• AI as modernity’s last stand

• Simone Weil’s apophatic concept of attention

• Towards a dialogue between CR and Postdigital Research

• Do Artifacts Have Politics?

• On rushing and apophatic reflexivity

• What is diagnosis?

• Bourdieu on powerlessness and prophecy

• Anscombe on the descriptions under which actions are performed

• To fail as a human being is to accept somebody else’s description of oneself

• Our own half-articulate need to become a new person, one whom we as yet lack words to describe

• Call for Participants Globalisation and Commercialisation in the Social Sectors

• The thrill of the alt-position

• Internal conversation and repression

• Post-Human Futures now out in paperback

• ChatGPT: “Write me a poem about the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu”

• The genealogy of the simulation hypothesis

• In defence of thinking in a speculative way

• What does a sociological rather than philosophical approach to thought experiments look like? The example of the Metaverse

• And if I see you, how it changes me

• The ontological implications of generative AI

• Defending the Social

• Neo-structuralism and social media in higher education

• The ladder of abstraction

• Ontological questions about the metaverse

• John Stuart Mill on libidinal collapse: some thoughts on socialisation and human purpose

• How to enjoy reading social theory

• The eye-on-the-object look

• Why do some people enjoy social theory while others don’t?

• Peter Sloterdijk on the difficulty of saying what is missing

• Habermas on colonisation of the lifeworld

• Recovering critique in an age of datafication

• A theory of learning for the future: the realist concept of reflexivity and the pragmatist concept of experience

• Why was the industrial revolution so slow and the digital revolution so fast?

• David Hume on escaping an overheated brain

• Georg Simmel and Critical Realism

• The comfort of ideas

• Coaxing the sight and sound back to your life

• Critical Realism & Technology Reading Group, Friday October 28th 1pm-2pm

• What does it mean to live a good life in a broken world? Some post-pandemic thoughts on Charles Taylor’s philosophy

• The temporal ontology of modernity

• Clive Lawson’s Technology & Isolation (ch 1-3)

• Critical Realism & Technology Reading Group

• Some notes on social generativity

• Notes on the conceptual grammar of platforms

• André Gorz and the concept of hygiene

• Reflexivity, contingency and platforms

• Flourishing as freedom

• Cruel optimism and the possibility of renewal

• How do you have rewarding conversations about social theory?

• Why do we read philosophy?

• What is it that’s special about face to face events? Perspectives from Peter Sloterdijk and Randall Collins

• George Simmel on Eye Contact

• Peter Sloterdijk and the concept of the sphere

• A first attempt to theorise socialisation in a way which is adequate to the challenges of platform society

• A critical realist critique of Rosi Braidotti’s Posthumanism

• Critical realism needs to be a living tradition

• An interview with Margaret Archer about her life and work

• Philosophers as situated in space and time, trying to muddle their way through

• The tragedy of Ludwig Wittgenstein

• The loneliness of Ludwig Wittgenstein

• Can we reclaim our agency by putting the internet in its place?

• The ontology of virtual worlds

• The social ontology of the Metaverse

• Keanu Reeves = philosopher of social acceleration

• Towards a sociology of splintered minds

• The things which bring us together

• A Heideggerian reading of Margaret Archer

• A few thoughts on Peter Sloterdijk’s Spheres

• Ralph Waldo Emerson’s self-reliance amidst the epistemic chaos of platform capitalism

• Walter Lippmann on the sociological imagination

• What is practical reasoning?

• The Beautiful Soul of the Critical Academic

• Who do we imagine ourselves to be tweeting on behalf of? Norm circles, networked harassment and the politics of social media

• Epistemic positioning and epistemic injustice 

• Do you use Margaret Archer’s approach to reflexivity in your work?

• The muppets explain phenomenology

• How bad will things get? The role of social theory when civilisation is collapsing

• What does it mean to think sociologically about educational technology?

• David Hume on the existential limitations of philosophical reasoning

• Crises precipitate change

• The Buddhist principle of skill in means and theorising communication

• How does sociological thought contribute to human freedom?

• The Quest for Normativity: Challenges and New Directions in Social Research

• The reification of social change

• The ontological preconditions for radical digital citizenship

• Heidegger on the End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking

• Conspiracy theories as assembly devices

• The malaise of modernity

• The voyages of concepts: some critical thoughts on sociotechnical imaginaries and its application in education

• What critical realism can learn from ANT and speculative realism

• Nietzsche’s theory of dialogue and its implications for educational podcasting

• The importance of the library

• Platform socialisation and the possibility of freedom

• What does it mean to be an efficacious agent? Some sketchy notes on critical realism and educational sociology

• Dewey’s conception of collateral learning and platform socialisation

• Recovering the Homeric gods

• An Archerian reading of John Dewey and its relevance for platform socialisation

• The role of involvement in learning how to learn

• Chomsky: On Being Truly Educated

• The true object of democratic education: to stand up within the context and against the context