In recent years, the growing academic field called “Data Science” has made many promises. On closer inspection, relatively few of these promises have come to fruition. A critique of Data Science from the phenomenological tradition can take many forms. This paper addresses the promise of “participation” in Data Science, taking inspiration from Paul Majkut’s 2000 work in Glimpse, “Empathy’s Impostor: Interactivity and Intersubjectivity,” and some insights from Heidegger’s "The Question Concerning Technology." The description of Data Science (...) provided in the scholarly literature includes “the study of the generalizable extraction of knowledge from data” (Dhar 2013, 64), “data stewardship and data sharing…access to data at higher volumes and more quickly, and the potential for replication and augmentation of existing research” (Hartter et al., 2013, 1), and “personal information, health status, daily activities and shopping preferences that are recorded and used to give us instant feedback and recommendations based on previous online behavior.” (Shin 2013) United States universities have begun to offer graduate programs in “data science”, anticipating the growth of this field for marketing, national security, and health industries. These universities include New York University, Columbia University, Stanford, Northwestern, and Syracuse. (shrink)

Vietnam, with a geographical proximity and a high volume of trade with China, was the first country to record an outbreak of the new Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 or SARS-CoV-2. While the country was expected to have a high risk of transmission, as of April 4, 2020—in comparison to attempts to contain the disease around the world—responses from Vietnam are being seen as prompt and effective in protecting the interests of its citizens, (...) with 239 confirmed cases and no fatalities. This study analyzes the situation in terms of Vietnam’s policy response, social media and science journalism. A self-made web crawl engine was used to scan and collect official media news related to COVID-19 between the beginning of January and April 4, yielding a comprehensive dataset of 14,952 news items. The findings shed light on how Vietnam—despite being under-resourced—has demonstrated political readiness to combat the emerging pandemic since the earliest days. Timely communication on any developments of the outbreak from the government and the media, combined with up-to-date research on the new virus by the Vietnamese science community, have altogether provided reliable sources of information. By emphasizing the need for immediate and genuine cooperation between government, civil society and private individuals, the case study offers valuable lessons for other nations concerning not only the concurrent fight against the COVID-19 pandemic but also the overall responses to a public health crisis. (shrink)

The aim of the present article is to discuss several consequences of the Open Science from a perspective of science communication and philosophy of communication. Apart from the purely communicative and philosophical issues, the paper deals with the questions that concern the science popularization process through social media. The article consists of three sections: the first one suggests a definition of science communication and social media, the second examines the transformation of science in (...) the Age of the Internet and considers the influence of social media on science communication, the third and final one presents some case studies and philosophical observations. The most important conclusion to be reached here is that the social media have changed science and science communication. Twitter and blogs as novelty tools of science communication can be useful and meaningful for both science and society. Furthermore, social media can be used to facilitate broader involvement of citizens in the discussion about science. (shrink)

When doubts were first raised about the veracity of the dramatic advances in stem cell research announced by Professor Hwang Woo-Suk, a significant minority response was to question the qualifications of journalists to investigate the matter. In this paper I examine the contemporary relationships between science, scientists, the public, and the media. In the modern context the progress of science often relies on the media to mobilise public support for research and also for the purpose of (...) communication within the scientific community. As a result, attempts to counterpose "science" and "the media" should be treated with some caution. I argue that because of the essential role played by ethics in good science, journalists may in fact sometimes be well placed to investigate scientists. At the conclusion of my paper I draw out some of the implications of my analysis for the ethics of investigative journalism directed towards scientific research. (shrink)

If media studies are to become established as a genuine science, then it needs to be determined what the subject matter of this science is to be. I propose a specification of this subject matter as consisting in: 1. the new sorts of digital entities that have been added to social reality through the invention of the digital computer, and 2. the new sorts of interactions involving human beings which such entities make possible. I support this proposal (...) by examining examples of some of the ways in which the digital products of emerging media differ from entities of other sorts. I then draw consequences from this examination to demonstrate how these products mark out a new realm within the larger domain of social ontology. (shrink)

Introduction. The development of legal culture and a culture of human rights in the modern world through media technologies, is acquiring special significance in connection with the processes of globalization and the spread of media in recent decades. The purpose of the article is to study the prospects for the use of media education in the formation of the legal social culture and a culture of human rights. Materials and methods. Based on a study of domestic and (...) foreign sources, issues of media education, media literacy, spiritual and moral education, the legal culture of society, the phenomenon of post-truth and ways of forming critical, creative thinking are considered. The use of general scientific, philosophical, and socio-pedagogical methods has made it possible to study media education as a dialogue of learning, stimulating the development of rational, critical thinking, focused on the search for the value foundations of intellectual and social activity. Results. The development of the field of information and communication technologies determines the principles for the formation of the content and orientation of modern education. Media education is interlinked with the development of democracy and human rights. It influences the formation of a culture of citizen participation, their active social position, civic and political culture. Media education plays a significant role in shaping the legal culture of society since critical media research and information research focuses on the analysis of power structures and structures of dominance in the media. A study of the interpretations of the concepts of "media education" and "media literacy" made it possible to show that media education focuses a person on a critical approach to media content. One of the main issues of media education is teaching a person the skills to critically study media and media technologies, which involves addressing the technological, cultural and historical specifics of specific media used at a specific time and place. Information and communication technologies have changed the way of life, work, communication, and ways of selfpresentation, the formation of values, participation in socially significant events. Therefore, a critical approach to mass media should be based on knowledge of socio-philosophical theories, ethics and research in the field of mass media. Discussion. Mass media are constructing a history of human rights, which updates the topic of the media policy of human rights, combining socio-legal, cultural and media theories. Education in the field of acquiring information perception skills, the ability to correctly understand the importance of audiovisual images, to competently handle and navigate information flows are necessary for the life of a modern person in society. (shrink)

This article investigates what constitutes good reason, in particular in scientific communication. I will start out with a general description of what scientists do and will identify the good argument as an integral part of all science. Employing some simple examples, I will then move on to derive some necessary conditions for the goodness of an argument. Along the way, I will introduce various basic concepts in logic and briefly talk about the nature of human knowledge. I will conclude (...) by relating my discussion of good reasoning in science to critical thinking in general and explain why I believe that critical thinking is at the heart of a well-functioning liberal democracy. (shrink)

Margaret Atwood and David Suzuki are two of the most prominent Canadian public ‎intellectuals ‎involved in the global warming debate. They both argue that anthropogenic global ‎warming is ‎occurring, warn against its grave consequences, and urge governments and the ‎public to take ‎immediate, decisive, extensive, and profound measures to prevent it. They differ, ‎however, in the ‎reasons and evidence they provide in support of their position. While Suzuki ‎stresses the scientific ‎evidence in favour of the global warming theory and the (...) scientific ‎consensus around it, Atwood is ‎suspicious of the objectivity of science, and draws on an ‎idiosyncratic neo-Malthusian theory of ‎human development. Their implicit views ‎about the cognitive authority of science may be ‎identified with Critical Contextual Empiricism ‎and Feminist Standpoint Epistemology, respectively, ‎both of which face difficulties with ‎providing solid grounds for the position they advocate.‎ ‎. (shrink)

