Nietzsche is undoubtedly the philosopher who has most captivated transhumanist thinkers, largely due to his concept of Übermensch, which in the early twentieth century came into common English as ‘Superman’, gradually incorporating all the mythic connotations that the word still holds. However, as Walter Kaufmann pointed out in the 1950s, a better English rendering of Nietzsche’s concept is ‘Overman’. Not only is ‘Overman’ truer to the original German, but it also better captures the alienating nature of the concept, since the Nietzschean ‘Overman’ is not simply a better version of the human—which ‘Superman’ seems to imply—but somehow rising above the human while at the same time putting an end to it.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull’s “Verification Is a Commons” improves the Verification Collapse Cascade (VCC) by forcing three clarifications. His distinction between replacement and accumulation narrows the use of model-collapse results. His public-good analysis shows how individually rational non-verification reflects a failure of provision while verification retains collective value. His distinction between agency in operation and agency in aetiology also sharpens the original claim: a cascade runs without requiring a present intentional distorter even when earlier institutional choices helped produce the conditions in which it runs.

Let me begin by thanking Moti Mizrahi for his thoughtful and supportive review of my (2026) book, which I very much appreciate. Mizrahi’s review of the book and the points he brings up are very congenial to my own way of thinking about the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI), so in a way it is a little hard to respond to the review.

Volume 15, Issue 9, 1–96, September 2026 ❧ Seddon, Robert. 2026. “Maintenance and Curation: A Reply to Theunissen.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 15 (9): 1–7. ❧ Russo, Federica. 2026. “How to Realise the Promise of Evidence-Based Approaches? Insights from Reflexive Policing.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 15 (9): 8–14. ❧ Broncano-Berrocal, Fernando. 2026. “Caring for Questions: Inquiry, Epistemic Paternalism, and the Attention Economy.”

Cristóbal Bellolio’s commentary (2026) on my “Making Sense of Science Denialism” (Billon 2026a) is the kind of reply one hopes for: generous, precise and constructive. Three of his four points call, I believe, for acceptance with refinement; one calls for argued resistance. I will take them in order: his moral sharpening of the denialism/conspiracism distinction (§1), his challenge from the “oppositional” model of epistemic populism (§2), his reframing of the objectivity question around a plebeian standpoint (§3), and, at greatest length, the question he explicitly puts to me: what to make of Rousseau (§4)?

Mohammad Ostadi, an Iranian journalist, first contacted Steve Fuller in August 2025 to conduct an interview as part of a series on ‘global thinkers’ to be published in Quds Online (www.qudsonline.ir).The thinkers covered have ranged from Peter Singer to Isabel Allende. In Fuller’s case, it was occasioned by the publication of Science: The Art of Living in Persian by Goman Publishing.

In the first part (Wills 2026) of this series, we discussed the political ‘Gnosticism’ of various right-wing trends prevalent on social media. We defined ‘political Gnosticism’ as a cultural stance involving rituals of purity and separation and the sense of belonging to an ‘elect’ under constant threat of erasure. One element of this phenomenon was defined as ‘theocratic’ though the ‘theocracy’ in question was not one easily assimilated to historic Christianity.

Jason Brennan (2026) devoted his latest SERRC post to my paper “Political Debate under Epistemic Asymmetries” (2026), for which I thank him warmly. In a careful reading, he identifies several theoretical problems and doubts, as well as practical implications of my position that could prove troublesome, for which I am also grateful to him. I believe that most of the shortcomings he identifies are the result of things I left unsaid.

What is the purpose of science? Who is science for? And why conduct scientific research at all? Though she does not explicitly state so, Gwen Ottinger aptly addresses these substantial questions in her new book The Science of Repair: How People Who Believe in Facts Can Build a Better Future (2026). Her underlying argument exposes the paradoxical relationship between community-engaged science and the quest for environmental justice: often, science undertaken with the goal of working toward environmental justice ends up reinforcing said injustices.

The publication of Science in the Face of the Post-Truth Condition: The Challenge of Steve Fuller’s Social Epistemology (2026), by Francis Remedios, represents a significant contribution to the contemporary debate on the post-truth condition. Its importance lies in offering a coherent reconstruction of Steve Fuller’s thought and situating it within the major discussions in the philosophy of science, social epistemology, and science, technology, and society studies.

