This article develops an account of local epistemic practices on the basis of case studies from ethnobiology. I argue that current debates about objectivity often stand in the way of a more adequate understanding of local knowledge and ethnobiological practices in general. While local knowledge about the biological world often meets criteria for objectivity in philosophy of science, general debates about the objectivity of local knowledge can also obscure their unique epistemic features. In modification of Ian Hacking’s suggestion to (...) discuss “ground level questions” instead of objectivity, I propose an account that focuses on both epistemic virtues and vices of local epistemic practices. (shrink)

Ian Hacking defines a “style of scientific thinking” loosely as a “way to find things out about the world” characterised by five hallmark features of a number of scientific template styles. Most prominently, these are autonomy and “self-authentication”: a scientific style of thinking, according to Hacking, is not good because it helps us find out the truth in some domain, it itself defines the criteria for truth-telling in its domain. I argue that Renaissance medicine, Mediaeval “demonology”, and magical (...) thinking pass muster as scientific according to Hacking's criteria. However, application of these thought styles to the entities they introduce generates statements that logically imply a set of “ordinary” statements—or what Bernard Williams calls “plain truths”—which, contra the claims of autonomy and self-authentication, allows styles to be assessed from a style- independent perspective. Using Williams’ notion of plain truth, I show that Renaissance medicine, demonology, and magical thinking, in reality issue in many plain falsehoods. This confronts us with what I call Hacking's dilemma: either define stricter necessary conditions on being a style of scientific thinking, or concede that some styles albeit scientific are not as good at finding things out about the world as others. I make three suggestions to deal with the dilemma. (shrink)

, Looping Effects, the Self, Psychopathology.

The paper discusses the version of entity realism presented by Ian Hacking in his book, Representing and Intervening. Hacking holds that an ontological form of scientific realism, entity realism, may be defended on the basis of experimental practices which involve the manipulation of unobservable entities. There is much to be said in favour of the entity realist position that Hacking defends, especially the pragmatist orientation of his approach to realism. But there are problems with the position. The (...) paper explores two issues that reflect negatively on Hacking’s version of the entity realist position. The first issue relates to the role of description in fixing the reference of theoretical terms. The second issue relates to Hacking’s claim that the argument for entity realism based on experiment is a different kind of argument from the standard argument for scientific realism based on the success of science. (shrink)

This paper examines the ways in which social scientific discourse and classification interact with the objects of social scientific investigation. I examine this interaction in the context of the traditional philosophical project of demarcating the social sciences from the natural sciences. I begin by reviewing Ian Hacking’s work on interactive classification and argue that there are additional forms of interaction that must be treated.

Differenti sono i modi di conoscere che sono emersi nel corso della storia umana. Ian Hacking ha proposto una nozione, quella di "stile di pensiero" ("style of reasoning"), che fornisce un modello per caratterizzarli ed esaminare la loro genesi e il loro sviluppo. L'articolo mette in luce alcune implicazioni di questa nozione concernenti l'evoluzione del nostro sapere.

The question of how psychiatric classifications are made up and to what they refer has attracted the attention of philosophers in recent years. In this paper, I review the claims of authors who discuss psychiatric classification in terms referring both to the philosophical tradition of natural kinds and to the sociological tradition of social constructionism — especially those of Ian Hacking and his critics. I examine both the ontological and the social aspects of what it means for something to (...) be a mental disorder, and how the ontological status of these disorders hinges on social causation. Finally, I conclude by suggesting a way in which the biological and the social may be reconciled in an integrative model of variation in psychiatric disorder. (shrink)

Until now, philosophical debate about human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research has largely been limited to its ethical dimensions and implications. Although the importance and urgency of these ethical debates should not be underestimated, the almost undivided attention that mainstream and feminist philosophers have paid to the ethical dimensions of hESC research suggests that the only philosophically interesting questions and concerns about it are by and large ethical in nature. My argument goes some distance to challenge the assumption that ethical (...) considerations alone must be foregrounded in philosophical discussions about hESC research by introducing a critical stance on the epistemological and ontological assumptions that underlie and condition it. A central aim of the paper is to show how Foucault's insights into knowledge-power, taken in combination with Hacking's claims about styles of reasoning, can make these assumptions evident, as well as cast light on their potentially deleterious implications for disabled people. Arguing in this way also enables me to draw out constitutive effects of research on stem cells, that is, to indicate how the discursive practices surrounding research on stem cells, as well as the technology itself, contribute to the constitution of impairment. (shrink)

According to Ian Hacking’s Entity Realism, unobservable entities that scientists carefully manipulate to study other phenomena are real. Although Hacking presents his case in an intuitive, attractive, and persuasive way, his argument remains elusive. I present five possible readings of Hacking’s argument: a no-miracle argument, an indispensability argument, a transcendental argument, a Vichian argument, and a non-argument. I elucidate Hacking’s argument according to each reading, and review their strengths, their weaknesses, and their compatibility with each other.

