Dear Professor Gabriel, By coincidence I reviewed the first two books of your trilogy for two different journals, and this one on the meaning of Thought, for yet another journal, without realizing that you had the intent to write the three… Read More ›
Month: August 2021
Enhancing Human Existence: Mercer and Trothen’s Religion and the Technological Future, Des Hewitt
Without intending to be distasteful, let alone insensitive, it seems fitting that the publication of Religion and the Technological Future: An Introduction to Biohacking, Artificial Intelligence, and Transhumanism (2021) by Calvin Mercer and Tracy J. Trothen should take place during… Read More ›
Nudging is Giving Testimony: A Response to Grundmann, Neil Levy
Nudges (Thaler and Sunstein 2008) are ways of changing people’s behavior by changing features of the context in which they choose, rather than by giving them explicit arguments and without removing or unduly burdening the options available to them. The… Read More ›
The Possibility of Epistemic Nudging: Reply to Grundmann, Jonathan Matheson and Valerie Joly Chock
In “The Possibility of Epistemic Nudging” (2021), Thomas Grundmann examines nudging as applied to doxastic attitudes. Grundmann argues that given the right presuppositions about knowledge, justified beliefs, and the relevant belief-forming processes, doxastic nudging can result in justified beliefs and… Read More ›
The Individual as Elusive Quarry in the History of Philosophy: A Response to Radenovic, Steve Fuller
Ljiljana Radenovic’s (2021) defense of the Desert Fathers of early Christianity as providing a basis for a ‘post-Enlightenment ethics’ is perhaps most provocative in terms of her framing of the argument, which is by way of a critique of modern… Read More ›
Vygotsky’s Janus-Faced Theory of Language: A Reply to Drain’s “Tomasello, Vygotsky, and the Phylogenesis of Mind”, Kyrill Potapov
In his lucid and helpful reply, Chris Drain (2021) clarifies some of his views and aims and offers pertinent criticisms of my own. Drain refocuses my forays into Pittsburgh Hegelianism onto Vygotsky’s own thought. He rightly notes that Brandom’s account… Read More ›
A Post-Enlightenment Ethics of the Desert Fathers, Ljiljana Radenović
For over three centuries, Enlightenment ethics have been central to philosophical debates on morality, shaping how we think about moral actions and ourselves. Instead of thinking of the moral person as a virtuous person who leads a good life, we… Read More ›
Social Conventions and Personal Confidences: Mario Luis Small’s Someone To Talk To: How Networks Matter in Practice, Emma Craddock
If I asked you who you would talk to about your personal problems, you might suggest a close friend, partner, or family member. This seems fairly straight forward on the surface; confiding in someone about our problems requires a level… Read More ›
Critique Equals Suffering Plus Society? Towards a New Approach to Critique, Johannes Angermuller
While science is typically expected to be neutral and objective, critical approaches have their established place in the social sciences. All social scientists are aware of the critical difference that their research can or should make in society, and some… Read More ›