This paper offers an analysis of the relation between political populism and mass media, and how this relation becomes problematic for democratic societies. It focuses on the fact that mass media, due to their purpose and infrastructure, can unintentionally reinforce populist messages. Research findings from communication science and political psychology are used to illustrate how, for example, a combination of mass media agenda setting and motivated reasoning can influence citizens’ political decisions and impair their political autonomy. (...) This poses a particular normative challenge for modern democracies: how to counter these populism-supporting effects within the constraints of democratic legitimacy? After showing how severely limited legal measures to curb populist media effects would be, the paper argues in favour of media competence education as a way of providing future citizens with an epistemic toolkit to navigate the media environment and strengthen their political autonomy. (shrink)

This Editorial summarizes the papers in a Frontiers in Communication Research Topic that looks at science journalism’s mediating role between the production of scientific knowledge and its public uptake. The four papers in the Research Topic consider science communication and journalism from the perspective of philosophy of science and epistemology. Framing the Research Topic is a conceptual analysis of the multiple aims of science communication and an assessment of empirical evidence to date regarding whether these aims (...) are being met. The other papers consider the practices of science journalism, the public reception of science information, and how the process of science is presented in three major mass media outlets. (shrink)

Take a question like the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines. Whether an ordinary citizen or a public official can acquire the correct answer to this question depends on the functioning of the epistemic basic structure of their society. The epistemic basic structure of a society consists of “the institutions that have a crucial role in the distribution of knowledge, that is, in the production and dissemination of knowledge, and in ensuring that people have the capability to assimilate what is (...) disseminated by providing them with the necessary educational background and intellectual skills”. It includes institutions of science and education, the media, search engines, libraries, museums, think tanks, and various government agencies. (shrink)

Academic social networks and social media have revolutionised the way individuals gather information and express themselves, particularly in academia, science, and research. Through the lens of academics, this study aims to investigate the epistemological and psychosocial aspects of these knowledge sources. The epistemological attitude model presented a framework to delve into and reflect upon the existence of knowledge sources, comprising subjective, interactional, and knowledge dimensions. One hundred and twenty-six university academics participated in this study, including lecturers and researchers (...) from different higher education institutions in Latvia. The study employed two methods: the Epistemological Attitudes towards Sources of Knowledge Questionnaire and the Epistemological Attitudes towards Sources of Knowledge Semantic Questionnaire. The data analysis involved several procedures, including exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, correlation analysis, and test statistics. By implementing these methods, the study gained valuable insights into the sources of knowledge, examining them from two perspectives. The first perspective brought attention to the differences in academics’ appraisals by discussing their understanding, approach, use, and valuations of these sources. By scrutinising the constructs of meanings, the second perspective sheds light on the anticipated knowledge which is deemed ideal, the concrete knowledge that is both social and objective, and the subjectively valuable nature of academic social networks and social media. The findings underscore the specialised knowledge and qualities that academics rely on for producing knowledge. In terms of epistemology, methodology, social science, and education, the study holds theoretical and practical implications, especially in comprehending knowledge and its sources. (shrink)

Women, the half of the global population, having being persuaded of the images created by media, are in turmoil to preserve their womanhood—is now becoming a question of many of the researchers over the globe. Over the years, media, as it is one of the great contributors to upgrading the human civilisation to a greater extent, are obviously contributing its role—to develop humanity, in the construction of ideas regarding rights, duties, democracy, laws and many core ideas of the (...) modern world. But, side by side, the growing awareness among the womenfolk has made them conscious about the images being produced in media contents, be it print or electronic media, to question media as being coping the patriarchal notion on women and womanhood and regenerating the concept of popularity of male gaze. (shrink)

In recent work, Stephen John (2018, 2019) has deepened the social epistemological perspective on expert testimony by arguing that science communication often operates at the institutional level, and that at that level sincerity, transparency, and honesty are not necessarily epistemic virtues. In this paper I consider his arguments in the context of science journalism, a key constituent of the science communication ecosystem. I argue that this context reveals both the weakness of his arguments and a need for (...) further analysis of how non-experts learn from experts. (shrink)

This paper discusses the implications for public participation in science opened by the sharing of information via electronic media. The ethical dimensions of information flow and control are linked to questions of autonomy, authority and appropriate exploitation of knowledge. It argues that, by lowering the boundaries that limit access and participation by wider active audiences, both scientific identity and practice are challenged in favor of extra-disciplinary and avocational communities such as scientific enthusiasts and lay experts. Reconfigurations of hierarchy, (...) mediated by new channels of information flow, are increasingly visible at the interface between professional and non-professional practice. Setting the scene by surveying the role of the media in defining twentieth-century contexts of lay science, the paper illustrates the appropriation and recuperation of scientific authority being played out in two contemporary models of active public engagement: so-called “citizen science” and varieties of “crowd-sourced science”. Both participatory models are increasingly reliant on information exchange via social media, but may be implemented to support distinctly different societal goals and beneficiaries. (shrink)

What guides, in fact, the spirit of the writer, a consciousness in the training of his sense of humanity and inhumanity of others, or just entertains readers who see life as uninteresting, as a "thing" that does not deserve to be lived only by the playful side of things and people? Yes, what commands the author’s conscience? The Id, the Ego? God? Does he accept a Voice, which though bothering him, gives him advice for free, dismissing the psychiatrist and then (...) shedding, further and further his verve, pleasant or unpleasant as the bile of many media? What bothers and commands you is the mob, the disorderly crowd of bodies and voices, of touches and insults, delinquency, injustice in the face of those who defend valid ideals.... Like the Depeche Mode song, "Suffer well...". (shrink)

Metaphysical considerations aside, today’s inheritors of the tradition of natural philosophy are primarily scientists. However, they are oblivious to the human factor involved in science and in seeing how political, religious, and other ideologies contaminate our visions of nature. In general, philosophers observe human (historical, sociological, and psychological) processes within the construction of theories, as well as in the development of scientific activity itself. -/- In our time, feminism—along with accompanying ideas of identity politics under the slogan “diversity, inclusion, (...) equity”—has emerged in science policies. The vast majority of scientists (including myself) are convinced that discrimination is reprehensible. We also believe that all individuals of any sex, race, ethnic group, or ideology should be valued in academia solely based on his or her merits and potential through equality programs. However, as I will show in this article, political indoctrination has inadmissibly undertaken the struggle for equality in academic institutions in Western countries. I argue here that universities and research institutes should be politically free (neutral) to encourage academic freedom. -/- One negative aspect of equality programs is that worldwide, scientists are harassed for expressing opinions related to the “gender” issue. This situation severely restricts scientists’ freedom of expression, even within the limits of the law. Codes of conduct extending beyond legal boundaries are examples of this issue. Scientists who express their views about “gender” are often harassed, bullied, and socially or academically excluded. Thus, we are witnessing a wave of proselytizing in research institutes and science-associated media. Today, there is widespread biased propaganda of “victimhood”. This propaganda proposes positive discrimination and increasing women’s participation in unnatural ways. It also bends the history of science by overvaluing the creations of forgotten women, offering lectures on indoctrination, organizing congresses on gender and science, and persecuting anyone who sees the subject differently. All of this covered by a multitude of associations that financially benefit from these discourses through succulent subsidies of public money. Apparently, feminism is no longer about fighting against discrimination. Instead, it is about imposing an ideology and giving more power to one group of people. Thus, we must ask whether the end justifies the means. (shrink)

