Fetzer's views have been featured by Iran's
PressTV,
Fars, and
Tasnim news agencies and the pro-Russian website
Veterans Today,[citation needed] which have been described as sources of state propaganda.[17] In an interview Fetzer supported Iranian and Russian media as "Press TV, along with
RT and
Sputnik News, have become the gold standard for reporting on international events and developments." He stated his opposition to the US and Israel as they "have become the greatest threats to freedom and democracy ever known, not only in the Middle East but throughout the world." He held up Iran as a "beacon of light in comparison to the United States."[18] In another interview, Fetzer stated "Russia and Iran are now providing leadership for the world community. May they prosper and endure!"[19]
After his parents' divorce, Fetzer moved to
La Habra Heights, California, with his brother, mother, and stepfather.[21] His mother took her own life when he was 11, and he went to live with his father and stepmother.[21][22]
In the late 1970s, Fetzer received a
National Science Foundation fellowship,[26] and contributed a chapter to a book on
Hans Reichenbach.[27] In 1990, Fetzer received the Medal of the
University of Helsinki.[1] He assisted theorists in computer science,[28][29] and joined the debate over proper types of inference in computing.[5] In the late 1990s, Fetzer was called to organize a symposium on
philosophy of mind,[30] and authored textbooks on cognitive science and artificial intelligence.[3][4] He is an expert on philosopher
Carl G. Hempel.[1][31]
Fetzer published over 100 articles and 20 books on philosophy of science and philosophy of
cognitive science, especially of
artificial intelligence and
computer science.[6][32] In 2002, Fetzer edited Consciousness Evolving, a collection of studies on the past, the present, and the future of
consciousness.[33] He founded the international journal Minds and Machines, which he edited for 11 years, and founded the academic library Studies in Cognitive Systems,[8] of which he was series editor.[1] He founded the Society for Machines & Mentality. Near and after retirement, Fetzer remained a contributor to as well as cited or republished in philosophy of science and cognitive science volumes and encyclopedias.[2][31][34][35][36]
Fetzer has alleged the
9/11 attacks were treasonable, and called for the military overthrow of President
George W. Bush.[8] He has asserted that the
World Trade Center buildings collapsed by controlled demolitions or by high-tech weaponry, gaining further critical attention.[8] In 2005, with
Steven E. Jones, Fetzer co-founded
Scholars for 9/11 Truth.[8] Within a year, Jones wrote to other members of Scholars for 9/11 Truth declaring he and others wished to sever their connections with the organization, because Fetzer's backing of theories about a direct energy weapon had left them open to severe mockery.[39]Jovan Byford criticized Fetzer's speculations that
Jews or
Israel were involved in a conspiracy to commit the 9/11 attacks as "a contemporary variant of the old, antisemitic conspiracist canard about the disloyalty of Jews and their usurpation of power in the name of communal interests and the accumulation of wealth."[40] Fetzer has asserted that elements in the
US Department of Defense,
US intelligence and the Israeli
Mossad were involved in the attacks.
