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330Robert A. Hinde. Why Gods Persist: A Scientific Approach to Religion 2nd ed., Routledge, 2010European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 5 (2): 172--175. 2013.
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703Adversity, Wisdom, and ExemplarismJournal of Value Inquiry 52 (4): 379-393. 2018.According to a venerable ideal, the core aim of philosophical practice is wisdom. The guiding concern of the ancient Greek, Indian, and Chinese traditions was the nature of the good life for human beings and the nature of reality. Central to these traditions is profound recognition of the subjection to adversities intrinsic to human life. I consider paradigmatic exemplars of wisdom, from ancient Western and Asian traditions, and the ways that experiences of adversity shaped their life. The sugge…Read more
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536Feyerabend, Pluralism, and ParapsychologyBulletin of the Parapsychological Association 5 (1): 5-9. 2018.Feyerabend is well-known as a pluralist, and notorious for his defences of, and sympathetic references to, heterodox subjects, such as parapsychology. Focusing on the latter, I ask how we should understand the relationship between the pluralism and the defences, drawing on Marcello Truzzi's and Martin Gardner's remarks on Feyerabend along the way.
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689Epistemic Courage and the Harms of Epistemic LifeIn Heather Battaly (ed.), The Routledge Handbook to Virtue Epistemology, Routledge. pp. 244-255. forthcoming.Since subjection to harm is an intrinsic feature of our social and epistemic lives, there is a perpetual need for individual and collective agents with the virtue of epistemic courage. In this chapter, I survey some of the main issues germane to this virtue, such as the nature of courage and of harm, the range of epistemic activities that can manifest courage, and the status of epistemic courage as a collective and as a professional virtue.
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762Confucianism, Curiosity, and Moral Self-CultivationIn Ilhan Inan, Lani Watson, Dennis Whitcomb & Safiye Yigit (eds.), The Moral Psychology of Curiosity, Rowman & Littlefield International. pp. 97-116. 2018.I propose that Confucianism incorporates a latent commitment to the closely related epistemic virtues of curiosity and inquisitiveness. Confucian praise of certain people, practices, and dispositions is only fully intelligible if these are seen as exercises and expressions of epistemic virtues, of which curiosity and inquisitiveness are the obvious candidates. My strategy is to take two core components of Confucian ethical and educational practice and argue that each presupposes a specific virtu…Read more
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15Life, "Technics", and the Decline of the WestThe Berlin Review of Books 00-00. 2017.An essay review of the Routledge Revival edition of Oswald Spengler, 'Man and Technics (1932)
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6Illness as Transformative ExperienceThe Lancet 388. 2017.We propose that certain forms of chronic illness can be transformative experiences, in the sense described by L.A. Paul.
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184Epistemic Corruption and Manufactured Doubt: The Case of Climate SciencePublic Affairs Quarterly 31 (3): 165-187. 2017.Criticism plays an essential role in the growth of scientific knowledge. In some cases, however, criticism can have detrimental effects; for example, it can be used to ‘manufacture doubt’ for the purpose of impeding public policy making on issues such as tobacco consumption and greenhouse gas emissions (e.g., Oreskes & Conway 2010). In this paper, we build on previous work by Biddle and Leuschner (2015) who argue that criticism that meets certain conditions can be epistemically detrimental. We e…Read more
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153Capital Epistemic VicesSocial Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 6 (8): 11-16. 2017.I offer a way to reflect on and taxonomise the vices of the mind. This is the idea of capital vices, an idea that has, historically, been mainly confined to moral and spiritual character traits, but is able to play a role in vice epistemology—or so I propose.
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16Epistemic Injustice in Medicine and HealthcareIn Kidd Ian James & Carel Havi (eds.), The Routledge Handbook to Epistemic Injustice, Routledge. pp. 336-346. 2017.We survey several ways in which the structures and norms of medicine and healthcare can generate epistemic injustice.
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903Epistemic Corruption and EducationEpisteme 16 (2): 220-235. 2019.I argue that, although education should have positive effects on students’ epistemic character, it is often actually damaging, having bad effects. Rather than cultivating virtues of the mind, certain forms of education lead to the development of the vices of the mind - it is therefore epistemically corrupting. After sketching an account of that concept, I offer three illustrative case studies.