The forceful impact of Michel Foucault’s work in the humanities and social sciences is apparent from the sheer abundance of its uses, appropriations, and refigurations. This article calls for greater self-conscious reflexivity about the relationship between our uses of Foucault and the opportunities afforded by his work. We argue for a clearer distinction between analytics and concepts in Foucault-inspired work. In so doing we draw on key moments of methodological self-reflection in Foucault’s Collège de France lectures and elsewhere. This distinction (...) helps identify different ways that Foucault might be put to productive use today as well as what can go wrong therein, a concern we develop with reference to Giorgio Agamben’s post-Foucaultian contributions to political theory. We are eager to open up a possibility that has been infrequently explored despite Foucault’s contemporary influence—-the idea that critique in and through Foucault is empirical critique. This idea can help facilitate a gain in reflexivity in the broader landscapes of contemporary theory, inquiry, and critique. (shrink)

This article uses the case study of ethnobiological classification to develop a positive and a negative thesis about the state of natural kind debates. On the one hand, I argue that current accounts of natural kinds can be integrated in a multidimensional framework that advances understanding of classificatory practices in ethnobiology. On the other hand, I argue that such a multidimensional framework does not leave any substantial work for the notion “natural kind” and that attempts to formulate a general account (...) of naturalness have become an obstacle to understanding classificatory practices. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: With this article, I advance a historicist and relativist feminist philosophy of disability. I argue that Foucault’s insights offer the most astute tools with which to engage in this intellectual enterprise. Genealogy, the technique of investigation that Friedrich Nietzsche famously introduced and that Foucault took up and adapted in his own work, demonstrates that Foucault’s historicist approach has greater explanatory power and transgressive potential for analyses of disability than his critics in disability studies have thus far recognized. I show (...) how a feminist philosophy of disability that employs Foucault’s technique of genealogy avoids ahistorical, teleological, and transcultural assumptions that beleaguer much work in disability studies. The article also situates feminist philosophical work on disability squarely in age-old debates in (Eurocentric) Western philosophy about universalism vs. relativism, materialism vs. idealism, realism vs. nominalism, and freewill vs. determinism, as well as contributes to ongoing discussions in (Western) feminist philosophy and theory about (among other things) essentialism vs. constructivism, identity, race, sexuality, agency, and experience. (shrink)

This is a sequel to my paper, ‘What is Scientific Realism?’, which appeared in an earlier issue of this journal (Sankey, 2000a). A number of papers by other authors on topics relating to scientific realism have followed in subsequent issues. In this paper I revisit some of the themes developed in my earlier paper in the light of these later papers. I begin by restating the key ideas of the earlier paper. Next, I mention a number of afterthoughts which I (...) have had since the appearance of the paper. I then offer some comments on three of these subsequent papers. I hope these comments advance the discussion by clarifying and developing a number of key points. (shrink)

Practices – specific, recurrent types of human action and activity – are perhaps the most fundamental "building blocks" of social reality. This book argues that the detailed empirical study of practices is essential to effective social-scientific inquiry. It develops a philosophical infrastructure for understanding human practices, and argues that practice theory should be the analytical centrepiece of social theory and the philosophy of the social sciences. -/- What would social scientists’ research look like if they took these insights seriously? To (...) answer this question, the book offers an analytical framework to guide empirical research on practices in different times and places. The author explores how practices can be identified, characterised and explained, how they function in concrete contexts and how they might change over time and space. -/- The Constitution of Social Practices lies at the intersection of philosophy, social theory, cultural theory and the social sciences. It is essential reading for scholars in social theory and the philosophy of social science, as well as the broad range of researchers and students across the social sciences and humanities whose work stands to benefit from serious consideration of practices. (shrink)

Epistemic relativists often appeal to an epistemic incommensurability thesis. One notable example is the position advanced by Wittgenstein in On certainty (1969). However, Ian Hacking’s radical denial of the possibility of objective epistemic reasons for belief poses, we suggest, an even more forceful challenge to mainstream meta-epistemology. Our central objective will be to develop a novel strategy for defusing Hacking’s line of argument. Specifically, we show that the epistemic incommensurability thesis can be resisted even if we grant the (...) very insights that lead Hacking to claim that epistemic reasons are always relative to a style of reasoning. Surprisingly, the key to defusing the argument is to be found in recent mainstream work on the epistemic state of objectual understanding. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis essay offers a reconfiguration of the possibility‐space of positions regarding the metaphysics and epistemology associated with historical knowledge. A tradition within analytic philosophy from Danto to Dummett attempts to answer questions about the reality of the past on the basis of two shared assumptions. The first takes individual statements as the relevant unit of semantic and philosophical analysis. The second presumes that variants of realism and antirealism about the past exhaust the metaphysical options . This essay argues that both (...) of these assumptions should be rejected. It develops as an alternative an irrealist account of history, a view based in part on work by Leon Goldstein and Ian Hacking. On an irrealist view, historical claims ought to be treated as subject to the same conditions and caveats that apply to any theory of empirical or scientific knowledge. Irrealism argues for pasts as made and not found. The argument emphasizes the priority of classification over perception in the order of understanding and so verification. Because nothing a priori anchors practices of classification, no sense can be attached to claims that some single structure must or does determine what events take place in human history. Irrealism denies to realism the very intelligibility of any imagined view from nowhere, that is, a determinately configured past subsisting sub specie aeternitatis. A plurality of pasts exists because constituting a past always depends to some degree on socially mediated negotiations of a fit between descriptions and experience. (shrink)

Why is there Philosophy of Mathematics at all? Ian Hacking. in Metascience (2015).

