What are conspiracy theories? And what, if anything, is epistemically wrong with them? I offer an account on which conspiracy theories are a unique way of holding a belief in a conspiracy. Specifically, I take conspiracy theories to be self-insulating beliefs in conspiracies. On this view, conspiracy theorists have their conspiratorial beliefs in a way that is immune to revision by counter-evidence. I argue that conspiracy theories are always irrational. Although conspiracy theories involve an expectation to encounter some seemingly disconfirming (...) evidence (allegedly planted by the conspirators), resistance to all counter- evidence cannot be justified on these grounds. (shrink)

In much of the current academic and public discussion, conspiracy theories are portrayed as a negative phenomenon, linked to misinformation, mistrust in experts and institutions, and political propaganda. Rather surprisingly, however, philosophers working on this topic have been reluctant to incorporate a negatively evaluative aspect when either analyzing or engineering the concept conspiracy theory. In this paper, we present empirical data on the nature of the concept conspiracy theory from five studies designed to test the existence, prevalence and exact form (...) of an evaluative dimension to the ordinary concept conspiracy theory. These results reveal that, while there is a descriptive concept of conspiracy theory, the predominant use of conspiracy theory is deeply evaluative, encoding information about epistemic deficiency and often also derogatory and disparaging information. On the basis of these results, we present a new strategy for engineering conspiracy theory to promote theoretical investigations and institutional discussions of this phenomenon. We argue for engineering conspiracy theory to encode an epistemic evaluation, and to introduce a descriptive expression—such as ‘conspiratorial explanation’—to refer to the purely descriptive concept conspiracy theory. (shrink)

In his book, "Prejudice", Endre Begby offers a novel and engaging account of the epistemology of prejudice which challenges some of the standard assumptions that have so far guided the recent discussion on the topic. One of Begby's central arguments against the standard view of prejudice, according to which a prejudiced person necessarily displays an epistemically culpable resistance to counterevidence, is that, qua stereotype judgments, prejudices can be flexible and rationally maintained upon encountering many disconfirming instances. By expanding on Begby's (...) analysis, I argue that, given the variety of truth conditions for true generic statements, the generic form of stereotype judgements can sometimes make prejudice extremely resistant to encounters with statistical facts about the distribution of the property among members of a certain group. At the same time, I argue that a more careful consideration of the generic form of stereotypes also allows us to recognize that evidence about how many members of the kind instantiate a property is not the only type of evidence which could disconfirm a prejudice. Evidence of no explanatory relation between a kind and a property should also have a direct effect on a prejudicial belief. For this reason, things may not look as dim for the standard view of prejudice in assessing paradigmatic instances of prejudicial beliefs as irrationally resistant to evidence. (shrink)

The main aim of this brief paper is to present in which sense both Putnam's internal realism and his natural realism are realist. In order to do that I will take into consideration the notion of "reality" that Putnam uses in his defense of his internalist perspective as well in his present natural realism. Although there exist significant differences between Putnam's two different realist stances, the notion of "reality" present in each of them remains the same. In this paper I (...) will clarify what Putnam understands by that notion. (shrink)

Writing about loneliness has been a struggle in the midst of the pandemic. Characterized by loneliness, isolation, anxiety, and fear, the COVID-19 pandemic is an exceptionally challenging time. At various points while navigating this loneliness project amid a particularly lonely time, we lamented the seeming futility of it all. A main goal of developing a Feminist Loneliness Studies in this introduction is to understand the ways that systems of oppression – white supremacy, settler colonialism, anti-queer bias, misogyny, neoliberal capitalism, and (...) so on – create our lonely world. To date, there remains no comprehensive feminist analysis of the structural conditions that both produce and intensify experiences of loneliness. We aim to remedy this gap. That is, we seek to address what a Feminist Loneliness Studies can contribute to understanding the complexities of this complicated emotion. For example, what is the unique loneliness of the feminist killjoy who calls out, or calls in, existing forms of queerphobia, racism, and sexism? What does it mean to be a politicized person and how does that result in both alienation and isolation? What might the relationship be between white supremacy and loneliness? How is loneliness both individual and systemic, and what is the relationship between the two? What distinctive forms of loneliness are created by ableism, sanism, neoliberalism, capitalism, globalization, and the gig economy? Ought loneliness be avoided at all costs? What are the ethics of loneliness? In our introduction to this special issue, we unpack and theorize the potential perils and generative possibilities offered up by this profound emotion. Establishing a Feminist Loneliness Studies provides us with the space we need to begin addressing and comprehending loneliness. (shrink)

