There’s a certain pleasure in accounts that debunk some of our most highly prized traits, especially when they’re seen to stem from science. Scientists and those who see themselves as scientifically minded often tell us that science shows that free… Read More ›
Month: December 2021
It’s the Economy, Stupid: Comment on Fuller’s “Is the Metaverse the New Metaphysics,” Raphael Sassower
Though the question posed by Steve Fuller’s latest essay (2021) appears to be metaphysically minded, it turns out to be much more aligned with either Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm shifts or James Carville’s famous quip about the economy.[1] After discussing Facebook’s… Read More ›
Is the Metaverse the New Metaphysics? Steve Fuller
Editor’s Note: Beginning in 2012, I asked Steve Fuller to provide a Christmas greeting—or, end-of-year reflection. As the SERRC grew, I invited contributions from our members. In this tradition, and at this time of resolutions, Steve asks us to consider… Read More ›
Our Techno-Masters and their Philosophical Cheerleaders: A Review of Richmond’s A Way Through the Global Techno-Scientific Culture, Stephen Turner
Sheldon Richmond is a philosopher who spent his working career in IT, and has written an ambitious and courageous book on the philosophy of the problem of computer technology that integrates philosophy of science and cultural and political aspects of… Read More ›
Pathologies of a Shuddering Civilization: Review of Fuchs’s Communicating COVID-19, Adam Riggio
Books like Christian Fuchs’s Communicating COVID-19 are necessary for our time. They are documents and analyses of global human civilization’s violent mutation, already catastrophically in progress. They document the causes and conditions of how humanity has failed the great test… Read More ›
A Rational Disagreement about Myside Bias, Keith E. Stanovich
Who says that book reviewing is dead? Within just a couple of weeks of the appearance of my new book, The Bias That Divides Us, it received two reviews that were in-depth and theoretically astute—one destined for the American Journal… Read More ›
Some are Still Locked Out after being Locked Down: Review of Bruno Latour, After Lockdown, Raphael Sassower
How does it feel to be under lockdown because of the coronavirus epidemic? Bruno Latour, a leading scholar of the science studies community for the past four decades, answers: “I feel like a load of washing in the drum of… Read More ›
Gaia and COVID: A Review of Bruno Latour’s After Lockdown, Mark D. West
Bruno Latour’s new After Lockdown: A Metamorphosis (2021) offers to the reader in what is said in the text Latour at his best—and also, by what goes unsaid, Latour at his most cryptic … [please read below the rest of… Read More ›
The Possibility of Epistemic Nudging: Reply to My Critics, Thomas Grundmann
In “The Possibility of Epistemic Nudging” (2021), I address a phenomenon that is widely neglected in the current literature on nudges: intentional doxastic nudging, i.e. people’s intentional influence over other people’s beliefs, rather than over their choices. I argue that,… Read More ›
Empathy Revisited, Ljiljana Radenović
In his science fiction novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Philip Dick’s main character, Deckard, has a peculiar job—to find and “retire” androids who have begun to misbehave. However, all recently-created androids look and act exactly like humans, and… Read More ›