The discipline of academic philosophy suffers from serious problems of diversity and inclusion whose acknowledgement and amelioration are often resisted by members of our profession. In this paper, I distinguish four main modes of resistance—naiveté, conservatism, pride, and hostility—and describe how and why they manifest by using them as the basis for a typology of types of ‘resister’. This typology can hopefully be useful to those of us trying to counteract such resistance in ways sensitive to the different motives and (...) strategies that these resisters tend to employ. (shrink)

Imre Lakatos' conception of the history of science is explicated with the purpose of replying to criticism leveled against it by Thomas Kuhn, Ian Hacking, and others. Kuhn's primary argument is that the historian's internal—external distinction is methodologically superior to Lakatos' because it is "independent" of an analysis of rationality. That distinction, however, appears to be a normative one, harboring an implicit and unarticulated appeal to rationality, despite Kuhn's claims to the contrary. Lakatos' history, by contrast, is clearly the (...) history of a normatively defined discipline; of science and not scientists and their activities. How such history can be written, the historiographic and critical tools available for its construction, and its importance as history, are considered in detail. In an afterword, the prevalence of Lakatos' treatment of history in philosophical discussion is indicated: A related approach is shown to arise in social contract theory. (shrink)

Quine’s writings on indeterminacy of translation are mostly abstract and theoretical; his reasons for the thesis are not based on historical cases of translation but on general considerations about how language works. So it is no surprise that a common objection to the thesis asserts that it is not backed up by any positive empirical evidence. Ian Hacking (1981 and 2002) claims that whatever credibility the thesis does enjoy comes rather from alleged (fictitious) cases of radical mistranslation. This paper (...) responds to objections of that kind by exhibiting actual cases of indeterminacy of translation. (shrink)

‘Why does language matter to philosophy?’ is the name of a minor classic by Ian Hacking published in 1975. It’s a good question. Among the many charges laid against academic philosophy, one of the more familiar is that it concerns itself excessively with verbal or ‘merely semantic’ questions, at the expense of the real questions of philosophy. And yet those who have made a serious attempt to engage with philosophical problems quite soon finds themselves grappling with the very words (...) they use to formulate the problems. (shrink)

Arguments pro and contra convergent realism – underdetermination of theory by observational evidence and pessimistic meta-induction from past falsity – are considered. It is argued that, to meet the counter-arguments challenge, convergent realism should be considerably changed with a help of modification of the propositions from this meta-programme “hard core” or “protecting belt”. Two well-known convergent realism rivals – “entity realism” of Nancy Cartwright and Ian Hacking and John Worrall’s “structural realism” – are considered. Entity realism’s main drawback is (...) fundamental laws underestimation. As for structural realism, its limitation of theoretical propositions by pure structural ones is ineffective. One always can transform propositions about objects into propositions about structures and vice versa. Both conceptions are kinds of “metaphysical revisionism” that tries to reformulate the good old convergent realism propositions using more decent language and applying ad hoc modifications of the solutions first obtained within the anti-realist epistemological meta-programmes. It is stated that to overcome the troubles of convergent realism one has to turn from classical or “metaphysical” realism to nonclassical or “internal” one and to coherent theory of truth. Internal realism has no troubles in solving the problem of empirically-equivalent theoretical descriptions and historical meta-induction problem, but gets the problem of scientific knowledge objectivity instead. Where does this objectivity come from? One of the answers is proposed by the scientific knowledge growth model elaborated by Rinat Nugayev and by Peter Galison. Each paradigm is a local viewpoint determined by the peculiarities of a culture into which its creator . was submerged. However, the meeting of the different paradigms leads to their interaction; as a result, the crossbred theoretical objects are constructed. Through these systems the infiltration of one paradigm on the other’s domain takes place. After the old paradigms’ grinding the new ones emerge that reconcile to each other much better than the old ones. Scientific theories reconcile results in elimination of many contingent details. In the process of competition more universal components survive. It is demonstrated that the process of objective knowledge genesis takes place in modern superstring theory too. The list of its drawbacks is rather long; it is clear that the theory cannot pretend on the role of the Theory of Everything. Nevertheless the process of argumentation pro and contra convergent realism – underdetermination of theory by observational evidence and pessimistic meta-induction from past falsity – are considered. It is argued that, to meet the counter-arguments challenge, convergent realism should be considerably changed with a help of modification of the propositions from this meta-programme “hard core” or “protecting belt”. It is stated that to overcome the troubles of convergent realism one has to turn from classical or “metaphysic” of quantum field theory and general relativity interpenetration have already begun. (shrink)