Public discourse is increasingly characterized by a climate of intolerance, a culture of exclusion (cancel culture) and thinking in categories of political correctness. (German) language is systematically manipulated by public broadcasting in line with a gender political agenda. A more and more uncritical and ideologically coloured trend journalism is on the rise there. The Freedom and quality of science are also methodically undermined due to nonproven and populist claims. -/- Der Öffentliche Diskurs ist zunehmend geprägt von einem Klima der (...) Intoleranz, einer Kultur der Ausgrenzung (cancel culture) und einem Denken in Kategorien der political correctness. Die (deutsche) Sprache wird im Sinne einer genderpolitischen Agenda im Öffentlichen Rundfunk systematisch manipuliert. Ein zunehmend unkritischer und ideologisch gefärbter Tendenzjournalismus gewinnt dort an Terrain. Auch die Freiheit und die Qualität der Wissenschaft werden aufgrund unhaltbarer und populistischer Behauptungen methodisch untergraben. -/- . (shrink)

The article aims to determine how university professors critically perceive and evaluate information when interacting with the media sphere. The study's relevance is due to the insufficient elaboration of Russian teachers' attitude to the information in the media sphere, which is significant in developing students' critical thinking. The study analyzes theoretical sources and documents on critical thinking in the media sphere and the results of processing empirical data obtained from questioning teachers. The main measuring instrument is a (...) questionnaire survey of university professors with various lengths of service. The study involved 76 teachers from Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B.N. Yeltsin. Ural State Pedagogical University (Ekaterinburg, Russia). Linguistics University of Nizhny Novgorod (Nizhny Novgorod, Russia). The data obtained from the study of the teachers' attitude to the information content of the media sphere show a predominant critical attitude in assessing the reliability and availability of information on social networking platforms. This conclusion is important for personality traits that develop students' critical thinking. (shrink)

This paper studies the connection between social media addiction and mental disorder from the existing investigation among undergraduate students. A comprehensive document search was conducted by using six electronic databases, including PubMed, Scopus, ScienceDirect, Web of Science, JSTOR, ProQuest Education to identify articles published before November 21st, 2019. All collected papers focused on studying social media addiction and psychosis. Two reviewers individualistically evaluated the quality of the study by using the Joanna Briggs Institute’s approach. Five articles were (...) filtered out through the screening process and included in the review. The high prevalence of social addiction among college students (9.7% ~ 41%) has been clarified. The association between social media addiction and mental disorders is positive for student health. This article contributes to raising awareness and finding solutions to these risk problems. The study also confirms the connection between online shopping addiction and eating disorders among social addicts. We also discuss the causes and harms of social media addiction. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary exploration synthesizes the philosophical reflections of Adam Kaiser with empirical insights from popular science to unravel the intricate dynamics of nostalgia, morality, and mass entertainment in a modern world increasingly disconnected from traditional values. Examining the psychological, neurobiological, and cultural aspects, the essay investigates how nostalgia serves as a potent coping mechanism, offering temporary relief from the moral complexities and existential questions of contemporary life. Popular science contributes valuable perspectives from fields such as media psychology, (...) cognitive neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and media ethics, shedding light on the relationship between nostalgia, morality, and human behavior. The essay emphasizes the role of media literacy, group dynamics, and the ethics of nostalgic media production, providing a comprehensive understanding of the multifaceted nature of our human experience. The synergy between philosophy and popular science empowers us to navigate the labyrinth of nostalgia, recognizing it as both a reflection of innate psychological mechanisms and a product of societal dynamics. Ultimately, this exploration invites us to embrace the richness of human cognition and culture, acknowledging the enduring quest to understand and reconcile the past with the present. (shrink)

This paper examined the relationship between tertiary students’ social media management attitudes and their academic performance in Cross River State, with a specific focus on Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. To achieve this purpose, three null hypotheses were formulated accordingly. The study adopted a correlational research design. Cluster and simple random sampling techniques were used to select a sample of 1000 students from the entire population. The instrument used for data collection was a questionnaire titled: Tertiary Students’ Social Media (...) Management and Academic Performance Questionnaire (TESSMMAPQ). The reliability of the instrument was established through Cronbach alpha and estimate of .93 was obtained indicating that the instrument was internally consistent in measuring what it purports to measure. Pearson Product Moment Correlation Analysis used to analyze data and to test the hypotheses at .05 level of significance. Findings revealed that there is no significant relationship between tertiary students Facebook management attitudes (r. cal.0.032 < crit. r.0.062), WhatsApp management attitudes (r. cal.0.038 < crit. r.0.062), and Instagram management attitudes (r. cal.-0.009 < crit. r.0.062) respectively, with their academic performance. Based on these findings it was recommended among others that; tertiary students' social media usage should be regulated by smartphones producers and internet service providers; in such a way that a maximum monthly login interval (MMLI) is provided that will restrict users to a limited number of login chances. This will ensure that students maintain focus when they have been barred. (shrink)

Many philosophers hold that generics (i.e., unquantified generalizations) are pervasive in communication and that when they are about social groups, this may offend and polarize people because generics gloss over variations between individuals. Generics about social groups might be particularly common on Twitter (X). This remains unexplored, however. Using machine learning (ML) techniques, we therefore developed an automatic classifier for social generics, applied it to 1.1 million tweets about people, and analyzed the tweets. While it is often suggested that generics (...) are ubiquitous in everyday communication, we found that most tweets (78%) about people contained no generics. However, tweets with generics received more “likes” and retweets. Furthermore, while recent psychological research may lead to the prediction that tweets with generics about political groups are more common than tweets with generics about ethnic groups, we found the opposite. However, consistent with recent claims that political animosity is less constrained by social norms than animosity against gender and ethnic groups, negative tweets with generics about political groups were significantly more prevalent and retweeted than negative tweets about ethnic groups. Our study provides the first ML-based insights into the use and impact of social generics on Twitter. (shrink)

I attribute to Aristotle a theory of sensible qualities that straddles the modern debate between reductive physicalist and primitivist theories of color. On the interpretation I defend, Aristotle identifies sensible qualities with the physical properties of sensibly qualified bodies in virtue of which they move and affect perceivers and sense media. Nevertheless, I argue, Aristotle thinks that the essential nature of these qualities is revealed in ordinary sense experience. From a modern perspective, the resulting picture of sensible qualities as (...) simultaneously causes and manifest features of sense experience appears naive. But as I hope to show, it is in fact the product of an explanatorily sophisticated scientific theory, one which Aristotle finds necessary to meet the complex demands that, for him, make sensible qualities an ontological problem. (shrink)

