Exploring the changing nature of public debate

Exploring the changing nature of public debate

Exploring the changing nature of public debate

Exploring the changing nature of public debate

Exploring the changing nature of public debate

Exploring the changing nature of public debate

Exploring the changing nature of public debate

Exploring the changing nature of public debate

Could advanced translation technologies solve linguistic injustice in the world? Activists and scholars hear this question being asked quite often, and sometimes with a slight skeptical tone sugges…

If you have followed the 2024 US election coverage, you have likely come across the term “migrant crime”. A term coined by Donald Trump to refer to an alleged crime wave spurred by Joe Biden’s bord…

On 1 January of this year, an American man drove his pickup truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans (Louisiana, US). Fifteen people were killed and dozens of others injured. The perpetr…

Think about the last time you expressed praise. For me this is easy. As a parent of young children, I do it multiple times a day. ‘How kind you are, sharing your teddy!’ ‘Aw, it sounds like you wer…

Public opinion in many contemporary democracies shows increasing signs of polarization. In particular, animosity and dislike across political lines have become increasingly characteristic of Wester…

In an age where we increasingly converse with artifacts – whose interfaces include AI, a pressing question emerges: Who, or what, are we really talking with? As AI-based chatbots, often terme…

An exploration of the digital aspects of human lives, and the ways in which identities, communities, and collectives form in online spaces.

Earlier, I argued that we should safeguard the right to a meaningful explanation of life-changing decisions, even when such decisions are made by complex AI algorithms. Here, I argue that the compl…

Ask anyone except a gun rights activist, and they will agree that the rise of new technologies requires the implementation of new regulations. Not too long ago, a law against human cloning would ha…

Introduction One popular image of the ‘brainwashed’ person is someone who repeats what their leader says and who professes conviction in what they repeat.[1] But do brainwashed people really believ…

This question has long preoccupied philosophers, but has recently taken on greater public urgency in response to fears about misinformation, disinformation, bullshit, tribalism, and other perceived…

During the recent general election campaign in the UK, I received a flyer through my door from a local independent candidate who claimed to value, among other things, humanitarianism. He also wante…

It’s common in public discourse to see worries about pseudoscience. This is understandable, for the stakes are high. Although science surely can’t tell us about everything, it is our best way to le…

There has been a lot of discussion recently – both among academics and in the popular press –  about what kinds of limits should be placed on content generated by AI. Although questions about how t…

The official journal of the Mind Association. Publishes high-quality original contributions on philosophy, in which no area of philosophy, no style of philosophy, and no school of philosophy is exclud...

In Kirill Srebrennikov’s 2016 film, The Student, Venia, a lonely high school student begins to intensely read the bible and appeal to it for everything he says and does. Through this, he becomes a …

Can bad people be good judges?[1] This question would have been unintelligible before the rise of the modern state, when moral character and expertise were deemed as inextricably linked.[2]  Person…

In the past decade or so, great achievements have been made in the emancipation of genderqueer persons. Not only has there been increased visibility of these individuals in politics and media, but …

The trope of the working novelist isolated for months at a time, hunched over a desk with yellow stained and repetitively strained fingers clacking away on a keyboard is no more. Today’s author nee…

In the previous post, I raised the possibility that people can hope without hope, that is, hope for things that they simultaneously despair or feel unhopeful about. Far from being a contradiction, …

In the series’ Unpacking Manipulation in the Digital Age,’ the previous five posts covered the rise of problematic forms of digital influence (Posts 1, 2, and 3), the need to demarcate …

In the previous four posts of this series on ‘Unpacking Manipulation in the Digital Age'(Post 1; Post 2; Post 3; Post 4), I argued that more attention to different types of social influence i…

The Pragmatics and Epistemology of Online Communication, Workshop Cardiff May 8 2024 Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay Philosophy at Cardiff University and Logos/University of Barcelona are hosting a...

In the previous post, I outlined three reasons for paying closer attention to social influence in the digital landscape: the proliferation of social influence, the informational empowerment of soci…

Public debate is shaped partly by human social influence, and we routinely distinguish different types of social influence, such as persuasion, coercion, and manipulation. While persuasion and coer…

// content warning: racist language and racist imagery // In 2012, the Swedish artist Makode Linde displayed an extremely controversial work of art at the Modern Museum in Stockholm. In celebration…

Fundamentalism is a contested concept. In ordinary language and public discourse, it is applied to actions, beliefs, or groups that we condemn, disagree with, or wish to delegitimize. Highly mediat…

The Department of Philosophy, University of Sheffield, runs an ongoing reading group on Implicit Bias. In collaboration with Philosophical Psychology editors, Professor Lisa Bortolotti and Dr Katherin...

A central claim of standpoint theory is that the oppressed have an epistemic advantage over the dominant with respect to the workings of oppression. This ‘epistemic advantage thesis’ ranges over i...

YouTube, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, and chatbots like ChatGPT and Bard—all of them are manipulating you. More specifically, their algorithms are manipulating you.�...

Rumours disrupt official lines of communication and can derail policy. During the 2013 – 2016 West African Ebola outbreak, rumours were that medics were stealing bodies to be sold for parts on the �...

Abstract. This chapter sets out the philosophical foundations of the proposed account of virtues and vices of intellectual self-appraisal. It explains the natur