Debates in the philosophy of science typically take place around issues such as realism and theory change. Recently, the debate has been reformulated to bring in the role of experiments in the context of theory change. As regards realism, Ian Hacking’s contribution has been to introduce ‘intervention’ as the basis of realism. He also proposed, following Imre Lakatos, to replace the issue of truth with progress and rationality. In this context we examine the case of the vitalism — reductionism (...) debate in biology inspired by the works of Indian physicist-turned-biologist Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858–1937), in the early twentieth century. Both camps had their characteristic hardcores. Vitalists led by John S. Burdon-Sanderson and Augustus D. Waller accepted religious metaphysics to support their research programme, which ultimately degenerated. Bose worked more with the ideals of science such as Occam’s razor, large-scale systematization of phenomena and novel prediction. I argue that his religious metaphysics, instead of acting as a protective shield, helped him to consolidate his position and allowed further problem shift resulting in a research programme that involved consciousness too. His research programme remains relevant even today. (shrink)

The traditional emphasis on the physics of the very small is questioned, and the suggestion made that a crucial test of contributions to the philosophy of science ought to be their applicability to areas which are more representative of the scientific enterprise. Life science is cited as just such an area. It is quantum physics, rather than biology, which nurtures anti-realism. The most respected anti-realism today is that provided by Bas C van Fraassen; and the persuasiveness of his "Constructive Empiricism" (...) is attested to by the failure of avowed realists, such as Ian Hacking, to distance themselves very far from van Fraassen's ideas. A detailed critique of van Fraassen is presented with particular attention paid to his ideas on scientific explanation - the question of whether good explanations are true explanations being one which tends to divide realist and anti-realist. The conclusion is reached that, while realism raises - and fails to answer - a number of philosophical questions, the anti-realism provided by Bas van Fraassen is no better at answering those questions. Moreover, it is argued, van Fraassen's ideas lack plausibility as a description of science and the attitudes of scientists - particularly when attention is shifted from physics to biology. Finally, a number of suggestions are made as to how the philosophical questions posed by realism might be answered in the future. (shrink)

Pascal’s wager is the name of an argument in favor of belief in God presented by Blaise Pascal in §233 of Thoughts. Ian Hacking (1972) pointed out that Pascal’s text involves three different versions of the argument. This paper proceeds from this identification, but it concerns an examination of the rhetorical strategy realized by Pascal’s argumentation. The final form of Pascal’s argument is considered as a product that could be established only through a specific process of persuasion led with (...) respect to an intended reader with a particular set of initial beliefs. The text uses insights from the pragma‐dialectical approach to argumentation, especially the concept of rhetorical effectiveness of particular choices from the topical potential. The argumentation structure of Pascal’s wager is considered to be a reflection of the anticipated course of dialogue with the reader critically testing the sustainability of Pascal’s standpoint “You should believe in God”. Based on the argumentation reconstruction of three versions of the argument, Pascal’s idea of opponent/audience is identified. A rhetorical analysis of the effects of his argumentative strategy is proposed. The analysis is based on two perspectives on Pascal’s argument: it examines the strategy implemented consistently by all arguments and the strategy of a formulation of different versions of the wager. (shrink)

I provide in this paper an examination of the influence of Immanuel Kant on the internal realist Hilary Putnam. I begin by discussing Putnam’s transition from external, or metaphysical, realism to internal realism, and argue in favor of the view that Kant is best understood as an internal realist. Where Putnam is concerned, I am interested here only in his versions of external and internal realism and not with his more recent views. Having laid out a case for internal realism, (...) I go on to discuss and defend Putnam’s interpretation of Kant’s views on the nature of truth, arguing that although Kant accepts correspondence as a nominal definition of truth, he should not be understood as endorsing the metaphysical realist conception of truth. I conclude by arguing against those, including Ian Hacking and Allen Wood, who believe that the internal realist Putnam misinterpreted Kant on the nature of truth. This criticism rests on a misunderstanding of what Kant must have meant by ‘correspondence.’ Kant does not offer a theory of truth, but had he done so, his theory would be compatible with the internal realist Putnam’s. The view that their views on the nature of truth are incompatible is founded largely on misunderstanding of Kant, Putnam or both. (shrink)

Ian Rumfitt has proposed systems of bilateral logic for primitive speech acts of assertion and denial, with the purpose of ‘exploring the possibility of specifying the classically intended senses for the connectives in terms of their deductive use’ : 810f). Rumfitt formalises two systems of bilateral logic and gives two arguments for their classical nature. I assess both arguments and conclude that only one system satisfies the meaning-theoretical requirements Rumfitt imposes in his arguments. I then formalise an intuitionist system of (...) bilateral logic which also meets those requirements. Thus Rumfitt cannot claim that only classical bilateral rules of inference succeed in imparting a coherent sense onto the connectives. My system can be extended to classical logic by adding the intuitionistically unacceptable half of a structural rule Rumfitt uses to codify the relation between assertion and denial. Thus there is a clear sense in which, in the bilateral framework, the difference between classicism and intuitionism is not one of the rules of inference governing negation, but rather one of the relation between assertion and denial. (shrink)

In his book The Boundary Stones of Thought, Ian Rumfitt considers five arguments in favour of intuitionistic logic over classical logic. Two of these arguments are based on reflections concerning the meaning of statements in general, due to Michael Dummett and John McDowell. The remaining three are more specific, concerning statements about the infinite and the infinitesimal, statements involving vague terms, and statements about sets.Rumfitt is sympathetic to the premisses of many of these arguments, and takes some of them to (...) be effective challenges to Bivalence, the following principle: Each statement is either true or false.However, he argues that counterexamples to Bivalence do not immediately lead to counterexamples to Excluded Middle, and so do not immediately refute classical logic; here, Excluded Middle is taken to be the following principle: For each statement A, is true.Much... (shrink)