We undeniably live in an information age—as, indeed, did those who lived before us. After all, as the cultural historian Robert Darnton pointed out: ‘every age was an age of information, each in its own way’ (Darnton 2000: 1). Darnton was referring to the news media, but his insight surely also applies to the sciences. The practices of acquiring, storing, labeling, organizing, retrieving, mobilizing, and integrating data about the natural world has always been an enabling aspect of scientific work. (...) Natural history and its descendant discipline of biological taxonomy are prime examples of sciences dedicated to creating and managing systems of ordering data. In some sense, the idea of biological taxonomy as an information science is commonplace. Perhaps it is because of its self-evidence that the information science perspective on taxonomy has not been a major theme in the history and philosophy of science. The botanist Vernon Heywood once pointed out that historians of biology, in their ‘preoccupation with the development of the sciences of botany and zoology… [have] diverted attention from the role of taxonomy as an information science’ (Heywood 1985: 11). More specifically, he argued that historians had failed to appreciate how principles and practices that can be traced to Linnaeus constituted ‘a change in the nature of taxonomy from a local or limited folk communication system and later a codified folk taxonomy to a formal system of information science [that] marked a watershed in the history of biology’ (ibid.). A similar observation could be made about twentieth-century philosophy of biology, which mostly skipped over practical and epistemic questions about information management in taxonomy. The taxonomic themes that featured in the emerging philosophy of biology literature in the second half of the twentieth century were predominantly metaphysical in orientation. This is illustrated by what has become known as the ‘essentialism story’: an account about the essentialist nature of pre- Darwinian taxonomy that used to be accepted by many historians and philosophers, and which stimulated efforts to document and interpret shifts in the metaphysical understanding of species and (natural) classification (Richards 2010; Winsor 2003; Wilkins 2009). Although contemporary debates in the philosophy of taxonomy have moved on, much discussion continues to focus on conceptual and metaphysical issues surrounding the nature of species and the principles of classification. Discussions centring on whether species are individuals, classes, or kinds have sprung up as predictably as perennials. Raucous debates have arisen even with the aim of accommodating the diversity of views: is monism, pluralism, or eliminativism about the species category the best position to take? In addition to these, our disciplines continue to interrogate what is the nature of these different approaches to classification: are they representational or inferential roles of different approaches to classification (evolutionary taxonomy, phenetics, phylogenetic systematics)? While there is still much to learn from these discussions—in which we both actively participate—our aim with this topical collection has been to seek different entrypoints and address underexposed themes in the history and philosophy of taxonomy. We believe that approaching taxonomy as an information science prompts new questions and can open up new philosophical vistas worth exploring. A twenty-first century information science turn in the history and philosophy of taxonomy is already underway. In scientific practice and in daily life it is hard to escape the imaginaries of Big Data and the constant threats of being ‘flooded with data’. In the life sciences, these developments are often associated with the socalled bioinformatics crisis that can hopefully be contained by a new, interdisciplinary breed of bioinformaticians. These new concepts, narratives, and developments surrounding the centrality of data and information systems in the biological and biomedical sciences have raised important philosophical questions about their challenges and implications. But historical perspectives are just as necessary to judge what makes our information age different from those that preceded us. Indeed, as the British zoologist Charles Godfray has often pointed out, the piles of data that are being generated in contemporary systematic biology have led to a second bioinformatics crisis, the first being the one that confronted Linnaeus in the mid-18th century (Godfray 2007). Although our aim is to clear a path for new discussions of taxonomy from an information science-informed point of view, we continue where others in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science have already trod. We believe that an appreciation of biological taxonomy as an information science raises many questions about the philosophical, theoretical, material, and practical aspects of the use and revision of biological nomenclatures in different local and global communities of scientists and citizen scientists. In particular, conceiving of taxonomy as an information science directs attention to the temporalities of managing an accumulating data about classified entities that are themselves subject to revision, to the means by which revision is accomplished, and to the semantic, material, and collaborative contexts that mediate the execution of revisions. (shrink)

In August 2002, three Indian computer scientists published a paper, ‘PRIMES is in P’, online. It presents a ‘deterministic algorithm’ which determines in ‘polynomial time’ if a given number is a prime number. The story was quickly picked up by the general press, and by this means spread through the scientific community of complexity theorists, where it was hailed as a major theoretical breakthrough. This is although scientists regarded the media reports as vulgar popularizations. When the paper was published (...) in a peer-reviewed journal only two years later, the three scientists had already received wide recognition for their accomplishment. Current sociological theory challenges the ability to clearly distinguish on independent epistemic grounds between distorted and non-distorted scientific knowledge. It views the demarcation lines between such forms of presentation as contextual and unstable. In my paper, I challenge this view. By systematically surveying the popular press coverage of the ‘PRIMES is in P’ affair, I argue--against the prevailing new orthodoxy--that distorted simplifications of scientific knowledge are distinguishable from non-distorted simplifications on independent epistemic grounds. I argue that in the ‘PRIMES is in P’ affair, the three scientists could ride on the wave of the general press-distorted coverage of their algorithm, while counting on their colleagues’ ability to distinguish genuine accounts from distorted ones. Thus, their scientific reputation was unharmed. This suggests that the possibility of the existence of independent epistemic standards must be incorporated into the new SSK model of popularization. (shrink)

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has brought science to the fore of public discourse and, considering the complexity of the issues involved, with it also the challenge of effective and informative science communication. This is a particularly contentious topic, in that it is both highly emotional in and of itself; sits at the nexus of the decision-making process regarding the handling of the pandemic, which has effected lockdowns, social behaviour measures, business closures, and others; and concerns the recording and (...) reporting of disease mortality. To clarify a point that has caused much controversy and anger in the public debate, the first part of the present article discusses the very fundamentals underlying the issue of causative attribution with regards to mortality, lays out the foundations of the statistical means of mortality estimation, and concretizes these by analysing the recording and reporting practices adopted in England and their widespread misrepresentations. The second part of the article is empirical in nature. I present data and an analysis of how COVID-19 mortality has been reported in the mainstream media in the UK and the USA, including a comparative analysis both across the two countries as well as across different media outlets. The findings clearly demonstrate a uniform and worrying lack of understanding of the relevant technical subject matter by the media in both countries. Of particular interest is the finding that with a remarkable regularity (????>0.998), the greater the number of articles a media outlet has published on COVID-19 mortality, the greater the proportion of its articles misrepresented the disease mortality figures. (shrink)

