Against the abstract connectionism: a reply to André Lemos (original) (raw)

André Lemos has published an article in this journal in which he attempts to invalidate the epistemic claims of critical thinking about technology and cyberculture, accusing it of essentialism. This article challenges this judgment, drawing attention to three types of issues. The first is a lack of academic references and, with this, of a deeper and well-informed understanding about what is proper to critical reason. The second is the author's performative contradiction of questioning the critique using the same line of thought that he opposes to instead of the one he advocates. The third is an uncritical endorsement of ideas that, separated from the research practice that can developed from them, promote a crude hyper-empiricism of little epistemic content.