Muki Haklay’s (2022) response, “Is Convergent Realism an Appropriate Method for Evaluating Ethics?”, to my article “The Method of Convergent Realism” (2022) did not criticize the method’s application to the natural sciences or mathematics, but raised three challenges to the suggestion that the… Read More ›
Critical Replies
Critical Replies are engagements with articles recently published in Social Epistemology.
Conspiracy Theory, Personal Epistemic Crisis and Epstein: Riggio on Trying, Lee Basham
The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.[1]—Antonio Gramsci Society is a prison. Some of us are prisoners but most of us are guards.[2]—Robert Zimmerman … [please read below… Read More ›
Children and Marginalization: Reflections on Arlene Lo’s “Hermeneutical Injustice and Child Victims of Abuse”, Gary Bartlett
1. Introduction I find myself in almost complete agreement with Arlene Lo (2022). Child abuse victims surely suffer hermeneutical injustice if they are denied the concepts necessary to understand their experience, and that injustice is immensely harmful. In this reply… Read More ›
Response to Hill: Conspiracy Theorizing, Ordinary Usage and Integrity, Lee Basham
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 ›
Epistemic Harm, Social Consequences: A Reply to Torcello on Climate Change Disinformation, Francesca Pongiglione and Carlo Martini
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 ›
Comments on Hiller and Randall’s “Epistemic Structure in Non-Summative Social Knowledge”, Jesper Kallestrup
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 ›
On the Worth of Trying, Adam Riggio
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 ›
Substantive Disagreement in the Le Monde Debate and Beyond: Replies to Duetz and Dentith, Basham, and Hewitt, Scott Hill
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 ›
Can We Tell Whether Philosophy is Special? Chad Gonnerman and Stephen Crowley
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 ›