Author Archives
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The Rise of the Robots: Post-Digital Being, Des Hewitt
Bioinformational Philosophy and Postdigital Knowledge Ecologies is an easy book for me to review. Why do I make such an audacious statement at the start of this review? Because this book is inextricably linked to the last two books I… Read More ›
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We Need to Talk About Religion: A Response to Smith’s “A Quasi-Fideist Approach to QAnon,” David G. Robertson
As a scholar of both religion and conspiracy theories, it was perhaps inevitable that Nicholas Smith’s (2022) recent article would catch my attention. Happily, I agreed with his conclusions in the main, but I was moved to respond nonetheless, as… Read More ›
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The Three Problems of Robots and AI, Joffrey Becker
Using examples from an ethnographic survey I conducted with manufacturers, researchers and users of so-called intelligent systems, this paper seeks to show that the relationship between humans and machines raises at least three categories of problems. The first one refers… Read More ›
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A Few Words on #Trust, Patricia Wong
I am not a philosopher. I am a mathematician. I have taught mathematics for more than 30 years, and so, when it comes to knowledge, I am comfortable only where certainty can be obtained, or, if it cannot be obtained,… Read More ›
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“Philosophy of the Social Sciences,” Joseph Agassi and Ian Jarvie, University of Trento, May 10-11, 2022: Videos
A two-day symposium on the philosophy of the social sciences, held at the Department of Sociology of the University of Trento, Italy, on May 10-11, 2022. “The Problem of the Persistence of Magical Thinking” May 10, 2022, Trento, Department of… Read More ›
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Power—not Knowledge—is Power: A Tale of Two Naïvetés and the Depredations of First Amendment Fundamentalism, Ahmed Bouzid
Donald J. Trump, still very much deep in the throes and the long bloom of his psychopathic narcissism, late in life as his full-on flowering may be taking place, has taught me, and continues to teach me, several very important… Read More ›
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Grounding Critical Theory, Frieder Vogelmann
In a recent article in Social Epistemology, Iaan Reynolds (2021) weights in on the discussion about normative foundations and progress in critical theory. Despite my sympathies for his overall account of critical theory, that takes its cues from early Frankfurt… Read More ›
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Philosophy of the Social Sciences, May 10-11, 2022
A two-day symposium on the philosophy of the social sciences, to be held at the Department of Sociology of the University of Trento, Italy, on May 10-11. On Tuesday, May 10 (3-5 pm, Italian time), Joseph Agassi and Ian Jarvie… Read More ›
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Review of Modelwork: The Material Culture of Making and Knowing, Mark D. West
What do we mean when we talk about models? We mean simulacra, miniatures, objects which serve as physical abstractions in order to make a point or test a theory. More broadly speaking, models are mental or physical objects that belong… Read More ›
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Reply to Iaan Reynolds: “The Dialectic of Progress and the Cultivation of Resistance in Critical Social Theory,” Charles A. Prusik
Among the many concepts that have fallen under suspicion in critical theory, the concept of progress may be the most contested. In “The Dialectic of Progress and the Cultivation of Resistance in Critical Social Theory,” Iaan Reynolds focuses on the… Read More ›