•  47
    Dirty data labeled dirt cheap: epistemic injustice in machine learning systems
    Ethics and Information Technology 25 (3): 1-14. 2023.
    Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) systems increasingly purport to deliver knowledge about people and the world. Unfortunately, they also seem to frequently present results that repeat or magnify biased treatment of racial and other vulnerable minorities. This paper proposes that at least some of the problems with AI’s treatment of minorities can be captured by the concept of epistemic injustice. To substantiate this claim, I argue that (1) pretrial detention and physiognomic…Read more
  •  21
    How Foucault Got Rid of (Bossy) Marxism
    Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 34 (3): 372-403. 2022.
    Foucault distanced himself from Marxism even though he worked in an environment—left French theory of the 1960s and 1970s—where Marxism was the dominant frame of reference. By viewing Foucault in the context of French Marxist theoretical debates of his day, we can connect his criticisms of Marxism to his discussions of the status of intellectuals. Foucault viewed standard Marxist approaches to the role of intellectuals as a problem of power and knowledge applicable to the Communist party. Marxis…Read more
  •  3
    The Death of the Data Subject
    Law, Culture and the Humanities 2021. 2021.
    This paper situates the data privacy debate in the context of what I call the death of the data subject. My central claim is that concept of a rights-bearing data subject is being pulled in two contradictory directions at once, and that simultaneous attention to these is necessary to understand and resist the extractive practices of the data industry. Specifically, it is necessary to treat the problems facing the data subject structurally, rather than by narrowly attempting to vindicate its righ…Read more
  •  12
    Infrastructure, Modulation, Portal
    Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 26 (1): 84-114. 2022.
    Following Foucault’s remarks on the importance of architecture to disciplinary power, this paper offers a typology of power relations expressed in different models of Internet governance. Infrastructure governance understands the Internet as a common pool or public resource, on the model of traditional infrastructures like roads and bridges. Modulation governance, which I study by way of Net Neutrality debates in the U.S., understands Internet governance as traffic shaping. Portal governance, wh…Read more
  •  6
    Privacy, People, and Markets
    Ethics and International Affairs 33 (4): 499-509. 2019.
    Most current work on privacy understands it according to an economic model: individuals trade personal information for access to desired services and websites. This sounds good in theory. In practice, it has meant that online access to almost anything requires handing over vast amounts of personal information to the service provider with little control over what happens to it next. The two books considered in this essay both work against that economic model. In Privacy as Trust, Ari Ezra Waldman…Read more
  •  24
    Foucault’s discussion of parrhēsia – frank speech – in his last two Collège de France lecture courses has led many to wonder if Foucault is pursuing parrhēsia as a contemporary strategy for resistance. This essay argues that ethical parrhēsia on either the Socratic or Cynical model would have little critical traction today because the current environment is plagued by problems analogous to those Plato thought plagued Athenian democracy. Specifically, authentication of parrhesiasts as a technique…Read more
  •  4
    As a central part of the regulation of contemporary economies, intellectual property is central to all aspects of our lives. It matters for the works we create, the brands we identify and the medicines we consume. But if IP is power, what kind of power is it, and what does it do? Building on the work of Michel Foucault, Gordon Hull examines different ways of understanding power in copyright, trademark and patent policy: as law, as promotion of public welfare, and as promotion of neoliberal priva…Read more
  •  21
    Foucault’s discussion of parrhēsia – frank speech – in his last two Collège de France lecture courses has led many to wonder if Foucault is pursuing parrhēsia as a contemporary strategy for resistance. This essay argues that ethical parrhēsia on either the Socratic or Cynical model would have little critical traction today because the current environment is plagued by problems analogous to those Plato thought plagued Athenian democracy. Specifically, authentication of parrhesiasts as a techniqu…Read more
  •  47
    Toward a critical theory of corporate wellness
    with Frank Pasquale
    Biosocieties 13 (1): 190-212. 2018.
    In the U.S., ‘employee wellness’ programs are increasingly attached to employer-provided health insurance. These programs attempt to nudge employees, sometimes quite forcefully, into healthy behaviors such as smoking cessation and exercise routines. Despite being widely promoted as saving on healthcare costs, numerous studies undermine this rationale. After documenting the programs’ failure to deliver a positive return on investment, we analyze them as instead providing an opportunity for employ…Read more
  •  58
    Cultural Branding, Geographic Source Indicators and Commodification
    Theory, Culture and Society 33 (2): 125-145. 2016.
