In response to the discussion of the "now" in PSYCHE - D, I sent a message (in 1996) to be posted, which the moderator killed. I think he (probably correctly) thinks the discussion is getting off topics appropriate for his list. At any rate, I wished to put a question to you (Henry Stapp) that you might (or might not) wish to address off list.

This work discusses whether Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was revolutionary. Steve Fuller argues that Kuhn held a profoundly conservative view of science and how one ought to study its history.

Thomas Kuhn's _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions_ is one of the best known and most influential books of the twentieth century. Whether they adore or revile him, critics and fans alike have tended to agree on one thing: Kuhn's ideas were revolutionary. But were they? Steve Fuller argues that Kuhn actually held a profoundly conservative view of science and how one ought to study its history. Early on, Kuhn came under the influence of Harvard President James Bryant Conant, who (...) had developed an educational program intended to help deflect Cold War unease over science's uncertain future by focusing on its illustrious past. Fuller argues that this rhetoric made its way into _Structure,_ which Fuller sees as preserving and reinforcing the old view that science really is just a steady accumulation of truths about the world. Fuller suggests that Kuhn, deliberately or not, shared the tendency in Western culture to conceal possible negative effects of new knowledge from the general public. Because it insists on a difference between a history of science for scientists and one suited to historians, Fuller charges that _Structure_ created the awkward divide that has led directly to the "Science Wars" and has stifled much innovative research. In conclusion, Fuller offers a way forward that rejects Kuhn's fixation on paradigms in favor of a conception of science as a social movement designed to empower society's traditionally disenfranchised elements. Certain to be controversial, _Thomas Kuhn_ must be read by anyone who has adopted, challenged, or otherwise engaged with _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions._ "Structure will never look quite the same again after Fuller. In that sense, he has achieved one of the main aims of his ambitious and impressively executed project."—Jon Turney, _Times Higher Education Supplement_ "Philosophies like Kuhn's narrow the possible futures of inquiry by politically methodizing and taming them. More republican philosophies will leave the future open. Mr. Fuller has amply succeeded in his program of distinguishing the one from the other."—William R. Everdell, _Washington Times_. (shrink)

Cybernetic-Existentialism: Freedom, Systems, and Being-for-Others in Contemporary Art and Performance offers a unique discourse and an original aesthetic theory. It argues that fusing perspectives from the philosophy of Existentialism with insights from the 'universal science' of cybernetics provides a new analytical lens and deconstructive methodology to critique art. In this study, Steve Dixon examines how a range of artists' works reveal the ideas of Existentialist philosophers including Kierkegaard, Camus, de Beauvoir and Sartre on freedom, being and nothingness, eternal recurrence, (...) the absurd, and being-for-others. Simultaneously, these artworks are shown to engage in complex explorations of concepts proposed by cyberneticians including Wiener, Shannon, and Bateson on information theory and 'noise', feedback loops, circularity, adaptive ecosystems, autopoiesis, and emergence. Dixon's ground-breaking book demonstrates how fusing insights and knowledge from these two fields can throw new light on pressing issues within contemporary arts and culture, including authenticity, angst and alienation, homeostasis, radical politics, and the human as system. (shrink)

As the field of Science and Technology Studies has become more established, it has increasingly hidden its philosophical roots. While the trend is typical of disciplines striving for maturity, Steve Fuller, a leading figure in the field, argues that STS has much to lose if it abandons philosophy. In his characteristically provocative style, he offers the first sustained treatment of the philosophical foundations of STS and suggests fruitful avenues for further research. With stimulating discussions of the Science Wars, the (...) Intelligent Design Theory controversy, and theorists such as Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour, _Philosophy of Science and Technology_ _Studies_ is required reading for students and scholars in STS and the philosophy of science. (shrink)