The word “hacker” has an interesting double meaning: one vastly more widespread connotation of technological mischief, even criminality, and an original meaning amongst the tech savvy as a term of highest approbation. Both meanings, however, share the idea that hackers possess a superior ability to manipulate technology according to their will (and, as with God, this superior ability to exercise will is a source of both mystifying admiration and fear). This book mainly concerns itself with the former meaning. To Thomas (...) this simultaneously mystified and vilified, elusive set of individuals exemplifies “the performance of technology” xx), showing the way in which “the cultural, social and political history of the computer...is fraught with complexity and contradictions” ix). In fact, he claims that hacking is more a cultural than technological phenomenon, citing Heidegger’s, “[t]he essence of technology is not anything technological” (56). (shrink)

Book Reviews Brian Epstein, Economics and Philosophy, FirstView Article.

Derek Jarman’s Wittgenstein (1993) is one of the very few films made about a philosopher’s life. Almost a parody of a late twentieth-century art-house movie, it contains a mimetic performance by Karl Johnson in the title role, plus cameos by Michael Gough (Bertrand Russell) and the ubiquitous Tilda Swinton (Russell’s lover, Ottoline Morrell). There is a green Martian (played by Nabil Shaban) who quizzes the young Ludwig Wittgenstein, and a collection of handsome young men sitting on deckchairs, looking puzzled and (...) gazing adoringly at the Master. The action, such as it is, takes place against a theatrical black background with a few props, and the whole thing lasts a brisk seventy minutes... (shrink)

Recent work by Ian Aitken and others has sought to re-establish a "Realist approach" to the documentary film in reaction to the postmodernist, pragmatist approach popular in the 1970s and 80s. The Saussurian/Lacanian orientation o f the semiotics that played a large role in the older film theory is rejected and replaced by an analytic theory of representation based on the work of Mary Hesse, Hilary Putnam and W.V.O. Quine. Although this may seem a setback vis-a-vis semiotics, it actually opens (...) up Realist Film Theory to an application o f the doctrine of signs more closely aligned to traditional realism, that of Pierce and Poinsot. This presentation outlines how Realist Film Theory can be enriched and developed by such an application. In particular, Aitken's model for the processing of the truth-value communicated through a documentary film can be strengthened in this manner. We will look at a short filmic example to illustrate the resulting development of the theory, manifesting how the documentary film is anchored in both reliablyrepresenting reality and creatively organizing and construing it. (shrink)

The first thing we must keep in mind is that when saying that China says this or China does that, we are not speaking of the Chinese people, but of the Sociopaths who control the CCP -- Chinese Communist Party, i.e., the Seven Senile Sociopathic Serial Killers (SSSSK) of the Standing Committee of the CCP or the 25 members of the Politburo etc.. -/- The CCP’s plans for WW3 and total domination are laid out quite clearly in Chinese govt publications (...) and speeches and this is Xi Jinping’s “China Dream”. It is a dream only for the tiny minority (perhaps a few dozen to a few hundred) who rule China and a nightmare for everyone else (including 1.4 billion Chinese). The 10 billion dollars yearly enables them or their puppets to own or control newspapers, magazines, TV and radio channels and place fake news in most major media everywhere every day. In addition, they have an army (maybe millions of people) who troll all the media placing more propaganda and drowning out legitimate commentary (the 50 cent army). -/- In addition to stripping the 3rd world of resources, a major thrust of the multi-trillion dollar Belt and Road Initiative is building military bases worldwide. They are forcing the free world into a massive high-tech arms race that makes the cold war with the Soviet Union look like a picnic. -/- Though the SSSSK, and the rest of the world’s military, are spending huge sums on advanced hardware, it is highly likely that WW3 (or the smaller engagements leading up to it) will be software dominated. It is not out of the question that the SSSSK, with probably more hackers (coders) working for them then all the rest of the world combined, will win future wars with minimal physical conflict, just by paralyzing their enemies via the net. No satellites, no phones, no communications, no financial transactions, no power grid, no internet, no advanced weapons, no vehicles, trains, ships or planes. -/- There are only two main paths to removing the CCP, freeing 1.4 billion Chinese prisoners, and ending the lunatic march to WW3. The peaceful one is to launch an all-out trade war to devastate the Chinese economy until the military gets fed up and boots out the CCP. -/- An alternative to shutting down China’s economy is a limited war, such as a targeted strike by say 50 thermobaric drones on the 20th Congress of the CCP, when all the top members are in one place, but that won’t take place until 2022 so one could hit the annual plenary meeting. The Chinese would be informed, as the attack happened, that they must lay down their arms and prepare to hold a democratic election or be nuked into the stone age. The other alternative is an all-out nuclear attack. Military confrontation is unavoidable given the CCP’s present course. It will likely happen over the islands in the South China Sea or Taiwan within a few decades, but as they establish military bases worldwide it could happen anywhere (see Crouching Tiger etc.). Future conflicts will have hardkill and softkill aspects with the stated objectives of the CCP to emphasize cyberwar by hacking and paralyzing control systems of all military and industrial communications, equipment, power plants, satellites, internet, banks, and any device or vehicle connected to the net. The SS are slowly fielding a worldwide array of manned and autonomous surface and underwater subs or drones capable of launching conventional or nuclear weapons that may lie dormant awaiting a signal from China or even looking for the signature of US ships or planes. While destroying our satellites, thus eliminating communication between the USA and our forces worldwide, they will use theirs, in conjunction with drones to target and destroy our currently superior naval forces. Of course, all of this is increasingly done automatically by AI. -/- By far the biggest ally of the CCP is the Democratic party of the USA. The choice is to stop the CCP now or watch as they extend the Chinese prison over the whole world. -/- Of course, universal surveillance and digitizing of our lives is inevitable everywhere. Anyone who does not think so is profoundly out of touch. -/- Of course it is the optomists who expect the Chinese sociopaths to rule the world while the pessimists (who view themselves as realists) expect AI sociopathy (or AS as I call it – i.e., Artificial Stupidity or Artificial Sociopathy) to take over, perhaps by 2030 Those interested in further details on the lunatic path of modern society may consult my other works such as Suicide by Democracy-an Obituary for America and the World 3rd Edition 2019 and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century: Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization 5th ed (2019) -/- . (shrink)

