Classical Presupposition Audit — Steve Fuller
Instrument architecture: Dave Kelly. Theoretical foundations: Grant C. Sterling (Eastern Illinois University). Prose rendering: Claude. Corpus in use: Core Stoicism, SLE v4.0, Nine Excerpts, The Little Enchiridion, Free Will and Causation, Stoicism Moral Facts and Ethical Intuitionism, Stoicism Foundationalism and the Structure of Ethical Knowledge, Stoicism Correspondence Theory of Truth and Objective Moral Facts, Stoicism Moral Realism and the Necessity of Objective Moral Facts, The Six Commitments Integrated with the Most Basic Foundations of Sterling’s Stoicism, A Brief Reply Re Dualism, Two and One-Half Ethical Systems. Classical Presupposition Audit (CPA) v1.0.
Step 0 — Protocol Activation
Subject: Steve Fuller, Auguste Comte Chair in Social Epistemology, University of Warwick. Philosopher and sociologist of science. Founder of the social epistemology research program.
Sources constituting the presupposition profile: Fuller’s IAI article “How America hijacked Western philosophy: Richard Rorty and the reinvention of Pragmatism” (May 28, 2026); his social epistemology program as documented in Social Epistemology (1988) and subsequent publications; his expert testimony at the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial (2005); Knowledge: The Philosophical Quest in History; Humanity 2.0; Post-Truth: Knowledge as a Power Game (2018); The Proactionary Imperative; the Ephemera Journal interview; and review literature that documents Fuller’s stated positions at second hand where those positions have not been contested by Fuller. No source is drawn from opponent characterization alone.
Prior conclusion check: None stated or implied. Findings to be produced by analysis.
Self-Audit — Step 0:
- Corpus in view: ✓
- Sources restricted to Fuller’s own public record: ✓
- No prior conclusion stated: ✓
Self-Audit Complete — No Failures Detected. Proceeding to Step 1.
Step 1 — Presupposition Profile
Stage A — Argumentative Record Summary
The Social Epistemology Program. Fuller’s founding move is to reorient epistemology away from truth as its primary criterion and toward the normative organization of knowledge as a social and political problem. His program asks how knowledge should be organized in order to serve humanity’s search for transcendence. Truth enters the program only as one consideration among others, not as the governing standard. This is load-bearing: the distinctiveness of his social epistemology depends on displacing truth from its classical position. An epistemology governed by correspondence truth would not need the Fullerian reorientation.
The Intelligent Design Testimony. In his 2005 Dover testimony, Fuller argued that Western science has its historical roots in Intelligent Design, that the Abrahamic tradition grounds science in the premise that humans are made in the image of God, and that this theological foundation provides the warrant for science as a rational enterprise. He invoked human consciousness and soul as the basis for methodological distinctiveness in the social sciences. He argued that humans, precisely because they possess a unique consciousness, cannot be treated as equivalent to non-human actants in a network. This is load-bearing for his argument that social science requires idiographic methods not available to natural science.
The Abrahamic Theological Anthropology. Fuller explicitly grounds human dignity and human cognitive capacity in the premise that humans are created in the image of God. The divine spark within the human being distinguishes the human from animals and from non-human components of social networks. He reads the scientific project as the human attempt to understand and exercise dominion over nature — a theological mandate, not merely a pragmatic one. This is load-bearing for his defense of human uniqueness against Latour’s actor-network theory and for his interpretation of Intelligent Design.
The Transhumanist Program. Fuller explicitly embraces transhumanism as the logical extension of the Abrahamic mandate to exercise dominion. He wants to use science and technology to transcend what is merely given by history and biology and to make humans the masters of their own fate, even their own creators. His proactionary ethics favors high-risk human experimentation as a rational expression of this mandate. This is load-bearing for his critique of the precautionary principle and for his defense of expansive human self-modification.
The Post-Truth Position. In Post-Truth: Knowledge as a Power Game (2018), Fuller argues that truth has always functioned as a political instrument, that Plato and his epistemological heirs were themselves “post-truth” in their use of knowledge claims for governance purposes, and that the contemporary post-truth phenomenon reflects a democratization of the strategic use of truth claims. He treats Rorty’s dismissal of philosophical truth-assertions as “honorifics” with apparent sympathy. This is load-bearing for his broader argument that truth is a power-game rather than a correspondence relation.