In this challenging and provocative book, Steve Fuller contends that our continuing faith in science in the face of its actual history is best understood as the secular residue of a religiously inspired belief in divine providence. Our faith in science is the promise of a life as it shall be, as science will make it one day. Just as men once put their faith in God's activity in the world, so we now travel to a land promised by (...) science. In "Science", Fuller suggests that the two destinations might be the same one. Fuller sympathetically explores what it might mean to live scientifically. Can science give a sense of completeness to one's life? Can it account for the entirety of what it is to be human? And what does our continuing belief in scientific progress say about us as a species? In answering these questions, Fuller ranges widely over the history of science and religion - from Aristotle and the atomists to Dawkins and the neo-Darwinists - and takes a close look at what science is, how its purpose has changed over the years, and what role religion and in more recent years atheism have played in its progression. Science, argues Fuller, is now undergoing its own version of secularization. We are ceasing to trust science in its institutional forms, formulated by an anointed class of science priests, and instead we are witnessing the emergence of what Fuller calls Protscience' - all sorts of people, from the New Age movement to anti-evolutionists, claiming scientific authority as their own. Fuller shows that these groups are no more anti-scientific than Protestant sects were atheistic. Fearless and thought-provoking, Science questions some of our most fundamental beliefs about the nature and role of science, and is a distinct and important contribution to debates about evolution, intelligent design, atheism, humanism, the notion of scientific progress, and the public understanding of science. (shrink)

Critical Realism and Marxism addresses controversial debates, revealing a potentially fruitful relationship; deepening our understanding of the social world and contibuting towards eliminating barbarism in contemporary capitalism.

As the field of Science and Technology Studies has become more established, it has increasingly hidden its philosophical roots. While the trend is typical of disciplines striving for maturity, Steve Fuller, a leading figure in the field, argues that STS has much to lose if it abandons philosophy. In his characteristically provocative style, he offers the first sustained treatment of the philosophical foundations of STS and suggests fruitful avenues for further research. With stimulating discussions of the Science Wars, the (...) Intelligent Design Theory controversy, and theorists such as Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour, _Philosophy of Science and Technology_ _Studies_ is required reading for students and scholars in STS and the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Aimed directly at those who aspire to be university leaders in these turbulent times, and written as an academic counterpart to Machiavelli's The Prince, The Academic Caesar explores four themes that are central to the contemporary university: its Caesar-leaders, its economics, its disciplines, and whether academics have a future in the universities. Drawing on a wealth of experience writing about the social epistemology of higher education, Steve Fuller makes a witty, robust and provocative contribution to the ongoing debate about (...) where the university has come from and where it is going. The Academic Caesar will prove a fascinating read for those seeking new insights into current crisis in higher education as well as researchers and academics interested in the sociology of leadership. (shrink)

Although the continental philosophers Jürgen Habermas and Emmanuel Levinas are both inescapably important to an array of debates in contemporary moral theory, they are rarely assessed in relation to each other. Not only are their basic agendas different—whereas Habermas's discourse ethics are framed within a general concern for democratic political theory, Levinas's work is largely indifferent, if not hostile, to political concerns—but their philosophical styles dramatically contrast as well. Steven Hendley's study is based on the conviction that beneath the surface (...) there is in fact a remarkable degree of convergence in the two philosophers' work that is usually overlooked. Hendley discovers and explains the complementarity of Levinas's conception of discourse as relation to the Other to Habermas's theory of communication as the basis for recognition of universal moral norms; and he presents a clear defense and validation of Levinas's position on the construction of political theory. From Communicative Action to the Face of the Other is a unique endeavor that achieves new and important connections in the contemporary scholarship in philosophy and political theory. (shrink)

I respond to William Lynch’s critique of the sympathetic reading of my work provided by Remedios and Dusek in Knowing Humanity in the Social World: The Path of Steve Fuller’s Social Epistemology. Lynch harks back to my early works, which he sees as a promoting a ‘naturalism’ lacking in the later works. In response, I observe that my commitment to naturalism has always been ‘reflexive’, which has led me to break with conventional forms of naturalism, though sticking closely to (...) the spirit of science. (shrink)