    One strategy for indigenous producers competing with global capital is to obtain geographic source protection (a form of trademark) for products traditionally associated with a cultural grouping or region. The strategy is controversial, and this article adds an additional reason to be cautious about adopting it. Specifically, consumers increasingly consume brands not for the products they designate but for the affiliation with the brands themselves. Since the benefits of source protection depend…Read more
  •  17
    The Politics of Quantified Relationships
    American Journal of Bioethics 18 (2): 29-30. 2018.
  •  126
    The “privacy paradox” refers to the discrepancy between the concern individuals express for their privacy and the apparently low value they actually assign to it when they readily trade personal information for low-value goods online. In this paper, I argue that the privacy paradox masks a more important paradox: the self-management model of privacy embedded in notice-and-consent pages on websites and other, analogous practices can be readily shown to underprotect privacy, even in the economic t…Read more
  •  1
    Marx's Anomalous Reading of Spinoza
    Interpretation 28 (1): 17-31. 2000.
    This paper is a study of the young Marx’s reception of Spinoza, centered around the 1841 notebooks Marx kept on Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise. I argue that Marx’s own thought carries remarkable affinities with Spinoza’s. On the one hand, both thinkers are concerned to present questions of interpretation and reading as political questions and as essential to any understanding of human freedom. On the other hand, both thinkers are attempting to disclose theological structures masquera…Read more
  •  25
    Capital sive Natura
    International Studies in Philosophy 37 (2): 15-35. 2005.
  •  214
    Platonism, Spinoza and the History of Deconstruction
    In K. C. Baral & R. Radhakrishnan (eds.), Theory After Derrida: Essays in Critical Praxis, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. pp. 74. 2009.
    This paper revisits Derrida’s and Deleuze’s early discussions of “Platonism” in order to challenge the common claim that there is a fundamental divergence in their thought and to challenge one standard narrative about the history of deconstruction. According to that narrative, deconstruction should be understood as the successor to phenomenology. To complicate this story, I read Derrida’s “Plato’s Pharmacy” alongside Deleuze’s discussion of Platonism and simulacra at the end of Logic of Sense.…Read more
  •  23
    Introduction: The politics of construction -- A genealogical context of modern political thought -- More geometrico -- Nominalism redux -- The state of nature -- Constructing politics -- Conclusion: From erasing nature to producing the multitude.
  •  58
    Building Better Citizens
    Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 20 (1): 105-129. 2015.
    Hobbes rejects the Aristotelian political animal, a move that enables a malleable psychology in which we are driven by our passions and responses to external objects. Our psychology is accordingly overdetermined by our socio-cultural environment, and managing that environment becomes a central task of the state. A particular problem is what I call the “ontological illusion,” the constitutive human tendency to ontologize products of the imagination. I argue that Hobbes’s strategies for managing t…Read more
  •  45
    The jewish question revisited: Marx, Derrida and ethnic nationalism
    Philosophy and Social Criticism 23 (2): 47-77. 1997.
    The question of nationalism as spoken about in contem porary circles is structurally the same as Marx's 'Jewish Question'. Through a reading of Marx's early writings, particularly the 'Jewish Question' essay, guided by Derrida's Specters of Marx and Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, it is possible to begin to rethink the nationalist question. In this light, nationalism emerges as the byproduct of the reduction of heterogeneous 'people' into a homo geneous 'state'; such 'excessive' voices…Read more
  •  32
    This paper discusses some of the current literature around the precautionary principle in environmental philosophy and law with reference to the possibility of transgenic food in Uganda (GMO bananas specifically). My suggestion is that the distinction between formal and substantive versions of a principle, familiar from legal theory, can be useful in imposing some conceptual clarity on aspects of debates concerning the precautionary principle. In particular, most of the negative critical respons…Read more
  •  151
    Defenders of strong Intellectual Property rights or of a nonutilitarian basis for those rights often turn to Locke for support.1 Perhaps because of a general belief that Locke is an advocate of all things proprietary, this move seldom receives careful scrutiny. That is unfortunate for two reasons. First, as I will argue, Locke does not issue a blank check in support of all property regimes, and the application of his reasoning to intellectual property would actually tend to favor a substantially…Read more
  •  2
    Hobbes, Marx, and the Foundations of Modern Political Thought
    Dissertation, Vanderbilt University. 2000.
