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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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176Epistemic 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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144Capital 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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852Epistemic 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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338Spiritual 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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62Feyerabend on politics, education, and scientific cultureStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 57 121-128. 2016.The purpose of this paper is to offer a sympathetic reconstruction of the political thought of Paul Feyerabend. Using a critical discussion of the idea of the ‘free society’ it is suggested that his political thought is best understood in terms of three thematic concerns – liberation, hegemony, and the authority of science – and that the political significance of those claims become clear when they are considered in the context of his educational views. It emerges that Feyerabend is best underst…Read more
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164Charging Others With Epistemic ViceThe Monist 99 (3): 181-197. 2016.This paper offers an analysis of the structure of epistemic vice-charging, the critical practice of charging other persons with epistemic vice. Several desiderata for a robust vice-charge are offered and two deep obstacles to the practice of epistemic vice-charging are then identified and discussed. The problem of responsibility is that few of us enjoy conditions that are required for effective socialisation as responsible epistemic agents. The problem of consensus is that the efficacy of a vice…Read more
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52Introduction: Historiography and the philosophy of the sciencesStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 55 1-2. 2016.The history of science and the philosophy of science have a long and tangled relationship. On the one hand, philosophical reflection on science can be guided, shaped, and challenged by historical scholarship—a process begun by Thomas Kuhn and continued by successive generations of ‘post-positivist’ historians and philosophers of science. On the other hand, the activity of writing the history of science raises methodological questions concerning, for instance, progress in science, realism and ant…Read more
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380Other histories, other sciencesStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 61 57-60. 2017.An essay review of Léna Soler, Emiliano Trizio, and Andrew Pickering (eds.), Science As It Could Have Been: Discussing the Contingency/Inevitability Problem (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press)
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119The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice (edited book)Routledge. 2017.In the era of information and communication, issues of misinformation and miscommunication are more pressing than ever. _Epistemic injustice - _one of the most important and ground-breaking subjects to have emerged in philosophy in recent years - refers to those forms of unfair treatment that relate to issues of knowledge, understanding, and participation in communicative practices. The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems and d…Read more
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75Transformative Suffering and The Cultivation of VirtuePhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 22 (4): 291-294. 2015.The idea that certain experiences of suffering can be positively transformative has a central role in the practical and pastoral aspects of Christian theology. It is easy to identify different historical and doctrinal reasons why physical, mental, and spiritual suffering enjoy a central role in that tradition, but less easy to articulate and justify the provocative claim that suffering can be positively transformative. Indeed, some critics protest that the very idea is deeply offensive, on moral…Read more
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10Paul Feyerabend, The Tyranny of Science, ed. Eric Oberheim. London: Polity, 2011. Pp. xii+153. ISBN 978-0-7456-5190-3. £12.95 (review)British Journal for the History of Science 44 (4): 576-577. 2011.
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383Is Naturalism Bleak? A Reply to Holland and CottinghamEnvironmental Values 22 (6): 689-702. 2013.Although Cottingham and Holland make a persuasive case for the claim that it is difficult to situate a meaningful life within a Darwinian naturalistic cosmology, this paper argues that their case should be modified in response to the apparent fact that certain persons seem genuinely not to experience the ‘bleakness’ that they describe. Although certain of these cases will reflect an incomplete appreciation of the existential implications of Darwinian naturalism, at least some of those cases may …Read more
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718Inevitability, contingency, and epistemic humilityStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 55 12-19. 2016.I reject both (a) inevitabilism about the historical development of the sciences and (b) what Ian Hacking calls the "put up or shut up" argument against those who make contingentist claims. Each position is guilty of a lack of humility about our epistemic capacities.
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148Epistemic Injustice and ReligionIn Ian James Kidd & José Medina (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice, Routledge. pp. 386-396. 2017.This chapter charts various ways that religious persons and groups can be perpetrators and victims of epistemic injustice. The practices of testifying and interpreting experiences take a range of distinctive forms in religious life, for instance, if the testimonial practices require a special sort of religious accomplishment, such as enlightenment, or if proper understanding of religious experiences is only available to those with authentic faith. But it is also clear that religious communities …Read more
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13Dean Rickles, The Ashgate Companion to Contemporary Philosophy of Physics Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 30 (3): 212-214. 2010.
