019): 36-47. The pdf of the article gives… Read More ›
Author Information: Susan Dieleman, University of Southern Illinois, Edwardsville, sdielem@siue.edu. Dieleman, Susan. “Against Ideal Theory Ignorance.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 9, no. 5 (2019): 11-15. The pdf of the article gives specific page references. Shortlink: https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-48M Daniel… Read More ›
By these means the American Founding Fathers endeavoured to defend the independence of their judiciary, and because of these defences the present partisan state of that country’s Supreme Court is a result, not of pressure exerted on the judges by… Read More ›
“Science is a Quantum Phenomenon and Scientism is its Observer Effect” Steve Fuller, University of Warwick, S.W.Fuller@warwick.ac.uk Nature published a letter of mine in response to Nathaniel Comfort’s piece, written for the journal’s 150th anniversary, entitled ‘How science has shifted… Read More ›
Is the constructivist analysis of science a hindrance to clear thinking, in particular clear thinking about the politics of science? […] This question arose from my discussions with Alan Sokal, who expressed his view that constructivism does indeed hinder clear… Read More ›
Robert Antonio’s association of authoritarian ethno-racial nationalism with neoliberal adventure capitalism, and the broader matter of how neoliberal democratization opens the way to rightwing populism and illiberal capitalism (Antonio 2019, 280), seem particularly pertinent. The recourse to Hayek’s political theory… Read More ›
In “What Facts Should be Treated as ‘Fixed’ in Public Justification?” (2019), Andrew Reid examines the issue of when scientific claims ought to be regarded as beyond reasonable disagreement (i.e., as “fixed” facts). According to one common line of thinking,… Read More ›
In the United States, as in many other locales throughout the world, “seeing a doctor” no longer requires physically going to an office. From phone and text communication, to video consultations, twenty-first century medicine involves technological mediation—the notion that technologies… Read More ›
You can learn a lot by reading books about post-truth, but conclusive answers on several key issues remain elusive. In 2016, two events shocked many observers. The first was the passing of the Brexit referendum in Britain… [please read below… Read More ›
Bas van Fraassen (2017) argues that we are rational to believe and disbelieve T,[1] a scientific theory that best explains phenomena, relying on the English view of rationality. In addition, he thinks that the belief of T is supererogatory. As… Read More ›
My recent paper published (2019) in Social Epistemology has attracted responses from Clevis Headley and Melanie Otto working respectively in the areas of Africana Philosophy and Literature. The fact that an essay on two 20th century Caribbean intellectuals evoked critical… Read More ›
In “The Quinean Assumption: The Case for Science as Public Reason” (Bellolio 2019), I argue that liberals need to introduce a crucial assumption into the argument that scientific reasons are public in the Rawlsian sense. This assumption—taken from W.V.O. Quine’s… Read More ›