In our rapidly changing environment, both profit and non-profit organizations confront an increasing demand for technological, economic, and social innovation. In response to this demand, organizations are taking on the role of “change agents” by transforming existing practices into innovative action. Libraries, as centers that accumulate and disperse knowledge, can support these organizations in their “change agent” roles. This paper delineates the way public libraries can help organizations meet the increasing need for external information associated with innovation. Policy issues concerned (...) with efficient information transfer to user organizationss are specified, and two concrete examples of information transfer systems are described. In order to best utilize existing knowledge,personal-professional assistance in selecting potentially innovative,impersonal written materials is recommended. (shrink)

En este estudio, Tempo e Poesia fue la obra de Eduardo Lourenço que más utilizamos para nuestras consideraciones. No sólo porque fue en esta obra donde su ensayismo cobra mayor expresión, sino, al mismo tiempo, porque tiempo-poesía es el binomio o el binomio temático, que, tanto a nivel existencial como ontológico, esclarece mejor el pensamiento de nuestro autor. Los ensayos de Eduardo Lourenço tienen siempre o casi siempre un ritmo existencial y ontológico, ya sea cuando vuelve la mirada a la (...) definición de cultura, con sus mitos y aventuras (sin análisis equivalente en otro autor portugués del siglo XX), o cuando analiza la expresión del pensamiento de sus primeros interlocutores más cercanos como Kierkegaard y Camus, o incluso cuando lee críticamente la obra de la mayoría de los poetas del siglo XX en Portugal. (shrink)

The main goal of this paper will be to analyze the relationship between the phenomenon of conceptual relativity and the speaking-sensitive semantics. My paper will be divided into three parts. In the first part I will present Putnam's the phenomenon of conceptual relativity, in the second part I will exhibit the main ideas that characterize the speaking-sensitive semantics defended by Putnam and, finally, in the last part I will connect Putnam's semantics with the doctrine of conceptual relativity.

The Artificial Kingdom is the first book to provide a cultural history of kitsch, an immensely popular aesthetic phenomenon that has always been disdained as "bad taste," or a cheap imitation of art. Proposing instead that kitsch is the product of a larger sensibility of loss, Celeste Olalquiaga shows how it enables the momentary re-creation of experiences that exist only as memories or fantasies. Simultaneously exposing and celebrating this process, Olalquiaga gives us a bold, trenchant analysis of what and (...) how we see when we look at kitsch. Tracing its beginnings to the nineteenth century--when industrialization transformed nature into an artificial kingdom of miniature scale--Olalquiaga describes the at once exhilarated and melancholic atmosphere where kitsch came to life. In an arresting mix of theory and anecdote, she examines objects from both the past and the present, probing the fluid boundaries between reality and fantasy, and finding in kitsch a phenomenon as relevant to our own time as it was to the era that made it a massive experience. (shrink)

Este artículo se propone analizar la producción tecnopolítica del cuerpo en la era farmacopornográfica, siguiendo las propuestas teóricas de Paul B. Preciado. En primer lugar se presenta el régimen disciplinario donde los procedimientos de vigilancia y control son exteriores al cuerpo. En un segundo momento, se analiza la constitución de un régimen somatopolítico de subjetividad, denominado farmacopornográfico, en el cual se utilizan tecnologías microprostéticas de control. A continuación, se señalan las principales tecnologías que crean, reproducen y consolidan un determinado sujeto (...) y corporalidad en la era farmacopornográfica. Finalmente, se plantea la hipótesis de que, a pesar de la producción biopolítica masiva de ideales heteronormativos, es posible una salida desde el interior de las identidades sexuales. (shrink)

The work of scientists and doctors in advancing genetic research and its applications has been accompanied by plenty of discussion in the popular press—from Good Housekeeping and Forbes to Ms. and the Congressional Record—about such ...

In the last third of the twentieth century, humanists and social scientists argued that attention to genetics would heighten already‐existing genetic determinism, which in turn would intensify negative social outcomes, especially sexism, racism, ableism, and harshness to criminals. They assumed that laypeople are at risk of becoming genetic essentialists. I will call this the “laypeople are genetic essentialists model.” This model has not accurately predicted psychosocial impacts of findings from genetics research. I will be arguing that the failure of the (...) model can be traced to its inability to recognize the complexity of laypeople’s attitudes; its incorrect theory of how beliefs, attitudes, and discourse function; and its blindness to how academics’ own interests can override the available evidence. More specifically, I suggest that the substantial data about laypeople’s deployment of genetics supports what I will call the “laypeople are strategic essentialists model” better than the “laypeople are genetic essentialists model.” The strategic essentialists model holds that people tend to store multiple categories, including multiple causal forces, that they deploy “strategically” to serve context‐dependent goals. It will be difficult for academics to reorient ourselves to model laypeople as sophisticated strategic essentialists rather than as naïve genetic essentialists. Perhaps a little shift, however, will be of value. (shrink)