The Defense of Human Agency Against Latour. Fuller explicitly rejects Latour’s actor-network theory on the grounds that it erases the morally significant distinction between human and non-human. He defends a robust conception of human agency that cannot be reduced to the network-participation of things, animals, and persons on an equal footing. This is load-bearing for his argument that the social sciences have a distinctive moral responsibility that natural science lacks.
Stage B — Domain Mapping
Fuller’s argumentative record operates from three distinct and partly conflicting theoretical strands. Each strand generates its own presupposition set, and the strands are not fully reconciled in his public record.
Strand One — Social Epistemology: Knowledge is socially organized, normatively governable, and not primarily answerable to correspondence truth. This strand tends toward anti-foundationalism, social constitution of belief, and the displacement of truth as a governing criterion.
Strand Two — Theological Anthropology: Humans are made in the image of God, possess a unique consciousness or soul, and are mandated to exercise dominion over nature through rational inquiry. This strand tends toward substance dualism, genuine human agency, and a theologically grounded foundation for human value.
Strand Three — Transhumanism: Humans should transcend their biological and historical givenness through technology and self-modification. This strand generates tension with both the theological strand (which grounds human dignity in a fixed divine image) and the social epistemology strand (which treats knowledge as institutionally organized rather than individually pioneered).
Domain variations are present and significant. Fuller’s presuppositions on human agency and human distinctiveness are stronger in his ID and anti-Latour arguments than in his social epistemology program. His presuppositions on truth are weaker in his social epistemology and Post-Truth arguments than in his defense of science as a truth-pursuing enterprise. These variations will produce Inconsistent findings in Step 2.
Self-Audit — Step 1:
- Presuppositions drawn from Fuller’s own public record: ✓
- Load-bearing test applied: ✓
- Charity requirement applied where record is ambiguous: ✓
- Domain variations mapped: ✓ Three strands identified with their tension points.
Self-Audit Complete — No Failures Detected. Proceeding to Step 2.
Step 2 — Commitment Audit
C1 — Substance Dualism
The commitment: The rational agent possesses a non-material rational faculty distinct from body, brain, biology, and social environment. The human being is not reducible to physical processes.
What Fuller’s record requires: Fuller’s ID testimony invoked human consciousness and soul as the basis for methodological distinctiveness in social science. His Abrahamic theological anthropology explicitly grounds human uniqueness in being made in the image of God — “the spark of the divine within us distinguishes us from animals.” His defense of human agency against Latour requires that the human being cannot be treated as merely one node in a material network. These moves require a real distinction between the human rational subject and the non-human material world.
Residual divergence: Fuller’s transhumanist strand introduces tension. If what makes the human being distinctive is a non-material soul, then technological modification of the biological substrate does not threaten that distinctiveness. But Fuller’s transhumanism includes the possibility of redesigning the knower itself — making humans their own creators. That move, taken consistently, strains the premise of a fixed non-material rational faculty. Additionally, his social epistemology treats the knowing subject as constituted through social organization, which does not require a non-material rational faculty and does not explicitly affirm one.
Finding: Partially Aligned. The theological-anthropological and ID strands require substance dualism in a form recognizable within the classical commitment. The transhumanist strand introduces instability without defeating the dualist premise. The social epistemology strand is non-operative on this commitment specifically. The alignment is genuine; the residual is the transhumanist complication.
C2 — Metaphysical Libertarianism
The commitment: The agent exercises genuine freedom in assent, judgment, and moral choice. The agent is the originating source of assent, not merely a system of processes acting according to its conditioning.
What Fuller’s record requires: His defense of human agency against Latour requires that humans exercise a form of agency not available to non-human actants — a morally significant freedom that makes the human being responsible in a way that things and animals are not. His Abrahamic theological framework grounds this in the divine mandate: humans are charged with understanding and completing the divine plan, which presupposes genuine agency. His transhumanist program requires that humans can genuinely choose their own trajectory — mastering their fate rather than being mastered by it. His proactionary ethics requires that agents can take genuine risks for genuine reasons, not merely be carried forward by conditioning.
Residual divergence: Fuller does not engage the compatibilism-versus-libertarianism debate in his public record. His social epistemology treats belief-formation as socially organized and institutionally shaped, which tends toward social determination of belief rather than origination of assent. There is no documented defense of origination of assent in the precise sense Sterling’s framework requires. The agency Fuller defends is stronger than compatibilism in practice but is grounded theologically rather than in the metaphysical argument the commitment requires.
