Uljana Feest, "Operationism in Psychology: An Epistemology of Exploration" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
About 100 years ago, prominent psychologists Stanley Smith Stevens, Edward Tolman and Clark Hull spearheaded the idea of linking psychological concepts, such as “memory”, to specific experimental designs. In Operationism in Psychology: An Epistemology of Exploration (University of Chicago Press, 2025), Uljana Feest offers a rich analysis of this link as a method for making progress in epistemically uncharted scientific territory. Feest, a professor of philosophy at Leibniz University in Germany, considers the conceptual, epistemic, and methodological issues involved when it is not clear what a target of research is like or even whether it exists. She provides an updated interpretation of what operational definitions are and how they function in psychology, and shows how these foundational issues in psychology intersect with philosophical debates about conceptual change, natural kinds, and mechanistic explanation.
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1:06:05
Talia Mae Bettcher, "Beyond Personhood: An Essay in Trans Philosophy" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
What does transphobic oppression have to do with sexism, heterosexism, and racism? How does a decolonial analysis help us understand trans oppression? How are the relatively recent concepts of person, self, and subject implicated in these forms of oppression? And what theorizations are already available within trans communities for thinking through this all?
In Beyond Personhood: An Essay in Trans Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2025), Talia Mae Bettcher develops a new theory of intimacy and distance to show how structures of appearing—as well as liminal experiences of appearance—can help us understand trans oppression and gender dysphoria in new ways. This new theory of interpersonal spatiality also shows how we can build worlds otherwise, thinking about connections and relations in ways foreclosed by many of the currently dominate accounts of gender and identity.
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52:53
Ryan M. Nefdt, "The Philosophy of Theoretical Linguistics: A Contemporary Outlook" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Between the study of specific languages and the philosophy of language lies what Ryan Nefdt calls a “Goldilocks zone” of theoretical issues related to language. In The Philosophy of Theoretical Linguistics (Cambridge University Press, 2024), Nefdt introduces and explores the elements in this zone, including different theories of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, and differing views of how language evolved, which languages are possible, and what defines language. Nefdt, a professor of philosophy at the University of Cape Town, shows where dominant linguistic theories, such as Chomskian syntactic theory and truth-conditional semantics, fit in a generalized framework where a key theoretical dimension is the role of social context.
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1:07:56
M. Chirimuuta, "The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience" (MIT Press, 2024)
This book is available open access here.
The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience (MIT Press, 2024), Mazviita Chirimuuta argues that the standard ways neuroscientists simplify the human brain to build models for their research purposes mislead us about how the brain actually works. The key issue, instead, is to figure out which details of brain function are relevant for understanding its role in causing behavior; after all, the biological brain is a highly energetically efficient basis of cognition in contrast to the massive data centers driving AI that are based on the simplification that brain functionality is just a matter of neuronal action potentials. Chirimuuta, who is a senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, also argues for a Kantian-inspired view of neuroscientific knowledge called haptic realism, according to which what we can know about the brain is the product of interaction between brains and the scientific methods and aims that guide how we investigate them.
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52:44
Omar Dahbour, "Ecosovereignty: A Political Principle for the Environmental Crisis" (Routledge, 2024)
Part of what makes the challenges that collectively are called the “environmental crisis” so difficult is that the vocabulary we deploy in thinking and discussing the issues emerged under social conditions that are far removed from our present. The familiar idiom of nation states, borders, jurisdiction, and so on seems inadequate for addressing a crisis that concerns global conditions. It’s plausible to think that a cogent response to the environmental crisis will require a reconstruction of the conceptual tools of social and political theory.
In his new book, Ecosovereignty: A Political Principle for the Environmental Crisis (Routledge 2024), Omar Dahbour develops new understandings of the concepts of sovereignty, territory, peoplehood, and self-determination, all with a view toward building a case for the principle according to which peoples have a right to protect and maintain their natural environments.
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South Africa