This article explores the prospects for a eudaimonist moral theory that is both feminist and Aristotelian. Making the moral philosophy developed by Aristotle compatible with a feminist moral perspective presents a number of philosophical challenges. Lisa Tessman offers one of the most sustained feminist engagements with Aristotelian eudaimonism. However, in arguing for the account of flourishing that her eudaimonist theory invokes, Tessman avoids taking a stand either for or against the role Aristotle assigned to human nature. She draws her account (...) of flourishing instead from the beliefs about flourishing implicit in the feminist and black freedom movements. I examine the implicit conception of flourishing in the writings of two prominent leaders of the black freedom movement—Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X—and argue that Tessman's attempt to avoid the “sticky issue” of human nature is not successful. Tessman's defense of the burdened virtues depends on a particular reading of human nature as does a eudaimonist account of the virtues more generally. (shrink)

This article discusses some aspects of the practice of complementary and traditional medicine in urban Mexico through a transcultural paradigm, hence it focuses on how medical knowledge are commodified as well as how a `travelling' medical knowledge acquires agency in a transculturation process. This study, while analysing different practices of Chinese and Japanese medicine, argues that oriental medicine is translated in at least two ways - a popular and a cosmopolitan form - that shape particular expressions of citizenship. The popular (...) form is carried out in low-income neighbourhoods and it focuses around a `Mexicanization' of oriental medicine and the reaffirmation of the popular as part of the national. Cosmopolitan medicine, on the other hand, is particularly practised in exclusive health spas and seeks to purge the popular out of the national and to incorporate `traditional' medicine as one of the multiple components of cosmopolitan consumption. The article argues that both popular and cosmopolitan expressions are important to understanding how complementary and oriental medicine have become not only part of a global market, but also part of a particular history of national and popular medical systems. (shrink)

Introduction: where do our rights come from? -- Jefferson's masterpiece: the Declaration of Independence -- Get off my land : the right to own property -- Names will never hurt me : the freedom of speech -- I left my rights in San Franscisco : the freedom of association -- You can leave any time you want: the freedom to travel -- You can leave me alone : the right to privacy -- That flesh is mine : you own your (...) body -- Sticks and stones will break my bones : the right to self-defense -- You'll hear from me : the right to petition the government for redress of grievances -- War . . .war . . .what is it good for? : the right to enjoy peace -- When the devil turns round on you : the right to fairness from the government -- A dime isn't worth a penny anymore : the right to sound money -- Theft by any other name : the right to spend your own money -- A ride on Dr. Feinberg's bus : the right to be governed by laws with moral limits -- Disobeying stupidity : the right to ignore the state -- Conclusion. (shrink)

Este artículo se propone retomar los conceptos de problemática y ruptura epistemológica presentados por Althusser en diversos artículos de La revolución teórica de Marx, a los que se busca poner en relación con las consideraciones de Lacan en el Seminario IX acerca del cogito cartesiano. En discusión con algunas de las lecturas contemporáneas de ambos autores, busca dar cuenta de cierta afinidad en sus planteos en torno a la posibilidad de un encuentro con lo real y del planteo de lo (...) verdadero distinto de la garantía de Verdad. Por último, presenta la conceptualización althusseriana de práctica teórica como proceso de trabajo que pone en relación Generalidades y la concepción de una ética de la práctica dada por la posibilidad de dar cuenta de sí. (shrink)

The cinema has long reigned as the kinetic medium of the twentieth century. Early in itsdevelopment it secured its privilege over the more traditional arts through itsunprecedented control and manipulation of time. In The Great Train Robbery and Life of an American Fireman crowds had theirfirst experiences of film crosscutting between two different spaces and moments in time.1They saw a shot of a raging house fire, and then suddenly a shot of a sleeping firemanin the station. Between these two spaces (...) is a simple cut, and yet here is the preciselocation of a vast frontier: the pleasure of waiting for something forever on the verge ofarrival. This expectation of the event, the catastrophe, and the culmination, is the fuel formodern cinema. The Hollywood tradition has been a developing story of technology’sattempts to exploit this passion, pushing the barriers of how much suspense can beintroduced and resolved within the space of a screen and a segment of time, and in the past thirty years the action film has become one of the most exciting genres, spinning offnumerous subgenres and transforming the industry. (shrink)