Background: Pandemics are challenging for clinical and public health agencies and policymakers because of the scientific and medical uncertainty that accompanies novel viruses like COVID-19 makes an increase of morbidity and mortality prominent. Consequently, there is a need to evaluate the public perception of social distancing, lockdown obligatory, and response satisfactory during the pandemic. Methods: This cross-sectional survey used an anonymous online google based questionnaire to collect data from respondents via social media platforms. The online survey was conducted among (...) social media users from 1st to 30th April 2020. A snowball sampling technique was employed to recruit respondents for the survey. A total of 1,131 respondents responded across the country. Results: Nine out of every ten respondents believed that social distancing is an effective measure to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Also, 8 out of every ten respondents agreed with the lockdown measures. However, just 36.8% think their government is doing enough to stop the outbreak, and only 25% of the respondents were satisfied with the country’s response to the worldwide epidemic. The age of respondents was found to be significantly associated with satisfaction with emergency response during pandemics. Conclusion: It could be concluded that Nigerian public accepted social distancing as an effective way of curbing the spread of COVID-19 and general acceptance on lockdown obligatory; however, more than half of respondents expressed non-satisfactory with government and other agencies responses during the pandemics. (shrink)

In light of rampant fake news and disinformation in today's press and social media, I provide a new consequentialist argument that regulations on the media pertaining to certain false verifiable empirical facts are warranted. This contention is based in part on a collection of pre-existing empirical findings that I newly piece together from political science and psychology demonstrating that a post-truth society is likely with current media. My position is then defended from several counters, such as (...) that it violates deontological rights to free speech and to freedom of the press, that free speech leads to the acquisition of truth, and that government regulators can be biased and corrupt. (shrink)

This essay examines narratives of fundamental change, which portray a break in the continuity between a pre-transition and post-transition transgender subject, in accounts of transgender transitions. Narratives of fundamental change highlight the various changes that occur during transition and its disruptive effects upon a trans subject’s continuous identity. First, this essay considers the historical appearance of fundamental change narratives in the social sciences, the media, and their use by families of trans people, partners of trans people, and trans people (...) themselves. After this is a consideration of Mark Johnson’s account of narrative as a meaning-making activity that occurs in the context of social norms. Johnson’s account is then applied to narratives of fundamental change to explain why these narratives occur, especially in relation to social norms and lived experience. The essay concludes by considering the trajectory of fundamental change narratives, looking at emerging transgender narratives, which stress a more integrated, complex account of transgender lives. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to propose a methodological externalism that takes knowledge about science to be partly constituted by the environment. My starting point is the debate about extended cognition in contemporary philosophy and cognitive science. Externalists claim that human cognition extends beyond the brain and can be partly constituted by external devices. First, I show that most studies of public knowledge about science are based on an internalist framework that excludes the environment we usually (...) utilize to make sense of science and does not allow the possibility of extended knowledge. In a second step, I argue that science communication studies should adopt a methodological externalism and accept that knowledge about science can be partly realized by external information resources such as Wikipedia. (shrink)

Trust in social media information is gaining in importance and relevance for both companies and individuals as nowadays contemporary society is confronted with a wave of fake news about daily life situations, brands, organizations, etc. As it becomes more difficult to accurately assess social media information and to determine its origin or source, as well as to be able to double-check information spread across different Social Networking Sites (SNS), businesses must understand how individuals’ perceived control, concentration, and time (...) distortion enhances the social media usage, thus allowing them to correctly assess online information. Therefore, the scope of the paper is to assess, based on a conceptual model, the antecedents of trust in online information about companies by considering users’ perceived control, concentration, and time distortion, while browsing social media networks and sharing fake news about companies in SNS. With the help of an online survey, data was collected from social media users, later being analysed with SmartPLS. The findings suggest that social media usage and sharing of fake news mediate the relationship between users’ perceived control, concentration, and time distortion (i.e., flow characteristics) and trust in online information about companies. (shrink)

The rise of social media has created a new platform for communication and interaction, but it has also facilitated the spread of harmful behaviors such as cyberbullying. Detecting and mitigating cyberbullying on social media platforms is a critical challenge that requires advanced technological solutions. This paper presents a novel approach to cyberbullying detection using a combination of supervised machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) techniques, enhanced by optimization algorithms. The proposed system is designed to identify and (...) classify cyberbullying behavior in real-time, analyzing textual data from social media posts to detect harmful content. The model is trained on a large dataset of labeled instances of bullying and non-bullying content, using supervised ML algorithms such as Support Vector Machines (SVM), Decision Trees, and Random Forest. NLP techniques, including sentiment analysis, keyword extraction, and text vectorization, are employed to preprocess and transform the data into a format suitable for machine learning. T. (shrink)

Using the two cases of the Icelandic Health Sector Database and Russian initiatives in biobanking, the article criticizes the view of narratives and imaginaries as a sufficient and unproblematic means of shaping public understanding of genetics and justifying population-wide projects. Narrative representations of national biobanking engage particular imaginaries that are not bound by the universal normative framework of human rights, promote affective thinking, distract the public from recognizing and discussing tangible ethical and socioeconomic issues, and harm trust in science (...) and technology. In the Icelandic case, the presentation of the project in association with national imaginaries concealed its market identity and could lead to the commodification of biodata. In the Russian case, framing in terms of "genetic sovereignty" and "civilizational code" offers pretexts for state securitization. Adherence to normative framework of human rights and public discussion of genetics in an argumentative and factual mode can counter these trends. (shrink)

No USA president in history has received as much opposition as Donald Trump has from all three components of the Establishment, namely the financial establishment, the political establishment and the corporate media establishment. The election of Donald Trump to the office of presidency is marked with dozens of historical first events that are anything but lackluster, yet a bleak picture of Fascism has been painted to describe Trump. This is an extraordinary piece of disinformation, as no modern president has (...) been more consistent in plainly saying what he will do regarding US military and geopolitical goals, both outside and in office. This, even though his stated position is clearly opposite to the wishes of the dominant cabal, supported by both parties, and to US foreign policy since WWII. USA history is not very long, but Trump presidency and his inaugural speech marked a historic starting point for this 'democracy'. Every sentence of Donald J. Trump's inaugural speech was a departure from diplomacy. Knowing what diplomacy actually means, it's a great step toward transparency. It is the best thing that happened in US political history. It is no surprise the Media established completely flipped, the political establishment gasped, and the financial establishment started to conspire a different strategy (George Soros declaring he wants Trump presidency to fail). In the mean time, the typically apolitical science and technology establishment declared Trump completely unfit for the office that he has just been elected to. Trump’s inaugural speech that contained phrases like, "It's time to remember that old wisdom our soldiers will never forget, that whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots", was in sharp contrast to how Abraham Lincoln viewed America, when he said, "I, as much as any other man, stand in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race… I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races." Trump’s embrace of humanity and righteousness was reminiscent of Prophet Muhammad’s last sermon at the pilgrimage, where he said over 1400 years, "An Arab is no better than a non-Arab, and a non-Arab is no better than an Arab; a red man is no better than a black man and a black man is no better than a red man – except if it is in terms of piety." Yet, Trump took oath of office swearing on the bible used by Abraham Lincoln. In this two-part paper, the key research question answered is what Trump presidency stands for. In answering this question, the first part deconstructs some of the dominant theories of Fascism. Then, a delinearized history is constructed in order to understand how democracy, as applied in USA, has an inevitable outcome of achieving the same goals as a Fascist regime. The concept of religious extremism, including “Islamic terrorism” or “radical Islam” is also discussed with relevance to ‘war on terror’. The history of US presidency then shows that the office of presidency is used as a tool to advance a Fascist agenda, albeit being packaged as USA exceptionalism. The ground is set for part 2 that analyses the rise of Trump and the demise of DNC integrity, followed by deconstruction of various allegations against Trump. (shrink)

