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 ›
Critical Replies
Critical Replies are engagements with articles recently published in Social Epistemology.
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 ›
Reconciling Conceptual Confusions in the Le Monde Debate on Conspiracy Theories, J.C.M. Duetz and M R. X. Dentith
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 ›
More on Ego-Dominance in Modern Civilization: Author Comment on Brian Martin’s Review of Escaping Maya’s Palace, Richard Sclove
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 ›
Is Convergent Realism an Appropriate Method for Evaluating Ethics? Muki Haklay
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 ›
Reimagining Suicide Research: The Limits and Possibilities of Suicide Cultures, Amy Chandler, Joe Anderson, Rebecca Helman, Sarah Huque, Emily Yue
The ‘cultural turn’ in some parts of suicide studies has long roots (Douglas 1967), and has recently begun to proliferate (Lester et al. 2013). Particularly within sociology, anthropology, and—more recently—critical suicide studies, culture has been and is taken seriously—understood to… Read More ›
Valuing Epistemic Heritage without Embracing Relativism, Fulvio Mazzocchi
I would like to thank Aleksandra Łukaszewicz for her interest in my work and words of appreciation. Her reply gave me the chance to better specify the overall purpose of my article (Mazzocchi 2022), together with some key points and… Read More ›
Hill on “Stereotypical” Conspiracy Theories and Cognitive Disabling, Lee Basham
We must not tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories. — George Bush I will not stand by and allow wild conspiracy theories. —Joseph Biden Scott Hill provides an interesting diversion of and, in that, dismissal of the Le Monde statement by certain… Read More ›
The Components of Stubborn Distrust, Sven-Ove Hansson
If we want to understand a belief or an attitude, not much is achieved by merely describing it as irrational. Often it is useful to try to reconstruct the thinking that can lead to seemingly strange beliefs. Sometimes irrational beliefs… Read More ›
The Human Refusal to Look in the Mirror, Steven James Bartlett
Professor Brian Martin of the University of Wollongong has published a series of insightful and articulate papers and books (Martin 2018, 2019a, 2019b, 2020, 2021a, 2021b, 2022a, 2022b) that offer commentaries on my book The Pathology of Man (Bartlett 2005),… Read More ›