Critics of conspiracy theories often charge that such theories are implausible because conspiracies of the kind they allege tend to fail. Thus, according to these critics, conspiracy theories that have been around for a while would have been, in all likelihood, already exposed if they had been real. So, they reason, they probably are not. In this article, I maintain that the arguments in support of this view are unconvincing. I do so by examining a list of four sources recently (...) cited in support of the claim that conspiracies tend to fail. I pay special attention to two of these sources, an article by Brian Keeley, and, especially, an article by David Grimes, which is perhaps the single “best” article in support of the idea that conspiracies tend to fail. That is, it offers the most explicit and elaborate attempt to establish this view. Further, that article has garnered significant (uncritical) attention in the mainstream press. I argue that Grimes's argument does not succeed, that the common assertion that conspiracies tend to fail remains poorly supported, and that there are good reasons to think that at least some types of conspiracies do not tend to fail. (shrink)

In response to several articles on SERRC, I argue that the common pejorative use of the phrase “conspiracy theory” is the fundamental basis for the distinction between generalism and particularism. That is, generalism describes the “conventional wisdom” about conspiracy theories to which particularism is the corrective. Generalism is best understood as the idea that conspiracy theories ought to be dismissed (perhaps even ridiculed) because they are conspiracy theories--for that is the conventional wisdom (as Charles Pigden has maintained). This is not (...) merely to say, vaguely, that such theories have "epistemic defects." Given this definition, particularism, as the rejection of generalism, is true for any definition of "conspiracy theory" for which Watergate would have at one time counted as one--not just for a minimal definition. Rather than being dismissed based on features that apply to conspiracy theories generally (as generalism would have it), each conspiracy theory should be judged on a case-by-case basis according to its own particular merits and demerits. (shrink)

Commonsense reasoning about the physical world, as exemplified by "Iron sinks in water" or "If a ball is dropped it gains speed," will be indispensable in future programs. We argue that to make such predictions (namely, envisioning), programs should use abstract entities (such as the gravitational field), principles (such as the principle of superposition), and laws (such as the conservation of energy) of physics for representation and reasoning. These arguments are in accord with a recent study in physics instruction where (...) expert problem solving is related to the construction of physical representations that contain fictitious, imagined entities such as forces and momenta (Larkin 1983). We give several examples showing the power of physical representations. (shrink)

Future robots should have common sense about the world in order to handle the problems they will encounter. A large part of this commonsense knowledge must be naive physics knowledge, since carrying out even the simplest everyday chores requires familiarity with physics laws. But how should one start codifying this knowledge? What kind of skills should be elicited from the experts (each and every one of us)? This paper will attempt to provide some hints by studying the mental models of (...) force and motion. (shrink)

a book review for Hagen Schulze's "Gibt es überhaupt eine deutsche Geschichte?" done as a homework for university (KIT Institut für Geschichte) Modul Pol.G. I.

Conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists have been accused of a great many sins, but are the conspiracy theories conspiracy theorists believe epistemically problematic? Well, according to some recent work, yes, they are. Yet a number of other philosophers like Brian L. Keeley, Charles Pigden, Kurtis Hagen, Lee Basham, and the like have argued ‘No!’ I will argue that there are features of certain conspiracy theories which license suspicion of such theories. I will also argue that these features only license (...) a limited suspicion of these conspiracy theories, and thus we need to be careful about generalising from such suspicions to a view of the warrant of conspiracy theories more generally. To understand why, we need to get to the bottom of what exactly makes us suspicious of certain conspiracy theories, and how being suspicious of a conspiracy theory does not always tell us anything about how likely the theory in question is to be false. (shrink)

Social media is a mess. Philosophers have recently helped catalogue some of the various ills. In this chapter, I relay some of this conceptual work on virtue signalling, piling on, ramping up, echo-chambers, epistemic bubbles, polarization, moral outrage porn, and the gamification of communication. In drawing attention to these things, philosophers hope to steer us towards being better online. One form that this takes is a call for more civility (both online and off). There is a good case to be (...) made for this; social media is a mess, and we should be kinder and look to communicate better with each other. But there is also a good objection: Civility, and calls for civility and politeness, can placate serious resistance to power and wrongdoing. What we ought to be doing is resisting power, looking to protect democracy and mitigate the climate crisis. And given that, so the objection goes, focussing on civility is at best wrong-headed, and at worse counterproductive to real needed change. How then are we to negotiate the call for civility with the need for real change? The hope is that we can be better online and work towards serious change together. (shrink)

