In “Rethinking Conspiracy Theories: Method First! A Reply to Shields”, Sanja Dembić pushes back against elements of my article “Rethinking Conspiracy Theories” (2022). Dembić starts her reply by giving a clear and accurate reconstruction of my main argument. I present a novel critique of generalism—the view that conspiracy theories are epistemically defective by their very nature. (To indicate that this is the relevant meaning, I’ll continue with Quassim Cassam’s convention of...| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Jennifer Mather Saul’s Dogwhistles & Figleaves: How Manipulative Language Spreads Racism and Falsehood (2024) is an important contribution to the domains of philosophy of language, social epistemology and political philosophy. As the title indicates, Saul’s primary focus is on the nature and rhetorical effects of two linguistic devices: (1) dogwhistles and (2) figleaves. These specific linguistic techniques are often employed by political leaders to manipulate a target audience and influe...| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
I thank Kurtis Hagen for his reply (2025). It is valuable for people with very different perspectives like us to candidly lay out our disagreements. While Hagen makes several points that merit…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
How should the pursuit of knowledge be organized, given that under normal circumstances knowledge is pursued by many human beings, each working on a more or less well-defined body of knowledge and each equipped with roughly the same imperfect cognitive capacities, albeit with varying degree of access to one another’s activities?| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