Predictions about autonomous weapon systems (AWS) are typically thought to channel fears that drove all the myths about intelligence embodied in matter. One of these is the idea that the technology can get out of control and ultimately lead to horrific consequences, as is the case in Mary Shelley’s classic Frankenstein. Given this, predictions about AWS are sometimes dismissed as science-fiction fear-mongering. This paper considers several analogies between AWS and other weapon systems and ultimately offers an argument that nuclear weapons (...) and their effect on the development of modern asymmetrical warfare are the best analogy to the introduction of AWS. The final section focuses on this analogy and offers speculations about the likely consequences of AWS being hacked. These speculations tacitly draw on myths and tropes about technology and AI from popular fiction, such as Frankenstein, to project a convincing model of the risks and benefits of AWS deployment. (shrink)

Forensics is proposed as a means to understand, trace, and recompile data and computational activities. It has a securitocratic dimension and one that is being developed as a means of opening processes, events and systems into a more public state. This article proposes an analysis of forces at play in the circulation of a ‘screener’ of Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight and associated files, to suggest that forensic approaches used to control flows of data may be repurposed for dis­semination. The (...) article maps a brief history of digital forensics and sets out some of its political entailments, indicating further lines of enquiry regarding the inter-relation of technosocial powers constituted in the interactions between forensics and coun­ter-measures. The article proposes that the posthumanities are partially constituted by a renewed relationship between questions of culture, subjectivity, knowledge and the technical. Some propositions for the technical as grounds for cultural politics are made. (shrink)

The last two decades have seen a rising interest in (a) the notion of a scientific phenomenon as distinct from theories and data, and (b) the intricacies of experimentally producing and stabilizing phenomena. This paper develops an analysis of the stabilization of phenomena that integrates two aspects that have largely been treated separately in the literature: one concerns the skills required for empirical work; the other concerns the strategies by which claims about phenomena are validated. I argue that in order (...) to make sense of the process of stabilization, we need to distinguish between two types of phenomena: phenomena as patterns in the data ( surface regularities ) and phenomena as underlying (or hidden ) regularities. I show that the epistemic relationships that data bear to each of these types of phenomena are different: Data patterns are instantiated by individual data, whereas underlying regularities are indicated by individual data, insofar as they instantiate a data pattern. Drawing on an example from memory research, I argue that neither of these two kinds of phenomenon can be stabilized in isolation. I conclude that what is stabilized when phenomena are stabilized is the fit between surface regularities and hidden regularities. (shrink)

Short paper about debate on cognitive meaning of religious use of language in early analytic philosophy of religion. Published in Companion to Philosophy of Religion, edited by Janusz Salamon, Cracow: WAM, 2016.