Undoubtedly, Science and Technology have solved a lot of problems we face in our daily lives. Science and Technology even have made some aspects of our lives more convenient such as communication, travel, research work, education, and finding cures for diseases. However, the same convenience that we enjoy have also turned against us. We as humans, on the pretense of being in control of technology, have become controlled by the same things we intended to master. This paper shall (...) delve on the catastrophic consequences of technology on humanity by using Black Mirror, a British television program vis a vis Max Horkheimer’s essay on Enlightenment and Mass Deception to analyze our self-made imprisonment. (shrink)

Scientists who engage in science and the scientific endeavor should seek truth with conviction of morals and commitment to ethics. While the number of publications continues to increase, the number of retractions has increased at a faster rate. Journals publish fraudulent research papers despite claims of peer review and adherence to publishing ethics. Nevertheless, appropriate ethical peer review will remain a gatekeeper when selecting research manuscripts in scholarly publishing and approving research applications for grant funding. However, this peer review (...) must become more open, fair, transparent, equitable, and just with new recommendations and guidelines for reproducible and accountable reviews that support and promote fair citation and citational justice. We should engineer this new peer-review process with modern informatics technology and information science to provide and defend better safeguards for truth and integrity, to clarify and maintain the provenance of information and ideas, and to rebuild and restore trust in scholarly research institutions. Indeed, this new approach will be necessary in the current post-truth era to counter the ease and speed with which mis-information, dis-information, anti-information, caco-information, and mal-information spread through the internet, web, news, and social media. The most important question for application of new peer-review methods to these information wars should be ‘Who does what when?’ in support of reproducible and accountable reviews. Who refers to the authors, reviewers, editors, and publishers as participants in the review process. What refers to disclosure of the participants' identities, the material content of author manuscripts and reviewer commentaries, and other communications between authors and reviewers. When refers to tracking the sequential points in time for which disclosure of whose identity, which content, and which communication at which step of the peer-review process for which audience of readers and reviewers. We believe that quality peer review, and peer review of peer review, must be motivated and maintained by elevating their status and prestige to an art and a science. Both peer review itself and peer review analyses of peer reviews should be incentivised by publishing peer reviews as citable references separately from the research report reviewed while crossreferenced and crosslinked to the report reviewed. (shrink)

Logic diagrams have seen a resurgence in their application in a range of fields, including logic, biology, media science, computer science and philosophy. Consequently, understanding the history and philosophy of these diagrams has become crucial. As many current diagrammatic systems in logic are based on ideas that originated in the 18th and 19th centuries, it is important to consider what motivated the use of logic diagrams in the past and whether these reasons are still valid today. This (...) paper proposes that transcendental philosophy was a key inspiration for the development of logic diagrams and that such diagrams can be employed in transcendental arguments, even after the linguistic turn. (shrink)

This special issue, which includes papers first presented at two workshops on ‘Memory, Mind, and Media’ in Sydney on November 29–30 and December 2–3, 2004, showcases some of the best interdisciplinary work in philosophy and psychology by memory researchers in Australasia (and by one expatriate Australian, Robert Wilson of the University of Alberta). The papers address memory in many contexts: in dance and under hypnosis, in social groups and with siblings, in early childhood and in the laboratory. Memory is (...) taken as a test case for evaluating the optimistic vision of a new kind of cognitive science defended by Andy Clark. Clark (2001:154) argues: Much of what matters about human intelligence is hidden not in the brain, nor in the technology, but in the complex and iterated interactions and collaborations between the two ... The study of these interaction spaces is not easy, and depends both on new multidisciplinary alliances and new forms of modelling and analysis. The pay-off, however, could be spectacular: nothing less than a new kind of cognitive scientific collaboration involving neuroscience, physiology, and social, cultural, and technological studies in about equal measure. So the central motivation is to investigate critically how well the case of memory would fit the extended mind’ thesis put forward by Clark and Chalmers (Clark and Chalmers 1998; Clark 1997, 2006)—according to which mental states and processes can spread across the.. (shrink)

This paper examines two parallel discussions of scientific modeling which have invoked experimentation in addressing the role of models in scientific inquiry. One side discusses the experimental character of models, whereas the other focuses on their exploratory uses. Although both relate modeling to experimentation, they do so differently. The former has considered the similarities and differences between models and experiments, addressing, in particular, the epistemic value of materiality. By contrast, the focus on exploratory modeling has highlighted the various kinds of (...) exploratory functions of models in the early stages of inquiry. These two perspectives on modeling are discussed through a case study in the field of synthetic biology. The research practice in question explores biological control by making use of an ensemble of different epistemic means: mathematical models and simulations, synthetic genetic circuits and intracellular measuring devices, and finally electronic circuits. We argue that the study of exploratory modeling should trace the ways different epistemic means, in different materialities, are being combined over time. Finally, the epistemic status of such novel investigative objects as synthetic genetic circuits is evaluated, with the conclusion that they can function as both experiments and models. (shrink)

In this essay I raise a dilemma for science journalists based on recent skepticism raised by scientists about the credibility of published results in many fields. Due to systematic biases in the publication record, most published findings in these fields (including psychology and biological subfields) are almost certainly false. So should science reporters stop reporting these findings, given their mission to report verified truths? Or should they report the findings while saying they are almost certainly false?

Currently, businesses located all over the world are adjusting to a new standard of operation. Customers are encouraged to make their purchases of necessities through the favored e-commerce platform of the organization. For the purpose of marketing web-based enterprises, websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest are utilized. The purpose of the study was to investigate how the COVID-19 epidemic altered the purchase patterns of Pakistani customers shopping online, with a particular emphasis on the role played by social (...) class='Hi'>media. The study utilized a quantitative research model and a descriptive research technique in its data collection and analysis. In order to obtain responses from 400 Pakistani clients, an online questionnaire employing the "purposive sampling" method was used. When looking at the data and putting the hypothesis to the test, PLS-SEM analysis was utilized. During the COVID-19 pandemic in Pakistan, a PLS-SEM study indicated that advertising tools, online reviews, and endorsements from celebrities had a favorable and significant effect on how individuals bought products online. According to the findings of this study, online businesses can improve their use of social media for marketing and advertising by following a number of particular measures. Customers have a greater propensity to make purchases via social media platforms when they come across favorable evaluations and recommendations from celebrities. (shrink)

