Volume 12, Issue 11, 1-100, November 2023 ❧ Bollen, Caroline. 2023. “Empathy as a Virtue: A Response to Marshall.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 12 (11): 94–100. ❧ Wills, Bernard N. 2023. “Believing in Dawkins: A Review of Steinhart.”… Read More ›
Colin Marshall wrote a detailed reply (2023) to my paper “Towards a Clear and Fair Conceptualization of Empathy” (2023) in which he raised four challenges to inspire a discussion. First, I would like to thank him for his detailed, critical,… Read More ›
Believing in Dawkins (2020) by Eric Steinhart is a book that answers a question I would not myself have asked. This makes it both intriguing and frustrating. Steinhart wants to build a ‘new spiritual atheism’ based on two elements which,… Read More ›
How should philosophers define conspiracy theory? In our paper, “What is a Conspiracy Theory?” (2021), we argued that the best definition is an evaluative one—one which characterizes conspiracy theories in terms of epistemic deficiency, appropriately spelled out. We argued for… Read More ›
I would like to start by thanking Michael Strand (2023) for his thoughtful comments on my recent article, entitled ‘Lessons from Reckwitz and Rosa: Towards a Constructive Dialogue between Critical Analytics and Critical Theory’.[1] As stated in the title of… Read More ›
In this essay, I argue that, with regard to controversial conspiracy theories: (1) Determining what the evidence indicates by appealing to expert consensus is problematic; (2) Identifying the relevant epistemic authorities is fraught with challenges, and; (3) The degree to… Read More ›
Vague evaluative terms, such as “implausible” and “unlikely,” are often used to describe conspiracy theories. In this essay, I argue that such vagueness facilitates equivocations that support unfounded negative generalizations about explanations called “conspiracy theories,” especially when the generalizations are… Read More ›
This is the first in a series of three essays in which I address the following issues: (1) The pros and cons of the so-called “minimalist” definition of conspiracy theories, compared to more complicated alternatives. (2) Whether taking implausible conspiracy… Read More ›
I always seem to be reviewing books for the Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective while on holiday. My last review was written while on the beaches of South Goa, India. That book was by Michael Gibson and was about… Read More ›
I would like to thank Renia Gasparatou, Philip Goff, and Andreas Vrahimis for contributing to the book symposium on For and Against Scientism: Science, Methodology, and the Future of Philosophy (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). I am grateful to James… Read More ›