Finding: Partially Aligned. The argumentative record requires an agency stronger than mere absence of external constraint. The theological grounding provides a real, if indirect, basis for the commitment. The residual is the absence of an explicit origination-of-assent defense and the social epistemology strand’s tendency toward social determination of belief.
C3 — Moral Realism
The commitment: Moral truths are real. Virtue is not admirable because a society approves it. Moral facts are not created by convention, preference, or social agreement.
What Fuller’s record requires: His Abrahamic theological framework implies that humans have a real mandate — a purpose grounded in being made in the image of God. This is not a social construction. His defense of human dignity against Latour has a moral dimension: the distinction between human and non-human is morally significant, not merely conventionally significant. His ID position requires that the universe has a structure that is not merely an artifact of human projection.
Contrary presuppositions in other domains: His social epistemology program operates without moral realism as a governing criterion. His Post-Truth position treats truth claims — including moral ones — as strategic instruments in power games. One authoritative review of his social epistemology program notes that “truth plays no role in terms of his advice about improving an epistemic practice.” If truth plays no normative role, moral truth is similarly ungrounded in his epistemological program. His sympathy for Rorty’s deflationary treatment of truth extends at least implicitly to moral truth claims.
Finding: Inconsistent. The theological-anthropological strand requires something functionally equivalent to moral realism: a real mandate grounded in the nature of things rather than in social convention. The social epistemology and Post-Truth strands operate without moral realism and sometimes against it. These presuppositions cannot be reconciled within Fuller’s argumentative record as it stands. This is Failure Mode 3 territory — the Inconsistent finding is required by the domain variation and cannot be smoothed into Partially Aligned without falsifying the record.
C4 — Correspondence Theory of Truth
The commitment: A proposition is true because it corresponds to reality. Reality is the measure. Truth is not usefulness, social assertibility, or survival of inquiry.
What Fuller’s record requires: This is the clearest finding in the audit. Fuller’s social epistemology program is explicitly built on the premise that truth is not the governing criterion for epistemic evaluation. His program reorients epistemology “to concern itself not only with truth.” One review of his program states that “truth plays no role in terms of his advice about improving an epistemic practice.” His Post-Truth book treats truth as a power instrument, arguing that even Plato deployed truth claims strategically rather than as pure correspondence assertions. His sympathy for Rorty’s characterization of philosophical truth-assertions as “honorifics” is documented. His acceptance of standard post-Kuhnian arguments against scientific convergence further weakens any commitment to truth as correspondence to a mind-independent reality.
Charitable reading applied: The most favorable interpretation of Fuller’s record is that he retains a regulative ideal of truth as correspondence in the natural sciences while relativizing it in the social and political domains. Even on this reading, correspondence truth is not the governing criterion for his social epistemology program, and that program is the primary vehicle of his philosophical contribution.
Finding: Contrary. Fuller’s social epistemology program requires the abandonment of correspondence truth as the governing criterion for epistemic evaluation. This is load-bearing for the program. It is not peripheral. The charitable reading does not rescue the finding.
C5 — Ethical Intuitionism
The commitment: Certain moral truths can be directly recognized by the trained rational faculty without derivation from empirical utility or social consensus.
What Fuller’s record requires: Fuller’s theological anthropology implies that humans are capable of recognizing their divine mandate — there is something they are for, and they can, in principle, apprehend it. This has intuitionistic echoes. However, his program does not develop this as a theory of moral knowledge. His social epistemology is normative and policy-oriented through institutional analysis, not through direct rational apprehension of moral truth. His Post-Truth position treats knowledge claims, including moral ones, as strategic rather than immediately apprehended.
Domain check: Ethical intuitionism as a theory of how moral truths are known is absent from Fuller’s argumentative record as a load-bearing element. His arguments do not require it. They do not directly address it. He could maintain his entire program — social epistemology, ID advocacy, transhumanism — without taking any position on ethical intuitionism in the philosophical sense.
Failure Mode 6 check: Is this a Non-Operative finding used to avoid a Contrary finding the analysis requires? Fuller’s record does not argue against direct moral recognition. His social epistemology operates in a different domain (the organization of institutional knowledge) rather than directly contradicting intuitionism as a theory of individual moral knowledge. Non-Operative is the correct finding, not a evasion of Contrary.
Finding: Non-Operative. The commitment’s domain is genuinely absent from Fuller’s argumentative record at the load-bearing level.
C6 — Foundationalism
The commitment: Reasoning must ultimately terminate in first principles, basic truths, or bedrock recognitions. The structure of rational knowledge is not an endless web of mutual support but rests on something that is immediately known or rationally necessary.