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47Biopiracy and the Ethics of Medical Heritage: The Case of India’s Traditional Knowledge Digital Library’Journal of Medical Humanities 33 (3): 175-183. 2012.Medical humanities have a unique role to play in combating biopiracy. This argument is offered both as a response to contemporary concerns about the ‘value’ and ‘impact’ of the arts and humanities and as a contribution to ongoing legal, political, and ethical debates regarding the status and protection of medical heritage. Medical humanities can contribute to the documentation and safeguarding of a nation or people’s medical heritage, understood as a form of intangible cultural heritage. In so d…Read more
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76Wittgenstein and Scientism (edited book)Routledge. 2014.Wittgenstein criticised prevailing attitudes toward the sciences. The target of his criticisms was ‘scientism’: what he described as ‘the overestimation of science’. This collection is the first study of Wittgenstein’s anti-scientism - a theme in his work that is clearly central to his thought yet strikingly neglected by the existing literature. The book explores the philosophical basis of Wittgenstein’s anti-scientism; how this anti-scientism helps us understand Wittgenstein’s philosophical aim…Read more
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62The Contingency of Science and the Future of PhilosophyIn Eric Dietrich & Zach Weber (eds.), Essays in Philosophy, . pp. 312--328. 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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2Reappraising FeyerabendStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 57 00-000. 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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66Oswald Spengler, Technology, and Human NatureThe European Legacy 17 (1). 2012.Oswald Spengler (1880?1936) is a neglected figure in the history of European philosophical thought. This article examines the philosophical anthropology developed in his later work, particularly his Man and Technics: A Contribution to a Philosophy of Life (1931). My purpose is twofold: the first is to argue that Spengler's later thought is a response to criticisms of the ?pessimism? of his earlier work, The Decline of the West (1919). Man and Technics overcomes this charge by providing a novel p…Read more
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Feyerabend on the Ineffability of RealityIn Asa Kasher & Jeanine Diller (eds.), Models of God and Other Ultimate Realities, Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2013.This paper explores the account of ‘ultimate reality’ developed in the later philosophy of Paul Feyerabend. The paper has five main parts, this introduction being the first. Part two surveys Feyerabend’s later work, locates it relative to his more familiar earlier work in the philosophy of science, and identifies the motivations informing his interest in ‘ultimate reality’. Part three offers an account of Feyerabend’s later metaphysics, focusing on the account given in his final book, Conquest o…Read more
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68Feyerabend on Science and EducationJournal of Philosophy of Education 47 (3): 407-422. 2013.This article offers a sympathetic interpretation of Paul Feyerabend's remarks on science and education. I present a formative episode in the development of his educational ideas—the ‘Berkeley experience'—and describe how it affected his views on the place of science within modern education. It emerges that Feyerabend arrived at a conception of education closely related to that of Michael Oakeshott and Martin Heidegger—that of education as ‘releasement’. Each of those three figures argued that th…Read more
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1Doing Science an Injustice: Midgley on ScientismIn Ian James Kidd & Elizabeth McKinnell (eds.), Science and the Self: Animals, Evolution, and Ethics: Essays in Honour of Mary Midgley, Routledge. pp. 151-167. 2015.In this chapter, I offer an account of Midgley‘s critique of scientism that converges on the claim that, among its many faults, scientism is objectionable because it does science an injustice
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761Phenomenology of Illness, Philosophy, and LifeStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 62 56-62. 2017.An essay review of Havi Carel, 'Phenomenology of Illness' (OUP 2015).
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118Why did Feyerabend Defend Astrology? Integrity, Virtue, and the Authority of ScienceSocial Epistemology 30 (4): 464-482. 2016.This paper explores the relationship between epistemic integrity, virtue, and authority by offering a virtue epistemological reading of the defences of non-scientific beliefs, practices, and traditions in the writings of Paul Feyerabend. I argue that there was a robust epistemic rationale for those defences and that it can inform contemporary reflection on the epistemic authority of the sciences. Two common explanations of the purpose of those defences are rejected as lacking textual support. A …Read more
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81Was Feyerabend a Postmodernist?International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 30 (1): 55-68. 2016.ABSTRACTThis article asks whether the philosophy of Paul K. Feyerabend can be reasonably classified as postmodernist, a label applied to him by friends and foes alike. After describing some superficial similarities between the style and content of both Feyerabend’s and postmodernist writings, I offer three more robust characterisations of postmodernism in terms of relativism, ‘incredulity to metanarratives’, and ‘depthlessness’. It emerges that none of these characterisations offers a strong jus…Read more
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21Renewing the Senses: A Study of the Philosophy and Theology of the Spiritual LifePhilosophical Quarterly 64 (255): 356-358. 2014.Review of Mark Wynn's book, Renewing the Senses: A Study of the Philosophy and Theology of the Spiritual Life