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370Spiritual exemplarsInternational Journal of Philosophy and Theology 79 (4): 410-424. 2018.This paper proposes that spiritual persons are an excellent focus for the study of 'living religion' and offers a methodology for doing so. By ‘spiritual persons’, I have in mind both exemplary figures – like Jesus or the Buddha – and the multitude of ‘ordinary’ spiritual persons whose lives are led in aspiration to the spiritual goods the exemplars manifest (enlightenment, say, or holiness). I start with Linda Zagzebski's recent argument that moral persuasion primarily occurs through encounters…Read more
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909Epistemic Injustice and IllnessJournal of Applied Philosophy 34 (2): 172-190. 2016.This article analyses the phenomenon of epistemic injustice within contemporary healthcare. We begin by detailing the persistent complaints patients make about their testimonial frustration and hermeneutical marginalization, and the negative impact this has on their care. We offer an epistemic analysis of this problem using Miranda Fricker's account of epistemic injustice. We detail two types of epistemic injustice, testimonial and hermeneutical, and identify the negative stereotypes and structu…Read more
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246Confidence, Humility, and Hubris in Nineteenth Century PhilosophiesIn Herman Paul & Jeroen van Dongen (eds.), Epistemic Virtues in the Sciences and the Humanities, Springer Verlag. pp. 11-25. 2017.Most historians explains changes in conceptions of the epistemic virtues and vices in terms of social and historical developments. I argue that such approaches, valuable as they are, neglect the fact that certain changes also reflect changes in metaphysical sensibilities. Certain epistemic virtues and vices are defined relative to an estimate of our epistemic situation that is, in turn, defined by a broader vision or picture of the nature of reality. I defend this claim by charting changing conc…Read more
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112Introduction: Reappraising Paul FeyerabendStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 57 1-8. 2016.This volume is devoted to a reappraisal of the philosophy of Paul Feyerabend. It has four aims. The first is to reassess his already well-known work from the 1960s and 1970s in light of contemporary developments in the history and philosophy of science. The second is to explore themes in his neglected later work, including recently published and previously unavailable writings. The third is to assess the contributions that Feyerabend can make to contemporary debate, on topics such as perspectivi…Read more
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442Receptivity to Mystery: Cultivation, Loss, and ScientismEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Religion 4 (3): 51-68. 2012.The cultivation of receptivity to the mystery of reality is a central feature of many religious and philosophical traditions, both Western and Asian. This paper considers two contemporary accounts of receptivity to mystery – those of David E. Cooper and John Cottingham – and considers them in light of the problem of loss of receptivity. I argue that a person may lose their receptivity to mystery by embracing what I call a scientistic stance, and the paper concludes by offering two possible respo…Read more
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8The Contingency of Science and the Future of PhilosophyEssays in Philosophy 12 (2): 313-329. 2011.Contemporary metaphilosophical debates on the future of philosophy invariably include references to the natural sciences. This is wholly understandable given the cognitive and cultural authority of the sciences and their contributions to philosophical thought and practice. However such appeals to the sciences should be moderated by reflections on contingency of sciences. Using the work of contemporary historians and philosophers of science, I argue that an awareness of the radical contingency of…Read more
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7Pluralism and the Problem of Reality in the Later Philosophy of Paul FeyerabendDissertation, Durham University. 2010.
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87Historical Contingency and the Impact of Scientific ImperialismInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 27 (3). 2013.In a recent article in this journal, Steve Clarke and Adrian Walsh propose a normative basis for John Dupré’s criticisms of scientific imperialism, namely, that scientific imperialism can cause a discipline to fail to progress in ways that it otherwise would have. This proposal is based on two presuppositions: one, that scientific disciplines have developmental teleologies, and two, that these teleologies are optimal. I argue that we should reject both of these presuppositions and so conclude th…Read more
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111Feyerabend, Pseudo-Dionysius, and the Ineffability of RealityPhilosophia 40 (2): 365-377. 2012.This paper explores the influence of the fifth-century Christian Neoplatonist Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (Denys) on the twentieth-century philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend. I argue that the later Feyerabend took from Denys a metaphysical claim—the ‘doctrine of ineffability’—intended to support epistemic pluralism. The paper has five parts. Part one introduces Denys and Feyerabend’s common epistemological concern to deny the possibility of human knowledge of ultimate reality. Part two e…Read more
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697Exemplars, Ethics, and Illness NarrativesTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 38 (4): 323-334. 2017.Many people report that reading first-person narratives of the experience of illness can be morally instructive or educative. But although they are ubiquitous and typically sincere, the precise nature of such educative experiences is puzzling—for those narratives typically lack the features that modern philosophers regard as constitutive of moral reason. I argue that such puzzlement should disappear, and the morally educative power of illness narratives explained, if one distinguishes two differ…Read more
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41A Phenomenological Challenge to 'Enlightened Secularism'Religious Studies 49 (3): 377-398. 2013.This article challenges Philip Kitcher’s recent proposals for an ‘enlightened secularism’. I use William James’s theory of the emotions and his related discussion of ‘temperaments’ to argue that religious and naturalistic commitments are grounded in tacit, inarticulate ways that one finds oneself in a world. This indicates that, in many cases, religiosity and naturalism are grounded not in rational and evidential considerations, but in a tacit and implicit sense of reality which is disclosed thr…Read more
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540‘“What’s So Great About Science?” Feyerabend on the Ideological Use and Abuse of ScienceIn Elena Aronova & Simone Turchetti (eds.), The Politics of Science Studies, . pp. 55-76. 2016.It is very well known that from the late-1960s onwards Feyerabend began to radically challenge some deeply-held ideas about the history and methodology of the sciences. It is equally well known that, from around the same period, he also began to radically challenge wider claims about the value and place of the sciences within modern societies, for instance by calling for the separation of science and the state and by questioning the idea that the sciences served to liberate and ameliorate human …Read more
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24Was Sir William Crookes epistemically virtuous?Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 48 67-74. 2014.
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10Science and the Self: Animals, Evolution, and Ethics: Essays in Honour of Mary Midgley (edited book)Routledge. 2015.Mary Midgley is one of the most important moral philosophers working today. Over the last thirty years, her writings have informed debates concerning animals, the environment and evolutionary theory. The invited essays in this volume offer critical reflections upon Midgley’s work and further developments of her ideas. The contributors include many of the leading commentators on her work, including distinguished figures from the disciplines of philosophy, biology, and ethology. The range of topic…Read more
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1Oswald SpenglerIn Gregory Claey (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Modern Political Thought, Cq Press. 2013.I provide an account of the political and philosophical thought of Oswald Spengler.
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22Emotion, religious practice, and cosmopolitan secularismReligious Studies (2): 1-18. 2013.Philip Kitcher has recently proposed a form of which he suggests could enable the members of a future secular society to continue to access and benefit from the moral and existential resources of the world's religions. I criticize this proposal by appeal to contemporary work on the role of emotion and practice in religious commitment. Using the work of John Cottingham and Mark Wynn, two objections are offered to the cosmopolitan secularists' claim that the moral resources of a religion could be …Read more