What Fuller’s record requires: Fuller explicitly accepts the standard post-Kuhnian arguments against convergence and against universal foundations in epistemology. His social epistemology is anti-foundationalist in method: knowledge is historically organized, institutionally shaped, and subject to indefinite revision. There are no bedrock recognitions in his epistemological program — only historically contingent settlements that can always be reopened.
Contrary presupposition in the theological strand: Fuller’s Abrahamic theological anthropology provides something foundational: the premise that humans are made in the image of God and are charged with understanding and completing the divine plan. This is not derived from further argument within his system — it functions as a foundational premise for his defense of human uniqueness, his ID advocacy, and his transhumanist ethics. It is foundational in a theological register, though not in the epistemological register Sterling’s commitment addresses.
Finding: Inconsistent. The epistemological method is explicitly anti-foundationalist. The theological anthropology provides a foundational grounding in a different register. The two strands are not reconciled in Fuller’s public record. An agent who adopts his framework encounters irreconcilable presuppositions on this commitment depending on which strand of his work governs the analysis.
Step 3 — Dissolution Finding
Governing criterion: Does the framework require those who adopt it to locate themselves and their condition in externals?
C1 finding: Partially Aligned. The theological strand affirms a non-material rational soul distinct from the biological and social environment. The transhumanist strand introduces instability by making the agent’s condition partly dependent on technological mediation. The social epistemology strand treats the knowing subject as constituted through social organization. An agent who adopts Fuller’s framework in its full complexity cannot locate his condition entirely within his rational faculty. He is pulled partly toward the classical position (soul as ground of dignity) and partly toward external dependence (social organization of knowledge, technological self-modification).
C2 finding: Partially Aligned. Genuine human agency is affirmed in the theological and anti-Latour strands. But no origination-of-assent defense is present, and the social epistemology strand’s treatment of belief-formation as institutionally organized introduces social determination of belief alongside the affirmation of agency.
Dissolution Finding: Partial Dissolution.
Fuller’s framework does not produce Full Dissolution. The theological strand preserves a genuine, if theologically grounded, account of human distinctiveness, rational agency, and dignity that locates something essential to the human being outside the stream of external conditions. An agent who adopts this strand of Fuller’s framework has a genuine resource for locating his condition in something other than externals.
However, Full Dissolution is also not the finding. The social epistemology strand requires the agent to locate his epistemic condition in social and institutional arrangements — externals. The transhumanist strand requires the agent to locate his trajectory partly in technological mediation — also externals. An agent who adopts Fuller’s framework in its full complexity is pulled in both directions simultaneously.
The result is an unstable framework. The theological strand provides the resources for non-dissolution; the social epistemology and transhumanist strands systematically undercut it. Fuller has not resolved this tension in his public record. An agent who attempts to inhabit all three strands simultaneously cannot locate his condition with any consistency. He has the language of soul and divine mandate and is simultaneously instructed by the same framework that his epistemic condition is a function of institutional organization and that his future condition is a function of technological self-modification.
That is Partial Dissolution: the framework provides resources against full dependence on externals while requiring, in other domains, precisely that dependence.
Summary of Findings
- C1 — Substance Dualism: Partially Aligned. Theological strand affirms soul and human uniqueness; transhumanist strand introduces instability.
- C2 — Metaphysical Libertarianism: Partially Aligned. Genuine agency affirmed; no origination-of-assent defense; social determination present in epistemology strand.
- C3 — Moral Realism: Inconsistent. Theological strand requires objective moral mandate; social epistemology and Post-Truth strands operate without it and sometimes against it.
- C4 — Correspondence Theory of Truth: Contrary. Social epistemology program requires abandonment of correspondence truth as governing criterion.
- C5 — Ethical Intuitionism: Non-Operative. Commitment’s domain absent from Fuller’s argumentative record at the load-bearing level.
- C6 — Foundationalism: Inconsistent. Epistemological method is anti-foundationalist; theological anthropology provides foundational grounding in a different register; tension unresolved.
- Dissolution Finding: Partial Dissolution. Framework provides resources for locating the agent in his rational faculty through the theological strand while simultaneously requiring external dependence through the social epistemology and transhumanist strands.
Instrument architecture: Dave Kelly. Theoretical foundations: Grant C. Sterling (Eastern Illinois University). Prose rendering: Claude. CPA v1.0. 2026.
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