Rolling Stone has described Fetzer as "a leader of the so-called Sandy Hook 'truther' movement".[41] An article by Fetzer published by Iranian state-run
Press TV and pro-Russian conspiracy theory and fake news website Veterans Today titled (by the latter) "Did Mossad death squads slaughter American children at
Sandy Hook?" was described in January 2013 by
Oliver Kamm in The Jewish Chronicle as "monstrous, calumnious, demented bilge" that "violates all bounds of decency".[42] Fetzer was a member of the Advisory Board of Veterans Today in 2013.[43] In 2015, Fetzer published a book titled Nobody Died at Sandy Hook: It Was a FEMA Drill to Promote Gun Control.[44] The book's publisher, Moon Rock Books, later apologized to the Pozners and agreed to take the book out of circulation.[14][15][16]
In December 2015 Iran's
Tasnim News Agency published an interview with Fetzer where he claims the Charlie Hebdo shooting, the November 2015 Paris attacks, and the Islamic State beheading incidents were staged.[19]
Fetzer contributed the foreword for a book entitled Breaking The Spell (2014) by
Nicholas Kollerstrom, a work of
Holocaust denial.[45] Fetzer himself has said of the
Holocaust: "My research on the Holocaust narrative suggests that it is not only untrue but provably false and not remotely scientifically sustainable."[12][7]
In 2013, officials of the
University of Minnesota said that "Fetzer has the right to express his views, but he also has the responsibility to make clear he's not speaking for the university." He is retired and no longer employed by the university.[23]
Leonard Pozner, father of Sandy Hook victim Noah Pozner, sued Fetzer and his co-author, Mike Palacek, for defamation in a
Dane County, Wisconsin court for statements contained in Nobody Died at Sandy Hook. Pozner’s son Noah, 6, was the youngest person killed during the mass shooting that left 26 people dead, including 20 children around Noah’s age. In June 2019, circuit judge Frank Remington found that Fetzer and Palacek had defamed the Pozners, with damages to be awarded at an October 2019 trial. On October 16, 2019, a jury in
Wisconsin awarded Leonard Pozner $450,000 for defamation.[41] Fetzer's appeals were denied by the Wisconsin Court of Appeals[47] and the Wisconsin Supreme Court.[48] Fetzer's petition for
certiorari to the
United States Supreme Court was denied on October 3, 2022.[49]
References
^
abcdeJames H Fetzer, ed, Science, Explanation, and Rationality: Aspects of the Philosophy of Carl G Hempel (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2000),
p xi.
^
abJan Woleński, "Books received: Philosophy, Mind and Cognitive Inquiry by David J Cole, James H Fetzer, Terry L Rankin; Artificial Intelligence: Its Scope and Limits by James H Fetzer", Studia Logica: An International Journal for Symbolic Logic, 1992; 51(2): 341–43,
p 341: "I start with Fetzer's monograph because it provides a general panorama of
AI and its foundational problems. ... The book touches many foundational problems of AI belonging to
epistemology,
psychology,
philosophy of language,
philosophy of science and
computer science. Fetzer's discussions vary from very elementary...to quite advanced...".
^
abJustin Leiber,
"James H Fetzer, Philosophy and Cognitive Science, Second Edition: Revised and Expanded, Paragon Issues in Philosophy", Minds and Machines, 1999 Aug;9(3):435–37, p 435: "It is a delight to see this revised edition of what is possibly the best short introduction to 'philosophy and cognitive science' around today, one fully accessible to undergraduates". John Heil, Philosophy of Mind: A Contemporary Introduction, 2nd edn (New York:
Routledge, 2004), ch 1 "Introduction", subch 1.5 "A look ahead", § "Suggested reading",
p 14, recommends Fetzer's Philosophy and Cognitive Science.
^
abDonald Angus MacKenzie, Mechanizing Proof: Computing, Risk, and Trust (Cambridge MA:
MIT Press, 2001), pp
18,
205,
244 &
323 discusses Fetzer's contributions, and on pp
388 &
421 identifies citations of Fetzer. Donald MacKenzie, "A view from Sonnelbichl: On the historical sociology of software and system dependability", in Ulf Hashagen, Reinhard Keil-Slawik, Arthur L Norberg &
Heinz Nixdorf, eds, History of Computing: Software Issues (Berlin, Heidelberg, New York:
Springer-Verlag, 2002),
p 112: "Conversely, the claims of the formalizers have been fiercely contested by computer scientists
Richard DeMillo,
Richard Lipton and
Alan Perlis, as well as by philosopher James H Fetzer".
^Subrata Dasgupta, Cambridge Tracts in Theoretical Computer Science 15: Design Theory and Computer Science (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), "Acknowledgements",
p xix: "Quite apart from the many hundreds of authors cited in the text, I owe a massive debt of gratitude to many individuals and organizations who, in one way or another, have influenced the final shape of this work. In particular, I thank the following: ... Bimal Matilal (Oxford University) and James Fetzer (University of Minnesota)—two philosophers—for discussions or correspondences regarding matters philosophical.