Should epistemic systems different from so-called “Western” science, particularly when they are associated to Indigenous peoples who have suffered for centuries the consequences of colonialism and oppression, be preserved, even taught in “Western” academic institutions? Is such a preservation a way to overcome epistemic injustice and “epistemicide?” Or (quite the opposite) should we consider science a spectacular achievement of our species, of which everyone (Indigenous or not) should equally benefit?

Abstract Sheldon Richmond in “Revolutions in Mathematics: A Surd Fantasy?—In Part” (2026) poses a simple question and presents a clear answer. He concludes that revolutions occur in the history of mathematics from the antiquity to the present day. He adds, however, a proviso which seems to me to be the most crucial point in his article, that mathematics is a continuum in terms of how proofs work.

In “Epistemic Paternalism and Protective Authority in a Non-Ideal World,” Pedro Schmechtig (2025) defends a virtue-based account of the justification of epistemic paternalism, which he characterizes as the intentional and significant interference with another person’s inquiry, without their consent or consultation, for the sake of their intellectual well-being or flourishing. His starting point is the familiar objection that such interference is unjustified because its non-consensual and non-consultative character is disrespectful and unfair: it violates the paternalised subject’s personal sovereignty and, in the epistemic case, their…

If not on evidence, “What on earth was medicine based before?”—this is a famous quote from John Worrall’s (2002) influential paper, which in many ways paved the way for a systematic philosophical discussion of the foundations of medicine and of medical methodology. It has been over 20 years since the publication of this paper, and the same question can be repeated for any field that, at some point in time, has had an ‘evidence-based turn’.

Maintenance, as a topic of philosophical interest, is enjoying something of a heyday. The focus is often on technological or engineering contexts; a special interest group within the Society for Philosophy and Technology has been holding talks on maintenance since 2022.[1] Mark Theunissen’s paper (2025) ultimately returns to this terrain, and to examples like the maintenance of the Golden Gate Bridge (313), but with lessons learnt by exploring maintenance in a different context: how curators maintain items in museums’ collections.

Volume 15, Issue 8, 1–95, August 2026 ❧ Yamada, Kenji. 2026. “Truth Without Liars: The Verification Collapse Cascade—A Response to the Post-Truth Consensus.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 15 (8): 1–9. ❧ Mizrahi, Moti. 2026. “Can’t Truss It (Epistemically): A Reply to Hauswald.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 15 (8): 10–18. ❧ Orlowski, Eric J. W. 2026. “Leaving the Machine Running: Posthuman Ethics and the Politics of Technology.” …

A Pronoun at the Post Office The following exchange happens to me, with small variations, almost every time I ask for information at a post office or a hospital: Citizen: “Mi perdoni. Avrei bisogno d’una informazione.” (“Excuse me. I need some information.”—uses the formal Lei.) Clerk: “Dica pure.” (“How can I help you?”—polite, yet professionally detached; uses the formal Lei.)

Fred is a professional philosopher who comes to think a specific philosophical claim C is true—even though there is significant disagreement in philosophy over C’s truth-value. To a first approximation, László Bernáth and János Tőzsér’s main thesis, BT, is that philosophers in Fred’s position “should suspend belief in any proposition about which there is a robust (long-standing and well-tested) disagreement” (2026, 30).

Abstract This note closes my side of an exchange over Nietzschean, Feminist, and Embodied Perspectives on the Presocratics. It concedes four points of formulation and implication, checks two disputed attributions against the published record and the book’s own text, and restates genre discipline as the local application of a broader norm of assertion. The last word is left to Dr. 

A fairly standard definition of “Socialism”: socialism /sō′shə-lĭz″əm/ noun 1st Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy. 2nd The stage in Marxist-Leninist theory intermediate between capitalism and communism, in which the means of production are collectively owned but a completely classless society has not yet been achieved.

I greatly enjoyed Alexandre Billon’s “Making Sense of Science Denialism: Epistemic Populism and the Demand for Autonomy and Inclusion” (2026) on the distinction between scientific denialism and conspiracism—a distinction that is often overlooked by academics and routinely treated in public debate as little more than a symptom of ignorance or irrationality. Applying the principle of interpretive charity, Billon argues that at least one of these phenomena—denialism—can be understood as a reasonable reaction by laypeople who feel belittled and patronized by arrogant scientific elites, whose language has become increasingly unintelligible to the epistemic sensibilities of ordinary citizens.