पहली बात हमें ध्यान में रखना चाहिए कि जब यह कहना है कि चीन यह कहता है या चीन ऐसा करता है, तो हम चीनी लोगों की बात नहीं कर रहे हैं, लेकिन उन सोशियोपैथों की जो सीसीपी को नियंत्रित करते हैं - चीनी कम्युनिस्ट पार्टी, अर्थात, सात सेनेले सोसाइपैथिक सीरियल किलर (एसएसएसएसके) के सीसीपी की स्थायी समिति या पोलितब्यूरो आदि के 25 सदस्य। -/- WW3 और कुल प्रभुत्व के लिए सीसीपी की योजना चीनी सरकार के प्रकाशनों और भाषणों में (...) काफी स्पष्ट रूप से बाहर रखी हैं और यह शी जिनपिंग की "चीन ड्रीम" है. यह केवल छोटे अल्पसंख्यक के लिए एक सपना है (शायद कुछ दर्जन से कुछ सौ) जो चीन शासन और हर किसी के लिए एक बुरा सपना (1.4 अरब चीनी सहित). 10 अरब डॉलर वार्षिक उन्हें या उनकी कठपुतलियों के मालिक हैं या समाचार पत्र, पत्रिकाओं, टीवी और रेडियो चैनलों को नियंत्रित करने और सबसे प्रमुख मीडिया में हर जगह हर दिन नकली खबर जगह सक्षम बनाता है. इसके अलावा, वे एक सेना है (शायद लाखों लोगों के) जो सभी मीडिया और अधिक प्रचार रखने और वैध टिप्पणी (50 प्रतिशत सेना) बाहर डूब ट्रोल. -/- संसाधनों के 3rd दुनिया अलग करना के अलावा, बहु खरब डॉलर बेल्ट और सड़क पहल का एक प्रमुख जोर दुनिया भर में सैन्य ठिकानों का निर्माण कर रहा है. वे एक बड़े पैमाने पर उच्च तकनीक हथियारों की दौड़ है कि सोवियत संघ के साथ शीत युद्ध एक पिकनिक की तरह लग रही है में मुक्त दुनिया मजबूर कर रहे हैं. -/- हालांकि SSSSK, और दुनिया की सेना के बाकी, उन्नत हार्डवेयर पर भारी रकम खर्च कर रहे हैं, यह अत्यधिक संभावना है कि WW3 (या छोटे सगाई यह करने के लिए अग्रणी) सॉफ्टवेयर प्रभुत्व होगा. यह सवाल से बाहर नहीं है कि SSSSK, शायद अधिक हैकर्स के साथ (कोडर्स) उनके लिए काम कर रहे तो संयुक्त दुनिया के सभी बाकी, कम से कम शारीरिक संघर्ष के साथ भविष्य के युद्ध जीत जाएगा, बस नेट के माध्यम से अपने दुश्मनों को paralyzing द्वारा. कोई उपग्रहों, कोई फोन, कोई संचार, कोई वित्तीय लेनदेन, कोई पावर ग्रिड, कोई इंटरनेट, कोई उन्नत हथियार, कोई वाहन, गाड़ियों, जहाजों या विमानों. -/- वहाँ केवल दो मुख्य रास्ते सीसीपी को हटाने के लिए कर रहे हैं, 1.4 अरब चीनी कैदियों को मुक्त, और WW3 के लिए पागल मार्च समाप्त. शांतिपूर्ण एक एक सब बाहर व्यापार युद्ध शुरू करने के लिए चीनी अर्थव्यवस्था को तबाह जब तक सेना तंग आ जाता है और सीसीपी बाहर जूते है. -/- चीन की अर्थव्यवस्था को बंद करने के लिए एक विकल्प एक सीमित युद्ध है, जैसे कि सीसीपी के 20वें कांग्रेस पर 50thermobaric ड्रोन कहते हैं, जब सभी शीर्ष सदस्य ों को एक ही स्थान पर हैं, लेकिन यह 2022 तक नहीं होगा तो एक लक्षित हड़ताल एक वार्षिक पूर्ण बैठक हिट सकता है. चीनियों को सूचित किया जाएगा, जैसा कि हमला हुआ है, कि उन्हें अपने हथियार डाल देके और लोकतांत्रिक चुनाव कराने के लिए तैयार रहना चाहिए या पत्थर की उम्र में नकेल कसी हुई है। दूसरा विकल्प एक सर्व-बाह्य परमाणु हमला है। सीपी के वर्तमान पाठ्यक्रम को देखते हुए सैन्य टकराव अपरिहार्य है। यह संभावना कुछ दशकों के भीतर दक्षिण चीन सागर या ताइवान में द्वीपों पर होगा, लेकिन के रूप में वे दुनिया भर में सैन्य ठिकानों की स्थापना यह कहीं भी हो सकता है (क्रोचिंग टाइगर आदि देखें). भविष्य के संघर्षों में सीसीपी के कथित उद्देश्यों के साथ कठोर और नरम पहलुओं को होगा ताकि सभी सैन्य और औद्योगिक संचार, उपकरण, बिजली संयंत्रों, उपग्रहों, इंटरनेट, बैंकों की नियंत्रण प्रणालियों को हैक करके और पैरालाइजिंग करके साइबरवार पर जोर दिया जा सके। और किसी भी डिवाइस या वाहन नेट से जुड़ा है। एसएस धीरे-धीरे मानव और स्वायत्त सतह और पानी के नीचे subs या पारंपरिक या परमाणु हथियार है कि चीन से एक संकेत का इंतजार कर निष्क्रिय झूठ हो सकता है या यहां तक कि अमेरिकी जहाजों या विमानों के हस्ताक्षर के लिए देख शुरू करने में सक्षम ड्रोन की एक दुनिया भर में सरणी क्षेत्ररक्षण कर रहे हैं। जबकि हमारे उपग्रहों को नष्ट करने, इस प्रकार दुनिया भर में संयुक्त राज्य अमेरिका और हमारे बलों के बीच संचार को नष्ट करने, वे उनके उपयोग करेंगे, ड्रोन के साथ संयोजन के रूप में लक्ष्य और हमारे वर्तमान में बेहतर नौसेना बलों को नष्ट करने के लिए. बेशक, यह सब तेजी से एअर इंडिया द्वारा स्वचालित रूप से किया जाता है. -/- द्वारा अब तक सीसीपी का सबसे बड़ा सहयोगी संयुक्त राज्य अमेरिका के डेमोक्रेटिक पार्टी है. विकल्प सीसीपी अब बंद करो या घड़ी के रूप में वे पूरी दुनिया में चीनी जेल का विस्तार है. -/- बेशक, सार्वभौमिक निगरानी और हमारे जीवन के digitizing हर जगह अपरिहार्य है. जो कोई ऐसा नहीं सोचता है, वह गहराई से संपर्क से बाहर है। -/- बेशक यह optomists जो चीनी socipaths दुनिया पर शासन करने की उम्मीद है, जबकि निराशावादी (जो खुद को यथार्थवादी के रूप में देखने) ऐ socipathy की उम्मीद (या के रूप में के रूप में मैं इसे कहते हैं - यानी, कृत्रिम बेवकूफी या कृत्रिम समाज) पर ले, शायद 2030 तक आधुनिक समाज के पागल रास्ते पर अधिक जानकारी में रुचि रखने वालों को लोकतंत्र द्वारा आत्महत्या जैसे अन्य कार्यों से परामर्श कर सकते हैं- अमेरिका के लिए एक प्रसूति और विश्व 3rd संस्करण 2019 और 21सेंट में आत्मघाती यूटोपियाई भ्रम सदी: दर्शन, मानव प्रकृति और सभ्यता के पतन 5वें एड (2019) . (shrink)