Since March of 2020, the world has been brought to its knees by unscientific and unethical mandates. These mandates have destroyed the world economy and the lives of countless innocent individuals. The “cure” that has been offered by medical bureaucrats and politicians has been more deadly than the disease (COVID-19). The imposition of ludicrous lockdowns, mask-wearing, coerced vaccination, and vaccine passports have not only proved to be ineffective, but also much more harmful than SARS-CoV-2 and all its variants. COVID-19 has (...) a recovery rate of close to 99% for most of the world’s population, however, despite this, institutions and power-hungry individuals have trampled upon our civil liberties and ignored our inalienable human rights. It is precisely as Thomas Paine famously stated: “The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes.” -/- Many lives have been gratuitously lost because of the administration of deadly medical treatments, and the rejection of effective treatments that follow genuine science. In the process, informed consent has been disparaged and desecrated. For over two years, we were instructed to “trust the science,” but the “science” advocated by medical bureaucrats and greedy politicians was the reason why the world was turned upside-down. In the face of these crimes against humanity, justice will only be brought by real courts and real judges, but this will require the awakening of a critical mass. This book serves as an instrument for this awakening. (shrink)

COVID science is being both done and circulated at a furious pace. While it is inspiring to see the research community responding so vigorously to the pandemic crisis, all this activity has also created a churning sea of bad data, conflicting results, and exaggerated headlines. With representations of science becoming increasingly polarized, twisted and hyped, there is growing concern that the relevant science is being represented to the public in a manner that may cause confusion, inappropriate expectations, (...) and the erosion of public trust. Here we explore some of the key issues associated with the representations of science in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of these issues are not new. But the COVID-19 pandemic has placed a spotlight on the biomedical research process and amplified the adverse ramifications of poor public communication. We need to do better. As such, we conclude with ten recommendations aimed at key actors involved in the communication of COVID-19 science, including government, funders, universities, publishers, media and the research communities. (shrink)

This book argues that misinformation poses a multi-faceted threat to knowledge, while arguing that some forms of content moderation risk exacerbating these threats. It proposes alternative forms of content moderation that aim to address this complexity while enhancing human epistemic agency. The proliferation of fake news, false conspiracy theories, and other forms of misinformation on the internet and especially social media is widely recognized as a threat to individual knowledge and, consequently, to collective deliberation and democracy itself. This book (...) argues that misinformation presents a three-pronged threat to knowledge. While researchers often focus on the role of misinformation in causing false beliefs, this deceptive potential of misinformation exists alongside the potential to suppress trust and to distort the perception of evidence. Recognizing the multi-faceted nature of this threat is essential to the development of effective measures to mitigate the harms associated with misinformation. The book weaves together work in analytic epistemology with emerging empirical work in other disciplines to offer novel insights into the threats posed by misinformation. Additionally, it breaks new ground by systematically assessing different forms of content moderation from the perspective of epistemology. Misinformation, Content Moderation, and Epistemology will appeal to philosophers working in applied and social epistemology, as well as scholars and advanced students in disciplines such as communication studies, political science, and social psychology who are researching misinformation. (shrink)

As is the case in other situations of deep uncertainty, the unknowns related to the COVID-19 pandemic have aroused a great deal of attention in the media. Drawing insights both from mediatization theory and ignorance studies, we discuss the coverage of the AstraZeneca vaccine controversies to develop a new concept that we call the mediatization of ignorance. In doing so, we conceptualize the procedure through which unknowns become mediatized as a three-step process that results from a combination of logics (...) from the areas of politics, health, and science/industry. Moreover, we argue that the mediatization of ignorance may have promoted vaccine hesitancy at a moment when vaccination was crucial for addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. We conclude by suggesting the need to explore in further detail the role that ignorance plays not only in the management of the COVID-19 crisis but also in different areas of society. (shrink)

The study examines the modes of representation and communication of information through illustrative teaching aids in the 19th century. It focuses primarily on the didactic wall paintings and the tradition of lectures with slides and notes, how could the experience of these types of collectively observed images influence impressions and expectations of early film audiences. Didactic images are here analyzed primarily in terms of their compositional features, but in an effort to explain how processuality penetrated into the didactic image of (...) the 19th century also with regard to the aspect of time. As a result, the study calls for a reassessment of the importance of the didactic wall painting in the formation of modern visuality and observational practices of the late 19th century. (shrink)

