Francis X. Remedios

This book examines and critiques Steve Fuller’s social epistemology on his study of four ways to understand the nature of post-truth: way one’s understanding is an epistemic crisis in which emotion has taken over and facts are irrelevant; way two’s understanding is a legitimation crisis of cognitive authority of science on the legitimation and delegitimation of knowledge claims; way three’s understanding is the Internet and social media have led to the democratization of knowledge; way four’s understanding is the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the changing boundaries of the knower. Though Fuller is known for his early social epistemology on how knowledge should be organized, and for his later social epistemology on a post-human future and the impact of AI on the changing boundaries of the knower, his position on the nature of post-truth brings together his early and later social epistemology into a coherent project. This book situates and carefully addresses the critics of Fuller’s work in the context of ongoing crises of authority in science and technology studies, expertise, the university, democracy, and the mass media.

This chapter is Fuller’s version of Intelligent Design (ID) in opposition to evolutionary theorists, and the controversy concerning it is discussed. This chapter discusses why ID is important to Fuller in terms of defending the spiritual distinctiveness of humanity. He claims doing science is to participate in the mind of God, since humanity is created in the image and likeness of God. Fuller contrasts what he claims is the natural history approach of Darwin and evolutionists with molecular biology, claiming ID is linked to the latter. Fuller’s claims concerning the scientific status of evolutionary theory are criticized.

This chapter starts with a contrast and comparison of Fuller and Latour and a survey of Fuller’s criticisms of Latour, on the human and non-human distinction in which Fuller defends that humans have agency against Latour’s view that agency is deflated to networks and actants. Next is Fuller’s treatment of Kuhn and Popper since Fuller views Kuhn as setting the stage for STS’s ascendancy through STS’s criticism of normativity in philosophy of science. Fuller’s relation to STS to which Fuller is most closely associated is described. Fuller is critical of STS’s lack of knowledge policy and of its relativism. STS’s version of social constructivism is contrasted to Fuller’s realism on the social sciences and social constructivism on the natural sciences.

This chapter is on agent-oriented social epistemology, which emphasizes epistemic agency or the knower as ontologically open. This is from Fuller’s move to transhumanist in which to knower is enhanced to become disembodied. Fuller views the epistemic agent to make knowledge to act in the world as contrasted to analytic social epistemology’s epistemic agent, who is a human knower with beliefs and does not make knowledge through construction of reality. There is also a discussion of cognitive economics in which the epistemic agent makes knowledge and leverages beliefs to action instead of the epistemic agent having beliefs to access knowledge.

This chapter is on an exploration of Fuller’s version of Cosmism. This movement, based in part on the Russian Orthodox concept of theosis as moving toward a union with God, advocates space travel and the scientific pursuit of immortality. This resembles Fuller’s humanity 2.0. There are charges of Gnosticism, which is the Christian heresy holding that the creator of the world was an evil creature and God is beyond this realm and with knowledge (gnosis), one can move beyond this world to a higher form of being, against Fuller’s transhumanism. Fuller has been accused of Gnosticism, though the Gnosticism of which he is accused is really eschatology. Fuller himself criticizes biologists who publicly deny biological race differences of being Gnostics. This view is critically analyzed.

This book examines Fuller’s pioneering vision of social epistemology. It focuses specifically on his work post-2000, which is founded in the changing conception of humanity and project into a ‘post-‘ or ‘trans-‘ human future. Chapters treat especially Fuller’s provocative response to the changing boundary conditions of the knower due to anticipated changes in humanity coming from the nanosciences, neuroscience, synthetic biology and computer technology and end on an interview with Fuller himself. While Fuller’s turn in this direction has invited at least as much criticism as his earlier work, to him the result is an extended sense of the knower, or ‘humanity 2.0’, which Fuller himself identifies with transhumanism. The authors assess Fuller’s work on the following issues: Science and Technology Studies (STS), the university and intellectual life, neo-liberal political economy, intelligent design, Cosmism, Gnosticism, agent-oriented epistemology, proactionary vs precautionary principles and Welfare State 2.0.

Fullerand Rouse are both political social epistemologists concerned with the cognitive authority of science, though both disagree on what role it should play in science. Fullerar gues that political factors such as knowledge policy and a constitution play a primary role in the global legitimation of scientific knowledge, while Rouse holds that politics play a role on the local (practices) level but not on the global (metascientific) level of legitimation. While Fullerpr ovides a political response to the legitimation project, Rouse rejects the legitimation project because he holds that it involves the need forglobal legitimation of the place of scientific knowledge in our culture. Key Words: legitimation project • social epistemology • epistemic sovereignty • metascience • scientific knowledge.

Neoliberalism advocates for the construction of free markets, which are to be used for solutions to economic and social problems rather than state solutions to those problems. Though Neoliberal reforms in Japan have affected its science and technology, STS literature has not focused on responses to neoliberalism through the lens of a country. Japan has a discrete STS history and Japan makes a good case study to the influence of neoliberalism on STS. In August 2010, at Tokyo’s Social Studies of Science (4S) meetings, there were several sessions on neoliberalism and STS. At these sessions, Kunio Goto, Yasumoto Fujita, Hidetoshi Kihara, Hideto Nakajima, Steve Fuller, David Hess, Francis Remedios presented different responses to neoliberalism and STS. This special issue explores two themes. The first theme is Goto's and Fujita's call for a revitalization of Marxist STS as an alternative to the influence of neoliberalism on STS in Japan. The second theme is Kihara's and Nakajima's call for a revitalization of a critical function of STS in Japan. Hess examines STS as a field and its response to neoliberalism in Europe and Anglophone countries.