The general tendency or attitude that Dreier 2004 calls creeping minimalism is ramping up in contemporary analytic philosophy. Those who entertain this attitude will take for granted a framework of deflationary or minimal notions – principally semantical1 and ontological – by means of which to analyse problems in different philosophical fields – e.g. theory of truth, metaethics, philosophy of language, the debate on realism and antirealism, etc. Let us call sweeping minimalist the philosopher affected by creeping minimalism. The framework of (...) minimal notions that the sweeping minimalist takes for granted encompasses, for instance, the concept of truth, reference, proposition, fact, individual, and property. Minimal notions are characterized in terms of general platitudinous principles expressed by schemata like the following (cf.: 26): ‘S’ is true if and only if S; ‘S’ is true if and only if ‘S’ corresponds to the facts; a has the property of being P if and only if a is P. Where ‘S’ and ‘a is P’ stand for sentences satisfying superficial constraints of truth-aptitude (i.e. sentences in declarative form subject to communally acknowledged standards of proper use), and.. (shrink)

The physical basis of conscious experience is revealed by direct observation and analysis of any conscious experience. Human conscious experience has an invariant structural mode of organization based on the three types of space-time intervals (light-like, time-like, space-like). Sensory input activates the autonomic nervous system, endocrine system, and ascending reticular activating system to produce the awake conscious state. The dorsal and ventral frontoparietal attention networks are activated. Dorsal and ventral cortical functional streams carry “what”, “where”, and “when” information to the (...) medial temporal lobe for the encoding, storage, and recall of conscious experience (episodic memory). Hippocampal place cells and time cells encode events in space and time within spatiotemporal contexts conveyed by entorhinal cortex grid cells and ramping cells. Theta phase precession unifies the encoding of space and time in the hippocampus so that segments of space and time are encoded in the hippocampus. Theta travelling waves ensure that the instantaneous output of the hippocampus consists of topographically-organized segments of space and time, space-time intervals. By parsing spatiotemporal contexts into quantal units of where and when events occur (spacetime intervals), hippocampal neurons bridge, and thereby organize events, in a conceptual organization of events (conscious experience). Space-time intervals are extracted from the hippocampus by a prefrontal cortex-basal ganglia-thalamic-prefrontal cortex loop for the cognitive, affective, and motivational aspects of conscious experience. (shrink)

It is tempting to interpret Marilyn Strathern as saying that the concept of nature is a social construction, because in her essay “No Nature, No Culture: the Hagen Case” she tells us that the Hagen people do not describe the world using this concept. However, I point out an obstacle to interpreting her in this way, an obstacle which leads me to reject this interpretation. Interpreting her in this way makes her inconsistent. The inconsistency is owing to a (...) commitment that she shares with previous British anthropologists, a commitment which points to an incompatibility between two intellectual traditions. (shrink)

« Espace privé et espace public s’imbriquent. Vie privée et vie publique se percutent. Intimité et “extimité” se combinent. For intérieur et for extérieur se répondent. Toutefois, tandis que l’espace privé, la vie privée et maintenant l’intimité accèdent à la visibilité, le for intérieur demeure, pour l’instant, à l’abri des feux de la rampe. Les cas de conscience,..

The Biblical story of the Art (a floating, zoo-like device, constructed to survive climate turmoil and mass extinction) can be regarded as an archetypal image (in the terminology of Gaston Bachelard), capturing structural components of the human-animal relationship. Building on the contributions by Larson and Barr, Keulartz, Bovenkerk and Verweij, and Ramp and Bekoff, I will argue that, in the course of history, the Ark has evolved from a fictional (imaginary) icon into something increasingly real. The agricultural village of the (...) Neolithic era already functioned as a sheltered enclave, a survival machine designed to allow a select number of humans and accompanying species to withstand environmental fluctuations and survival pressure. In the current situation, however, the Ark has developed into a Gestell of planetary dimensions. The concept of the anthropocene basically conveys the idea that we have entered a global symbolical Ark, conceptualised by Teilhard de Chardin as the noosphere (the world-wide web of intelligence and policies, technologies and engineering, research and regulations) and emerging against the backdrop of a necro(s)cene: an ambiance of mass extinction. Increasingly, prospects for survival of a disconcertingly large number of species depend on human behaviour and human decision: on our ability or failure to collectively address the daunting challenges of the present. (shrink)