Thinking about philosophy and Carl Sagan’s “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”

I find philosophy to be an incredibly controversial subject, one that is difficult to get a handle on. There is a value to philosophy, though I often struggle to understand it or place it. Perhaps this is because I lack a satisfactory definition of philosophy - a term which can represent so many different bases …

Latour’s Revision: Objects and “Truth”

One may have noticed something distinct about the title of this essay, namely that I have enclosed the word "truth" in quotations.  The purpose is to bring focus to the question of its status, not because the concept itself is in doubt, but because after what seems like much neglect, whatever truth content may have …

The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect

The notion of causality - and the many longstanding debates about it - has interested me for some time. It is a subject that regularly resurfaces in my study of knowledge, and one that I continue to write about in my notebooks. In truth, it is no small or trivial matter - debates about the …

Ethics: “Should We Stop Doing Science?”

It is not common for me to begin an essay this way. But the latest edition of New Scientist was released - "the ethics issue" - and it raised a few points of reflection, however informal and searching. New Scientist is generally known for its unique combination of science reporting and communication, critical thinking and …

The Enlightenment, Science and Core Humanistic Values in a Post-Factual World

R.C. Smith Over the course of the last few years, I’ve been re-reading a lot of books on the enlightenment (mostly in my spare time), including many notable texts by such prominent enlightenment thinkers as Kant, Hume, Descartes and so on. My interest in the philosophes dates back to when I was a teenager, where …

Social Pathology, Philosophy of Reason and Bloom’s “Against Empathy” – On Science, Ethics, and Knowledge

R.C. Smith To think of ethics is likely today to evoke the idea of empathy. Similarly, in the context of many mainstream discourses within social theory, to think of empathy is often to evoke philosophical consideration in the field of radical ethics. The same is true with the order of terms reversed. It is not …

Review: “The Gods in Whom They Trusted” – On Science, Knowledge and Ethics (Part 2)

R.C. Smith Ethics of Experience In think, ultimately,  what we read in The Gods in Whom They Trusted is a set of philosophical formulations that take the human tendency to formulate faith-based constructs, fundamental principles of “life direction”, “core or ultimate convictions”, or “visions of life” – very much in the philosophical sense of absolute first principles – as universal. …

Review: “The Gods in Whom They Trusted” – On Science, Knowledge and Ethics (Part 1)

R.C. Smith Introduction I recently read through and had time to consider Arnold De Graaff’s The Gods in Whom They Trusted: The Disintegrative Effects of Capitalism – A Foundation for Transitioning to a New Social World (2016). This book in particular is one, I think, that can best described as being part of the broader …

Reclaiming the Enlightenment: Grounding Normativity

[An earlier unedited draft of this article was written with contributions by Arnold De Graaff. It has since become single authored and has been revised, updated and shortened.] R.C. Smith The Interrelated Nature of our Global Crisis: A Summary i) The situation today – A brief statement of need “The Enlightenment”, Theodor Adorno and Max …