Panentheism has recently become a widely accepted and appreciated concept among scholars in the science-theology dialogue, and its theological repercussions have been discussed to great extent. Yet, there remains to be studied in more detail the notion of the philosophical foundations of the term. A prominent gap in our understanding of these foundations is the potential similarity between the metaphysics of Hegel and Whitehead, their understanding of the transcendence and immanence of God, and their respective versions of panentheism. In this (...) article, I present a critical reflection on the possible resemblance between process thought and Hegelian metaphysics and philosophy of God. In the last section I refer to those who use panentheism within the science-theology dialogue. I try to specify which of the two versions of panentheism, that of Hegel or Whitehead, is more popular among those scholars. (shrink)

This article offers two arguments for the conclusion that we should refuse on moral grounds to establish a human presence on the surface of Mars. The first argument appeals to a principle constraining the use of invasive or destructive techniques of scientific investigation. The second appeals to a principle governing appropriate human behavior in wilderness. These arguments are prefaced by two preliminary sections. The first preliminary section argues that authors working in space ethics have good reason to shift their focus (...) away from theory-based arguments in favor of arguments that develop in terms of pretheoretic beliefs. The second argues that of the popular justifications for sending humans to Mars only appeals to scientific curiosity can survive reflective scrutiny. (shrink)

As engineering applications require management of ever larger volumes of data, ontologies offer the potential to capture, manage, and augment data with the capability for automated reasoning and semantic querying. Unfortunately, considerable barriers hinder wider deployment of ontologies in engineering. Key among these is lack of a shared top-level ontology to unify and organise disparate aspects of the field and coordinate co-development of orthogonal ontologies. As a result, many engineering ontologies are limited to their scope, and functionally difficult to extend (...) or interoperate with other engineering ontologies. This paper demonstrates how the use of a top-level ontology, specifically the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), greatly facilitates interoperability of multiple engineering-related ontologies. We constructed a system of formal linked ontologies by re-engineering legacy ontologies to be conformant with BFO and developing new BFO-conformant ontologies to capture knowledge in the engineering design, enterprise, human factors, manufacturing, and application domain of additive manufacturing. The resulting Integrated Framework for Additively Manufactured Products (IFAMP), including the body knowledge instantiated on its basis, serve as the basis for a proposed Design with Additive Manufacturing Method (DWAM), which we believe can support the design of innovative products with semantically enhanced ideation tools and enhanced access to application domain knowledge. The method and its facilitation through the ontological framework are demonstrated using a case study in medicine. (shrink)

A growing number of authors defend putative examples of knowledge from falsehood (KFF), inferential knowledge based in a critical or essential way on false premises, and they argue that KFF has important implications for many areas of epistemology (whether evidence can be false, the Gettier debate, defeasibility theories of knowledge, etc.). I argue, however, that there is no KFF, because in any supposed example either the falsehood does not contribute to the knowledge or the subject lacks knowledge. In particular, I (...) show that if the subject actually has knowledge in putative KFF cases, then there is always a veridical evidential path meeting the basing conditions that accounts for her knowledge; if there is no such path, then the subject is in a type of Gettier case. All the recent arguments that rely on KFF are therefore based on a mistake. (shrink)

Act-based theories of content hold that propositions are identical to acts of predication that we perform in thought and talk. To undergo an occurrent thought with a particular content just is to perform the act of predication that individuates that content. But identifying the content of a thought with the performance of an act of predication makes it difficult to explain the intentionality of bouletic mental activity, like wanting and desiring. In this paper, I argue that this difficulty is insurmountable: (...) the contents of occurrent desires cannot be determined by acts of predication. (shrink)