Philosophy and Digitalization, special issue of SATS
We are living in a time of radical digital change. Disruptions to the status quo are celebrated. Most of us are in certain respects at least enamored by some of the new technological tools and possibilities. How these changes should be understood remains unclear and controversial. Digital realms have turned the neat divisions of disciplines upside down and given ample evidence for the importance of new thinking about complex contemporary challenges.
Rapid developments in digitalization in virtually every area of human life has fractured established divisions between fields of philosophy. Insightful philosophical analyses of the new digital challenges may require reinventing philosophical methods and categories which cut across traditional fields of ethics, political philosophy, epistemology and metaphysics. Epistemological tools and ways of comprehending specific changes in the current world need to be developed as digitalization influences interactions between individual human beings, advances the digital structures of social media and digital economies, and alters grounding assumptions of democratic rule.
For these reasons contributions are invited under the open ended theme of Philosophy and Digitalization. Our hope is that such contributions will offer original ways to consider and assess the implications of the digital era for humans existentially, for our roles as responsible citizens, and our abilities to act as cognizant beings and so on. Contributions on issues such as privacy, ‘fake news’, ‘swarming’ of public opinion prompted by social media, and broader epistemic behavioral patterns, structures of digital economies, challenges for democracy and social life, as well as basic questions about the nature and interrelations between the analog and the digital are welcome. Reflecting on how to philosophize about digitalization will create and reshape enquiries about human understanding and our place in the world.