Bad philosophy is responsible for the climate and nature crises, and other global problems too that threaten our future. That sounds mad, but it is true. A philosophy of science, or of theatre or life is a view about what are, or ought to be, the aims and methods of science, theatre or life. It is in this entirely legitimate sense of “philosophy” that bad philosophy is responsible for the crises we face. First, and in a blatantly obvious (...) way, those institutions, organizations, corporations, businesses, endeavours, and activities of humanity that cause the crises and global problems we face, do so because of the aims they pursue (profit perhaps, or power, or heat and light for homes), and the methods adopted in pursuit of those aims – the philosophy in other words, built into the institution, organization, business, human activities, or whatever it may be. It is the philosophy of these institutions, organizations and activities that we need to change to put a stop to, or at least lessen the severity of, the crises we face, the global problems that confront us, above all the climate and nature crises. One institution has an especially crucial role in this respect: our universities. They are dominated in a multitude of ways by a particularly disastrous philosophy, a philosophy of inquiry which may be called knowledge-inquiry. This holds that the basic aim of the university is to acquire and apply knowledge. First, knowledge is to be acquired; once acquired, it can be applied to help solve social problems. But this philosophy of knowledge-inquiry is an intellectual disaster. As a result, universities are, in devastating and almost entirely unrecognized ways, humanitarian disasters too. Judged from the standpoint of helping to promote human welfare, the university shaped by the philosophy of knowledge-inquiry violates THREE of the four most elementary rules of rational problem solving conceivable in a wholesale, structural fashion, and it is this gross, wholesale, structural irrationality of the university, unnoticed by all but a few scientists and scholars, that is in part responsible for the creation of our grave global problems, and our current incapacity to learn how to solve them. The pursuit of knowledge, conducted in universities, within the framework of knowledge-inquiry over the decades and centuries, has produced much of great benefit to humanity. It has made the modern world possible. It has led to modern power production, modern industry and armaments, modern agriculture, modern hygiene and medicine, modern travel and communications, and the internet. But these very successes have also created many of our most serious current global problems: the climate crisis; the destruction of natural habitats, the catastrophic loss of wild life, and impending mass extinction of species (the nature crisis); the lethal character of modern war; the impact on the natural world of the rapid growth of the human population; the menace posed by nuclear weapons; pollution of earth, sea and air; threats to democracy caused in part by the internet and social media. All these grave global problems have been made possible by modern science and technology, pursued largely in universities within the framework of knowledge-inquiry. Nevertheless, it is not science and technology as such that are the problem, but science pursued in a way that is dissociated from a more fundamental task of the university to help humanity resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways, so that progress may be made to a better world. Science and technology, pursued within the framework of knowledge-inquiry, create for some of us the power to act, but not the power to act wisely – not the power to learn how to resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways. For that, we need our institutions of learning, above all our universities, to take as their primary task to help humanity learn how to do it. In order to do that, the philosophy of inquiry put into practice by universities needs to be dramatically transformed. We urgently need to bring about a revolution in the overall aims and methods of academic inquiry – a revolution in the philosophy of the university, all around the world, wherever possible, so that the basic aim becomes to seek and promote wisdom, construed to be the capacity, active endeavour, and perhaps desire, to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others, wisdom in this sense including knowledge, understanding and technological know-how, but much else besides, methods being dramatically modified too so as to help achieve the new academic aim. The basic task of the university would be, not to solve problems of knowledge, but rather to help people in the social world beyond the university to resolve conflicts and problems of living so that what is of value in life may be realized by everyone, insofar as that is possible. The pursuit of knowledge would be vital, but not intellectually fundamental. The intellectual and institutional revolution we so urgently need in our universities would affect every discipline and aspect of the university; it would dramatically affect both research and education, and the whole way the university is related to the rest of the social world. The revolution, from knowledge-inquiry to wisdom-inquiry would dramatically enhance the intellectual integrity and rationality of natural science, social inquiry, the humanities and technology, the character of these disciplines and the relationships they have with one another. University education throughout the university would be dramatically improved. And academic inquiry as a whole would do what, on the whole, it fails to do at present: it would help humanity resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational and, as a result, increasingly successful ways, progress at last being made to a genuinely good, civilized world – a world in which there is peace, justice, liberal democracy, individual freedom, education, reasonable equality, sustainable prosperity and worthwhile opportunities in life, all of these for everyone, insofar as this is possible. Why, it may be asked, has academic philosophy not noticed that we urgently need to transform the current bad philosophy of inquiry of knowledge-inquiry into the far more intellectually rigorous and humanly valuable philosophy of wisdom-inquiry, so that we can begin to do what so far we have failed to do so lamentably: learn how to avoid impending disasters, and even make progress to a better world, something that seems at present almost unthinkable given the horrors of war, poverty, political enslavement of the 20th century, and the horrors of this century so far too? The answer is that academic philosophy is in a particularly pitiful state, as philosophers themselves, are just beginning to realize and lament. That is why academic philosophers are blind to the intellectual and humanitarian disaster of the bad philosophy that dominates universities today, and inconceivable to them to them that they might have, as a disciplinary task, to ensure academic inquiry implements a good philosophy of inquiry, and advocate and argue for change if it does not. Once upon a time, in Europe at least, philosophy was an intellectual power in the world. In the 17th century it created modern science which massively increased and improved our knowledge and understanding of the world, which in turn led to the Enlightenment, the industrial revolution, and the modern world. Philosophy was once so intellectually powerful and influential that it changed the course of history. But philosophy also made in the past three disastrous intellectual blunders: the post-Cartesian blunder, the post-Newtonian blunder, and the Enlightenment blunder. Never acknowledged and corrected by subsequent philosophy right down to the present, these unrecognized intellectual blunders rendered academic philosophy the esoteric, pathetic, and powerless discipline it is today, so that throughout the last century and, so far, throughout this one, academic philosophy has remained blind to the intellectual disaster of knowledge-inquiry, and thus failed entirely to take up its proper disciplinary task of warning fellow academics of the structural irrationality of the philosophy that prevails in the university, and of proposing what steps need to be taken to put things right. Instead of performing such an urgently needed philosophical task, so-called analytic philosophy was reduced to analysing the meaning of words. Since then, there has been hardly any discernible improvement, even if analysis of concepts no longer dominates the scene. Bad academic philosophy is indeed responsible for intellectual and humanitarian failures of the university. What the three past intellectual blunders of philosophy are, why their persistence so dramatically reduces academic philosophy to a triviality, and why, furthermore, this results in the failure of scientists and scholars to see what is so blatantly bad about the philosophy prevailing in universities around the world – the failure to see what so urgently needs to be done to put right what has been wrong for so long: all this is made clear in this book. A new kind of philosophy emerges during the course of the argument, critical fundamentalism, which has as its task to keep alive imaginative and critical – that is rational – thinking about our fundamental problem: How can our human world, the world we experience and live in – the world of living things, people, consciousness, free will, meaning and value – how can all of this exist and best flourish embedded as it is in the physical universe? That problem encompasses all others of life, science and thought. Critical fundamentalism tries to improve answers to aspects of this problem; but it also seeks to encourage everyone to think about the problem, from time to time, and think about how it interacts, in both directions, with more urgent particular and specialized problems of life and thought. Critical fundamentalism sets out to help improve bad philosophy wherever it is to be found: in social, political, commercial, legal, financial, and international life; and especially in academia, in institutions of learning, so that they become devoted to enhancing the capacity of people to learn how to achieve what is of genuine value in this brief life of a few decades if we are fortunate. Critical fundamentalism does everything it can to bring about the revolution in our universities we so urgently need. If taken up by mainstream philosophy, it might really have an impact, and begin to transform universities for the better, in both intellectual and humanitarian terms, and thus, enable humanity to learn how, after the grim failures and horrors of the last century and this one, to make progress to a better world. -/- . (shrink)

Throughout what is now the more than 50-year history of the computer many theories have been advanced regarding the contribution this machine would make to changes both in the structure of society and in ways of thinking. Like other theories regarding the future, these should also be taken with a pinch of salt. The history of the development of computer technology contains many predictions which have failed to come true and many applications that have not been foreseen. While we must (...) reserve judgment as to the question of the impact on the structure of society and human thought, there is no reason to wait for history when it comes to the question: what are the properties that could give the computer such far-reaching importance? The present book is intended as an answer to this question. The fact that this is a theoretical analysis is due to the nature of the subject. No other possibilities are available because such a description of the properties of the computer must be valid for any kind of application. An additional demand is that the description should be capable of providing an account of the properties which permit and limit these possible applications, just as it must make it possible to characterize a computer as distinct from a) other machines whether clocks, steam engines, thermostats, or mechanical and automatic calculating machines, b) other symbolic media whether printed, mechanical, or electronic and c) other symbolic languages whether ordinary languages, spoken or written or formal languages. This triple limitation, however, (with regard to other machines, symbolic media and symbolic languages) raises a theoretical question as it implies a meeting between concepts of mechanical-deterministic systems, which stem from mathematical physics, and concepts of symbolic systems which stem from the description of symbolic activities common to the humanities. The relationship between science and the humanities has traditionally been seen from a dualistic perspective, as a relationship between two clearly separate subject areas, each studied on its own set of premises and using its own methods. In the present case, however, this perspective cannot be maintained since there is both a common subject area and a new - and specific - kind of interaction between physical and symbolic processes. (shrink)

The epistemic value of models has traditionally been approached from a representational perspective. This paper argues that the artifactual approach evades the problem of accounting for representation and better accommodates the modal dimension of modeling. From an artifactual perspective, models are viewed as erotetic vehicles constrained by their construction and available representational tools. The modal dimension of modeling is approached through two case studies. The first portrays mathematical modeling in economics, while the other discusses the modeling practice of synthetic biology, (...) which exploits and combines models in various modes and media. Neither model intends to represent any actual target system. Rather, they are constructed to study possible mechanisms through the construction of a model system with built-in dependencies. (shrink)