    This dissertation is a study of the nature and development of "modern" political thought, typical features of which include the "state of nature" and "social contract." Specifically, I argue that modern thought is constructive, which is to say that thinking is seen as, at least to some extent, generative of its objects. I focus primarily on Hobbes and Marx as liminal thinkers in the development of modern political thought. I begin with a discussion of the nature of construction in modern thought…Read more
  •  69
    Biopolitics Is Not (Primarily) About Life: On Biopolitics, Neoliberalism, and Families
    Journal of Speculative Philosophy 27 (3): 322-335. 2013.
    The emergence of topics such as reprogenetics and genetic testing for hereditary diseases attests to the continued salience of Foucault's analyses of biopolitics. His various discussions pose at least two problems for contemporary appropriation of the work. First, it is unclear what the "life" on which biopolitics operates actually refers to.1 Second, it is unclear how biopolitics relates to the economy, either in the classical form of the family/household (oikos) or in the current form of neoli…Read more
  •  65
    In this paper I critically examine recent developments in intellectual property law. In particular, from a point of view informed primarily by Marx and Foucault, I study (a) the rhetoric surrounding the Metallica lawsuit against Napster; (b) a pair of conflicting trademark cases surrounding the ownership of a word on the Internet; and (c) the software industry's move to win approval for “shrink-wrap” or “click here” licenses. I conclude that these developments indicate a new form of disciplinary…Read more
  •  53
    Overblocking autonomy: The case of mandatory library filtering software
    Continental Philosophy Review 42 (1): 81-100. 2009.
    In U.S. v. American Library Association (2003), the Supreme Court upheld the Child Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which mandated that libraries receiving federal funding for public Internet access install content-filtering programs on computers which provide that access. These programs analyze incoming content, and block the receipt of objectionable material, in particular pornography. Thus, patrons at public libraries are protected from unintentionally (or intentionally) accessing objectionabl…Read more
  •  24
    This paper attempts a theoretical discussion of effects on the legal regime of copyright induced by the change from material to digital media. Specifically, a fundamental question remains unanswered: what is the relationship between an object and a copy? A conceptually clear answer to this question has been unnecessary because it has always been possible to provide an ad hoc answer through visual inspection of an object. Authorized mechanical reproductions – authorized copies – look similar to o…Read more
  •  40
    This paper uses Heidegger’s discussion of artifacts in Being and Time to motivate a phenomenological critique of Digital Rights Management regimes such as the one that allows DVDs to require one to watch commercials and copyright notices. In the first section, I briefly sketch traditional ethical approaches to intellectual property and indicate the gap that a phenomenological approach can fill. In section 2, following Heidegger’s discussion in Being and Time, I analyze DRM technologies as exempl…Read more
  •  23
    Walter Benjamin’s work shows evidence of a sustained engagement with Kant and neo-Kantianism, particularly his thoughts on history and experience. I read Benjamin’s “Theses” and “Theologico-Political Fragment” against Kant’s “Idea for a Cosmopolitan History” to suggest that actual experience becomes an impossibility in the Kantian system because historical events always outrun the efforts of the Kantian apparatus to contain them. That Kant ignores these excesses indicates the theological basis…Read more
  •  106
    Hobbes’s Radical Nominalism
    Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 11 (1): 201-223. 2006.
    This paper analyzes Hobbes’s understanding of signification, the process whereby words come to have meaning. Most generally, Hobbes develops and extends the nominalist critique of universals as it is found in Ockham and subsequently carried forward by early moderns such as Descartes. Hobbes’s radicality emerges in comparison with Ockham and Descartes, as, unlike them, Hobbes also reduces the intellectual faculty entirely to imagination. According to Hobbes, we have nothing in which a stabilizing…Read more
  •  247
    Contextual gaps: privacy issues on Facebook
    with Heather Richter Lipford and Celine Latulipe
    Ethics and Information Technology 13 (4): 289-302. 2011.
    Social networking sites like Facebook are rapidly gaining in popularity. At the same time, they seem to present significant privacy issues for their users. We analyze two of Facebooks’s more recent features, Applications and News Feed, from the perspective enabled by Helen Nissenbaum’s treatment of privacy as “contextual integrity.” Offline, privacy is mediated by highly granular social contexts. Online contexts, including social networking sites, lack much of this granularity. These contextual …Read more