This article is a response to William Lynch’s, ‘Social Epistemology Transformed: Steve Fuller’s Account of Knowledge as a Divine Spark for Human Domination,’ an extended and thoughtful reflection on my Knowledge: The Philosophical Quest in History. I grant that Lynch has captured well, albeit critically, the spirit and content of the book – and the thirty-year intellectual journey that led to it. In this piece, I respond at two levels. First, I justify my posture towards my predecessors and contemporaries, (...) which Lynch shrewdly sees as my opposition to deference. However, most of the response concerns an elaboration of my theodicy-focussed sense of social epistemology, which is long-standing but only started to become prominent about ten years ago, in light of my involvement in the evolution controversies. Here I aim to draw together a set of my abiding interests – scientific, theological and philosophical – in trying to provide a normative foundation for the future of humanity. (shrink)

Does the receipt of benefits from some common resource create an obligation to contribute toward its maintenance? If so, what is the basis of this obligation? I consider whether individual contributions to climate change can be impugned as wrongful free riding upon the stability of the planet's climate system, when persons enjoy its benefits but refuse to bear their share of its maintenance costs. Two main arguments will be advanced: the first urges further modification of H.L.A. Hart’s “principle of fairness” (...) as the basis for demanding that would-be free riders pay their fair share in the context of climate change, while the second claims that remedial action on climate change is better captured through collective action analysis than through harm principles that seek to connect individual actions to bad environmental outcomes. (shrink)

David GormanNorthern Illinois UniversityThe official topic of Steve Fuller’s editorial is aphorisms, but I think that it is early days in his thinking about this interesting genre. He mentions them...

In the spirit of the pragmatic account of quotation and reporting offered by Macagno and Walton (2017), we outline a systematic pragmatic account of rephrasing. For this purpose, we combine two interrelated methods of inquiry into the variety of uses of rephrase as a persuasive device: (i) the annotation of rephrase types to identify locutionary and illocutionary aspects of rephrase, (ii) the crowd–sourced examination of rephrase types to investigate their perlocutionary effects. As it draws on Waltonian insights and on empirical (...) and experimental research on the (mis)use of rephrase, our approach allows us to ground a novel theoretically–informed and data–driven pragmatic account of rephrase. (shrink)

In the spirit of the pragmatic account of quotation and reporting offered by Macagno and Walton (2017), we outline a systematic pragmatic account of rephrasing. For this purpose, we combine two interrelated methods of inquiry into the variety of uses of rephrase as a persuasive device: (i) the annotation of rephrase types to identify locutionary and illocutionary aspects of rephrase, (ii) the crowd–sourced examination of rephrase types to investigate their perlocutionary effects. As it draws on Waltonian insights and on empirical (...) and experimental research on the (mis)use of rephrase, our approach allows us to ground a novel theoretically–informed and data–driven pragmatic account of rephrase. (shrink)

Deals with the issue of relativism in the context of Jean Paul Sartre's later philosophy, and with the contemporary debates about the social-historical character of reason as they emerge in the works of Foucault, Habermas, and other ...

We have a need today to free up the Church in its ability think through and debate its ethical responses to contemporary issues. How do we think about and respond to the issues of crime, punishment and rehabilitation, consumerism - money, banks, economics and bonuses, war and peace making, euthanasia and assisted dying, same sex relationships. etc. ‘We can only act within the world we can envision…. We do not come to see merely by looking, but must develop disciplined skills (...) through initiation into that community that attempts to live faithfully to the story of God…by learning to be faithful disciples, we are more able to see the world as it is.’ Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom. Ethics provide the cultural and moral framework in which we live our whole lives. Our ethics are like the air we breathe, and though for the most part they go unnoticed, our lives and communities depend on them. But Christian ethics are distinctive. They are not just anyone’s ethics. Indeed, if the Christian vision is not distinct from other moral frameworks, then what is so special about Christ and our story? For many, Jesus has simply become nothing more than a ‘personal’ and ‘private’ motivator to the same common ideals, which are shared by all. So, how do we live distinctively in a time of uncertainty? How do we see the world through the eyes of Christ? What tools do we need for the complex choices that confront us, in order to live well; to live Christ centred lives in the 21st century? This book provides this kind of help in a clearly, written accessible style with discussion questions making this useful for small-group use. (shrink)

. Who's Wearing the White Hat? A Review of Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists—a Conservative Manifesto. Ethics, Place & Environment: Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 253-259.

