Critical Replies are engagements with articles recently published in Social Epistemology.
Scott Hill’s most recent defense of the Le Monde declaration against conspiracy theory is welcome.[1] It’s an enjoyable and thoughtful piece with a high spirit to it. He also shares a disturbing revelation. Most important, it represents another opportunity to… Read More ›
The temperatures registered in the summer of 2022 were among the highest on record in Europe, central and eastern China, and North America (ECMWF, ERA5 2022). The summer of 2022 is, however, unlikely to be an exceptional one. Similar heat… Read More ›
In “Epistemic Structure in Non-Summative Social Knowledge” (2022), Avram Hiller and R. Wolfe Randall argue that not only is not all group knowledge summative, the knowledge that groups have also fails to supervene on mental states of their members. That… Read More ›
The core of the problem of whether institutions of scientific knowledge can hold onto their legitimacy is a matter of trust. When I take a COVID vaccine, I do so trusting that the institutions and organizations involved in developing and… Read More ›
I agree with much of what J.C.M. Duetz and M R.X. Dentith have to say in “Reconciling Conceptual Confusions in the Le Monde Debate on Conspiracy Theories” (2022). They have given me a lot to think about and have caused… Read More ›
Beatriz Buarque (2022) provides a very insightful analysis of how conspiracy theories spread in the digital era. She carries out a thorough analysis of video that was distributed and circulated on social media, issuing the notorious conspiracy theorist David Icke… Read More ›
In “Is Philosophy Exceptional? A Corpus-Based, Quantitative Study” (2022), Moti Mizrahi and Michael Adam Dickinson use corpus methods to determine the kinds of arguments that turn up in philosophical writing. They use the results to contribute to debates on philosophy’s… Read More ›
As philosophers in the business of a very multifaceted research domain—i.e., Conspiracy Theory Theory—we believe that the interdisciplinarity of our research is not just important, but can promote and advance the fruitfulness of integrative (and thereby more resourceful) research endeavors… Read More ›
I am grateful to Brian Martin for his thoughtful review of my book, Escaping Maya’s Palace. Yet there is more to say about the hidden psychological underbelly of modern civilization and capitalism and about the prospects for social transformation. …… Read More ›
This article serves an invited response to Chris Santos-Lang’s “The Method of Convergent Realism” (2022). I respond from a social constructionist position, mixed with critical realism, that challenges some of the premises of Santos-Lang’s paper. I question if the use… Read More ›