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 ›
Month: August 2023
Two Problems with the Generalist-Particularist Distinction in the Philosophy of Conspiracy Theory and Why I am not a Generalist, Steve Clarke
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 ›
Jesse Walker’s “Broad Church” of Conspiracy Theory: We’re all Paranoids, Lee Basham
Wish politicians looked out for miners instead of minors on some island somewhere. … They want to have total control, know what you think, know what you do. — Oliver Anthony Jesse Walker’s background premise is that we are paranoiacs…. Read More ›
Is Academic Research Sufficiently Communist? A Comment on Bright and Heesen, Daniel J. Dunleavy
Liam Kofi Bright and Remco Heesen (2023) seek to identify a more pragmatic and fruitful criterion for demarcating academic from commercial research. Having described the limitations of criteria based on epistemic success they propose adopting the Mertonian social norm of… Read More ›
The Political Sins of Cybernetics: A Review of Evgeny Morozov’s The Santiago Boys, Felipe Figueroa
My interest in Evgeny Morozov’s new podcast on Project Cybersyn is long-lasting. I come from Chile and have been interested in Project Cybersyn ever since reading Eden Medina’s wonderful book Cybernetic Revolutionaries (2011). Hence, I have been eagerly waiting for… Read More ›
Conspiracy Theory and the “Bodyguard of Lies”: The Bennewitz Matter, Mark D. West
Joseph Uscinski and Adam Enders (2022) describe “conspiracy theory” as a pejorative term, one employed in what they see as our “post-truth” era to indict official explanations for historical events. Conspiracy theories involve answers for why things happened that conflict… Read More ›
William Whewell: Dramaturge of Science, Steve Fuller
What follows is the English original of my Chinese introduction to the main account of the life, work and times of William Whewell: Richard Yeo, Defining Science: William Whewell, Natural Knowledge and Public Debate in Early Victorian Britain (Cambridge University… Read More ›
Defining ‘Conspiracy Theory’: A Reply to Lee Basham, Jesse Walker
Lee Basham asks how I define “conspiracy theory.”[1] I have a rather broad-church definition: I use the phrase to mean any theory that posits a conspiracy. I do not think a theory needs to be implausible, fringy, or false to… Read More ›
Requiem for Expertise, Des Hewitt
It is perhaps an understatement to say that expertise has undergone something of an assault in recent years. Under the post-truth condition, experts and their knowledge have been under attack from politicians, commentators, and ironically those who oppose politicians and… Read More ›