Analysis of the use of the key term the people shows that it has varied both semantically and syntactically along the time-line of the evolution of the CPC.

Aims to find the common language between two of the most important philosophical thinkers of the twentieth century.

I will argue (contra Carruthers) that accepting natural language as the format of many of our thoughts should entail accepting a version of Whorfian relativism and that, rather than something to be avoided, evidence from bilingual cognition suggests that incorporating this idea into future research would yield further insights into the cognitive functions of natural language.

This ambitious and challenging book, by a noted American Marxist sociologist, tries to do two things at once, both of which should be of interest to social and political philosophers as well as philosophers of science. First, it distances itself from virtually all the European Marxist traditions for their adherence to "science" as the dominant mode of epistemic legitimation; second, it clears the conceptual space for an epistemic practice that retains a sufficiently critical distance from science so as to enable (...) the emergence of a truly emancipatory form of knowledge. It should be said, however, that Aronowitz merely hints at this new practice, which will emerge in forthcoming works on feminism and ecologism as perhaps the first sustained attempts since the Enlightenment to ground rationality in the pursuit of substantive ends, namely, the relationship that humans have to their material existence. (shrink)

The distinction between presentism and eternalism is usually sought in some formula like ‘Only presently existing things exist’ or ‘Past, present, and future events are equally real’. I argue that ambiguities in the copula prevent these slogans from distinguishing significant opposed positions. I suggest in addition that one can find a series of significant distinctions if one takes spacetime structure into account. These presentisms and eternalisms are not contradictory. They are complementary elements of a complete naturalistic philosophy of time.

Mark Hinchliff concludes a recent paper, "The Puzzle of Change," with a section entitled "Is the Presentist Refuted by the Special Theory of Relativity?" His answer is "no." I respond by arguing that presentists face great difficulties in merely stating their position in Minkowski spacetime. I round up some likely candidates for the job and exhibit their deficiencies.

The aim of this essay is to introduce philosophers of science to some recent philosophical discussions of the nature and origin of the direction of time. The essay is organized around books by Hans Reichenbach, Paul Horwich, and Huw Price. I outline their major arguments and treat certain critical points in detail. I speculate at the end about the ways in which the subject may continue to develop and in which it may connect with other areas of philosophy.

When the policies and activities of one country or generation harm both other nations and later generations, they constitute serious injustices. Recognizing the broad threat posed by anthropogenic climate change, advocates for an international climate policy development process have expressly aimed to mitigate this pressing contemporary environmental threat in a manner that promotes justice. Yet, while making justice a primary objective of global climate policy has been the movement's noblest aspiration, it remains an onerous challenge for policymakers. -/- Atmospheric Justice (...) is the first single-authored work of political theory that addresses this pressing challenge via the conceptual frameworks of justice, equality, and responsibility. Throughout this incisive study, Steve Vanderheiden points toward ways to achieve environmental justice by exploring how climate change raises issues of both international and intergenerational justice. In addition, he considers how the design of a global climate regime might take these aims into account. Engaging with the principles of renowned political philosopher John Rawls, he expands on them by factoring in the needs of future generations. Vanderheiden also demonstrates how political theory can contribute to reaching a better understanding of the proper human response to climate change. By showing how climate policy offers insights into resolving contemporary controversies within political theory, he illustrates the ways in which applying normative theory to policy allows us to better understand both. -/- Thoroughly researched and persuasively argued, Atmospheric Justice makes an important step toward providing us with a set of carefully elaborated first principles for achieving environmental justice. (shrink)