Alexios Stamatiadis-Bréhier (2026) has provided the study of meta-conspiracy theorising with its first genuinely systematic architecture.[1] By proposing an ordinal hierarchy of conspiracies about conspiracy theories, a taxonomy of their scopes, and a supertask objection to their endless proliferation, his framework imposes welcome order on a historically tangled literature. … . Article Citation: West, Mark D. 2026. “Sedation and Discharge: A Reply to Stamatiadis-Bréhier on Meta-Conspiracy Theorising.” …

In the following essay, Shawn Wilson, Anna Lydia Svalastog, Lindsay DuPré-Fiddler, Melissa Shouting, and Neha Raj Singh, in addition to individual graduate students (and with reference to graduate student experiences), respond to Maud Woiczik’ s article—“Can One Grieve a Way of Knowing? Introducing Epistemological Grief”—published on 13 May 2026.[1] … . Article Citation: Wilson, Shawn, Anna Lydia Svalastog, Lindsay DuPré-Fiddler, Melissa Shouting, and Neha Raj Singh.

Abstract Jacob Vangeest (2026) shows why posthuman ethics requires humanity to withdraw from ethical oversight; I argue that, in contemporary technopolitical practice, such withdrawal risks becoming abdication, as imaginaries around transhumanism and artificial superintelligence relocate political responsibility into the very technologies through which the posthuman is imagined. … . Article Citation: Orlowski, Eric J. W. 2026. “Leaving the Machine Running: Posthuman Ethics and the Politics of Technology.” …

Allow me to summarize my dialogue with Rico Hauswald to this point: Hauswald (2026b) responds to Mizrahi (2026), which is a reply to Hauswald (2026a), which is itself a reply to Mizrahi (2025), which is a commentary on Hauswald (2025). I am very grateful to James Collier for inviting us to continue this fruitful dialogue. I also thank Rico Hauswald for his thoughtful engagement with my arguments. … . Article Citation: Mizrahi, Moti. 2026. “Can’t Truss It (Epistemically): A Reply to Hauswald.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 15 (8): 10–18.

The post-truth literature has given us our dominant vocabulary for the erosion of truth in public life, and it has done so around a single organizing figure: the intentional agent who distorts. Lee McIntyre (2018) defined “post-truth” as a condition in which emotions and beliefs exert greater influence on policy than objective facts, tracing its lineage through science denialism to postmodern relativism; his later…

Volume 15, Issue 7, 1–97, July 2026 ❧ Lawler, Diego and Jesús Vega-Encabo. 2026. “Between Generics and Forms of Life: Toward a Practical Ontology of Artifacts.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 15 (7): 1–20. ❧ Cormick, Claudio and Valeria Edelsztein. 2026. “More Diversity, Better Science? On Evidence, Specificity, and the Wedge Between Ethical and Epistemic Justifications.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective…

Sven Nyholm’s The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: A Philosophical Introduction (Hackett Publishing 2026) is a clear, well-written, accessible, and fairly comprehensive philosophical introduction to the ethics of artificial intelligence. In each chapter, Nyholm raises pressing ethical questions about the development and deployment of technologies that can be broadly characterized as “artificial intelligence.” Nyholm does a great job of motivating different answers to these questions, thereby offering the reader various ways of approaching them.

I found Rebecca Monteleone, Martin Perez Comisso, and Elma Hajric’s “Cyberpositionality: Sociotechnical Location in the Digital Age” (2024) to be an extremely timely and important article which can greatly influence how academics and the general public think not only about online spaces, communities, and selves, but also about algorithmic systems and tools, across the board. Their central argument—that there is something both real and importantly different about the way that our identities are positioned in online digital spaces—is one which has precursors in other areas of investigation, but it is laid out here in ways carefully relating it to how humans are categorized, read, rendered, and reproduced by algorithmic systems.

