Judging and Justifying Steve Fuller’s Orthogonality

Abstract Steve Fuller's recent book, To Judge and To Justify: Profiles of the Academic Vocation, serves as a point of entry for a dialogue on the intellectual enterprise of social epistemology. Sharon Rider begins by identifying and interrogating a handful of key concepts in Fuller's arsenal of provocative ideas, honing in especially on the notions of orthogonality and modal power as in tandem forming the engine propelling the project. She places Fuller's thinking in a broader historical discussion of philosophers who have considered the conditions of thought, and in particular under what circumstances these may be overcome or transformed. Steve Fuller responds to Rider's intervention and delves deeper into what he has termed ‘quantum epistemology’, which he associates with, inter alia, Baconian experimentalism, Popperian bold conjectures, William James' will to believe, the trans movement in general, and transhumanism in particular. In the last section, Rider connects the kind of audacity that Fuller aims to articulate and incarnate in philosophy with methods of self-critique in the spirit of Descartes and Kant, and the courage required to ruthlessly investigate one's own intellectual assumptions and inclinations. The dialogue ends aporetically because to seek or set a terminus would go against the grain of philosophy understood as orthogonal thinking.