^Allen Kent & James G Williams, eds, Encyclopedia of Microcomputers, Volume 14: Productivity and Software (New York:
Marcel Dekker, 1994),
p v.
^Selmer Bringsjord & Michael John Zenzen, Superminds: People Harness Hypercomputation, and More (Dordrecht:
Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003),
pp xx–xxi: "In connection with Chapter 1, we're grateful to Michael Costa for inviting Jim Fetzer to organize a symposium on whether minds are computational systems for the annual meeting of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, in Nashville, Tennessee, April 4–7, 1996".
^
abErich H Reck, ch 15 "Hempel, Carnap, and the covering law model" pp 311–24, in Nikolay Milkov & Volker Peckhaus, eds, Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science 273: The Berlin Group and the Philosophy of Logical Empiricism (Dordrecht, Heidelberg, New York, London: Springer, 2013), pp
312 &
323.
James H. Fetzer (December 31, 1981). Scientific Knowledge: Causation, Explanation, and Corroboration. Springer.
ISBN978-90-277-1335-3.
Principles of Philosophical Reasoning. Rowman & Littlefield. June 1984.
ISBN978-0-8476-7341-4.
James H. Fetzer, ed. (August 1985). Sociobiology and Epistemology. Springer.
ISBN978-90-277-2005-4.
Definitions and Definability: Philosophical Perspectives. 1991. ASIN B000IBICGK.
James H. Fetzer (October 1992). Philosophy of Science (Paragon Issues in Philosophy). Paragon.
ISBN978-1-55778-481-0.
James H. Fetzer, ed. (January 1993). Foundations of Philosophy of Science: Recent Developments (Paragon Issues in Philosophy). Paragon.
ISBN978-1-55778-480-3.
James H. Fetzer (January 1997). Philosophy and Cognitive Science (Paragon Issues in Philosophy). Paragon.
ISBN978-1-55778-739-2.
Minds and Machines: Journal for Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science, Vol. 7, No. 4. Kluwer. November 1997. ASIN B000KEV460.
James H. Fetzer, ed. (December 2000). Science, Explanation, and Rationality: The Philosophy of Carl G. Hempel. Oxford.
ISBN978-0-19-512137-7.
James H. Fetzer (January 2001). Artificial Intelligence: Its Scope and Limits. Springer.
ISBN978-0-7923-0548-4.
Computers and Cognition: Why Minds are Not Machines. Springer. January 8, 2002.
ISBN978-1-4020-0243-4.
James H. Fetzer, ed. (May 2002). Consciousness Evolving (Advances in Consciousness Research). John Benjamins.
ISBN978-1-58811-108-1.
James H. Fetzer (2005). The Evolution of Intelligence: Are Humans the Only Animals With Minds?. Open Court.
ISBN978-0-8126-9459-8.
James H. Fetzer (December 28, 2006). Render Unto Darwin: Philosophical Aspects of the Christian Right's Crusade Against Science. Open Court.
ISBN978-0-8126-9605-9.
Conspiracy Theories:
James H. Fetzer, ed. (October 1997). Assassination Science: Experts Speak Out on the Death of JFK. Open Court.
ISBN978-0-8126-9366-9.
James H. Fetzer, ed. (August 2000). Murder in Dealey Plaza: What We Know Now that We Didn't Know Then. Open Court.
ISBN978-0-8126-9422-2.
James H. Fetzer, ed. (September 2003). The Great Zapruder Film Hoax: Deceit and Deception in the Death of JFK. Catfeet Press.
ISBN978-0-8126-9547-2.
Four Arrows (aka Don Trent Jacobs); James H. Fetzer (November 2004). American Assassination: The Strange Death Of Senator Paul Wellstone. Vox Pop.
ISBN978-0-9752763-0-3.
James H. Fetzer, ed. (March 28, 2007). The 9/11 Conspiracy. Open Court.
ISBN978-0-8126-9612-7.