In his recent paper “Political Debate under Epistemic Asymmetries,”[1] Janusz Grygieńć argues that political theorists have underestimated the importance of epistemic asymmetries (EAs). Epistemic asymmetries occur whenever some people have first-hand or at least well-grounded knowledge while others must rely on their testimony. Many political issues, such as climate change, vaccines, trade policy, and national defense are dominated by these asymmetries.

The rapid expansion of generative artificial intelligence has initiated a transformation that is not merely technological but epistemological and ontological. Contemporary AI systems increasingly mediate the conditions under which interpretation, semantic authority, and epistemic legitimacy emerge. This article argues that artificial intelligence transforms the ontology of meaning by shifting interpretation from phenomenological disclosure toward probabilistic stabilization—a transition better described as an infrastructural eclipse than as a definitive end.

Abstract Do revolutions occur in mathematics? I agree with Karl Popper, Imre Lakatos and Joseph Agassi regarding their view—with a proviso— that in the history of ancient mathematics, early modern mathematics, as well as recent mathematics, revolutions occur. The proviso I argue is that mathematics is a continuum in terms of how proofs work. I propose that the main methodology of proof in mathematics has endured since the time of Euclid: Euclid provides a methodology for proof that has endured until today through to Stephen Cook … .

I have learnt a lot from some of Hannah Hilligardt’s previous contributions, most recently her article “Science as Public Service” (Hilligardt 2024; see also Langvatn and Holst 2026), and I am grateful for her generous words and engaged discussion of my article “Democratizing Expertise: The Epistemic Approach” (Holst 2025). … . Article Citation: Holst, Cathrine. 2026. “Making Epistemic Considerations Primary Does Not Make Social Values Secondary: A Reply to Hilligardt.” …

I appreciate Mark D. West clarifying what he means by genre discipline, and I’m on board as far as it goes. Dr. West claims that his original review was meant to protect the methodological challenge of my book Nietzschean, Feminist, and Embodied Perspective on the Presocratics: Philosophy as Partnership (henceforth NFEP)[1],[2] by differentiating the constructive appropriation side of the text from the historical reconstruction side but, as much as I would like to agree with him, I’m not as sure of this as I am that I stand by my first response.

We are grateful to Leonardo González Galli and Agustín Adúriz-Bravo for an engagement that is both generous and intellectually serious. Much of what follows takes place against a backdrop of substantial agreement. All four of us share a commitment to diversity in research communities, to the value of critical reflection within progressive epistemologies, and to the importance of resisting both obscurantism and anti-scientific attitudes.

5. The Principle of Unity: No Essence, but No Emptiness Either Tim Juvshik’s objection to the notion of a principle of unity identifies a real tension in our original formulation. On the one hand, we speak of a principle that concerns the persistence and identity of artifacts; on the other hand, we deny that this principle can be strictly defined, or that it consists in a fixed form or essence of the artifact.

We are grateful to Tim Juvshik for his careful engagement (2026) with our article (2025). His commentary is valuable because it identifies a significant issue in our proposal: whether an ontology of artifacts centered on maintenance and repair needs the notions of natural history, life-form/form of life, and principle of unity, or whether the same phenomena can be explained more economically by appeal to kinds, generics, and social practices.

Volume 15, Issue 6, 1–66, June 2026 ❧ Hauswald, Rico. 2026. “On ‘Bullshit Machines’ and Artificial Epistemic Authorities: A Response to Mizrahi.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 15 (6): 1–4. ❧ Atkins, Richard Kenneth. 2026. “Epistemic Requirements and Ethical Responsibilities: Remarks in Response to Kasser’s Gentle Nudges.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 15 (6): 5–12. ❧ Salwa, Mateusz. 2026.

Abstract About five years ago, “Taming Human Subjects” emerged from a practical question that arose while learning to conduct experiments: if human subjects are so difficult to study, how do experimental findings nevertheless come to appear orderly and reproducible? At the time, answering that question felt like closure. Jill Morawski’s commentary encouraged me to look again at what the paper left unexplored.

What follows is hybrid of a book review and rejoinders to Jack David Eller’s Apisteology: The Study of Not Believing and of its sometimes surprising claims. A caution: Do not address Jack as Jack in correspondence, stated book authorship notwithstanding. We are cautioned by Jack that only his friends are permitted to call him “Jack”. In what follows we will simply use Eller for Jack.

5. Doing Philosophy in the Spirit of Pyrrhonian Skepticism about Philosophy Suppose we have shown that Pyrrhonian Skepticism about Philosophy (PSP) does not undermine itself, since it is committed only to the truth of substantive propositions that anyone is inalienably entitled to believe. If so, then you must take the Argument from Disagreement (AfD) seriously—you can no longer dismiss it with the familiar response that, since PSP is self-defeating, its skeptical challenge may simply be ignored.

3. Answers to the Pyrrhonian Skeptical Challenge The AfD presented above [Part I] is a formally valid chain of inferences starting from the phenomenon of permanent philosophical disagreement. Accordingly, if you reject the conclusion of the AfD, you must deny one of its premises—more precisely, one of the three conditionals it contains. In what follows, we present these objections and show what reasons you can have for maintaining substantive philosophical beliefs despite permanent disagreement.

By Pyrrhonian Skepticism about Philosophy (PSP) we mean the view that, considering the permanent and pervasive dissensus in philosophy, you cannot maintain your philosophical beliefs—you should suspend them, or at least significantly (and perhaps painfully) reduce your confidence in their truth. … . Article Citation: Bernáth, László and János Tőzsér. 2026. “Pyrrhonian Skepticism about Philosophy.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective…

Gabriele Contessa’s Science Denial (2025) offers an exceptional illustration of how philosophy, when done at its best, can illuminate and help us make sense of issues that fall outside its traditional domains of inquiry. … . Article Citation: Piazza, Tommaso. 2026. “A Review of Gabriele Contessa’s Science Denial.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 15 (6): 22–27. 📄 The…

Recent scholarship aims to broaden the scope of philosophical aesthetics. As a result, identifying aesthetics solely with the philosophy of fine arts has become problematic. While traditional questions concerning aesthetic values such as beauty, aesthetic experience (appreciation), and notions about art, creativity and imitation remain relevant and largely define contemporary discussions within aesthetics, these questions also get applied to fields far beyond the traditional aesthetic boundaries—e.g., business, environments, food, the everyday, design, law, politics, and sport.

Ever a charitable reader and rigorous thinker, Jeff Kasser has generously written a critical reply to my essay “Apology for an Average Believer” (2024). I am grateful for the time and effort he expended in doing so. I have learned much from conversation with him and from his published works on the epistemology of belief. For my own work to be the object of his attention is an honor.

I would like to thank Moti Mizrahi for his response to Hauswald (2026), where I discuss the two arguments he advances against my account of artificial epistemic authorities (see Hauswald 2025; Mizrahi 2025). I would also like to thank James Collier for inviting me to continue our dialogue. … . Article Citation: Hauswald. Rico. 2026. “On ‘Bullshit Machines’ and Artificial Epistemic Authorities: A Response to Mizrahi.” …

Volume 15, Issue 5, 1–68, May 2026 ❧ Breidenstein Jr, Joseph I. 2026. “A Response to West’s ‘Usable Antiquity’.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 15 (5): 1–8. ❧ Galli, Leonardo González. 2026. “A Commentary on Edelsztein and Cormick’s ‘If It’s Too Good to be True, It Ain’t’.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 15 (5): 9–14. ❧ Riggio, Adam.

Tomas Nemunas Mickevičius’s fascinating “Gilbert Simondon as a Philosopher of (Technological) Mediation” (2024) builds on Pascal Chabot’s observation that Simondon is “the philosopher of technical mediation. For him, it is central” (338). Mickevičius then systematises the dimensions of mediation into four levels: ontogenetic, conceptual-paradigmatic, concrete-political, and phenomenotechnological. The claim that mediation is a “necessary addition” to the canonical list of Simondonian concepts is defensible and productive, and the reconstruction of its levels is philologically precise.

Abstract This reply to Aleksandra Vučković clarifies two aspects of my earlier critique of Pre-emptionism and develops a positive alternative account of epistemic authority. It argues that evidentialist approaches may adequately capture epistemic permissions but fail to explain the positive obligations we may bear toward epistemically superior agents. Drawing on systems theory, it proposes understanding epistemic authority within a broader epistemic ecology structured by multiple social epistemic goods, including reputation, trust, and epistemic character.