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521Feyerabend, 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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668Epistemic 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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725Confucianism, 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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182Epistemic 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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150Capital 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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893Epistemic 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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362Spiritual 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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147Epistemic Injustice in PsychiatryPsychiatry Bulletin 41. 2017.Epistemic injustice is a harm done to a person in their capacity as an epistemic subject by undermining her capacity to engage in epistemic practices such as giving knowledge to others or making sense of one’s experiences. It has been argued that those who suffer from medical conditions are more vulnerable to epistemic injustice than the healthy. This paper claims that people with mental disorders are even more vulnerable to epistemic injustice than those with somatic illnesses. Two kinds of con…Read more
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6The Making of Modern Science: Science, Technology, Medicine and Modernity: 1789–1914 (review)Annals of Science 70 (1): 101-104. 2013.No abstract
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419Reawakening to Wonder: Wittgenstein, Feyerabend, and ScientismIn Jonathan Beale & Ian James Kidd (eds.), Wittgenstein and Scientism, Routledge. pp. 101-115. 2018.My aim in this chapter is to reconstruct Feyerabend’s anti-scientism by comparing it with the similar critiques of one of his main philosophical influences – Ludwig Wittgenstein. I argue that they share a common conception of scientism that gathers around a concern that it erodes a sense of wonder or mystery required for a full appreciation of human existence – a sense that Feyerabend, like Wittgenstein, characterised in terms of the ‘mystical’.
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44Humane philosophy and the question of progressRatio 25 (3): 277-290. 2012.According to some recent critics, philosophy has not progressed over the course of its history because it has not exhibited any substantial increase in the stock of human wisdom. I reject this pessimistic conclusion by arguing that such criticisms employ a conception of progress drawn from the sciences which is inapplicable to a humanistic discipline such as philosophy. Philosophy should not be understood as the accumulation of epistemic goods in a manner analogous to the natural sciences. I arg…Read more
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12Paul Feyerabend, Against Method. London and New York: Verso, 2010. Pp. xxxii+296. ISBN 1-84467-442-8. £10.24British Journal for the History of Science 44 (2): 311-312. 2011.
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1036Educating for Intellectual HumilityIn Jason Baehr (ed.), Educating for Intellectual Virtues: Applying Virtue Epistemology to Educational Theory and Practice, Routledge. pp. 54-70. 2015.I offer an account of the virtue of intellectual humility, construed as a pair of dispositions enabling proper management of one's intellectual confidence. I then show its integral role in a range of familiar educational practices and concerns, and finally describe how certain entrenched educational attitudes and conceptions marginalise or militate against the cultivation and exercise of this virtue.
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46Humility and historyThink 13 (38): 59-68. 2014.I argue that amongst its many benefits, the history of philosophy is an excellent resource for the cultivation of certain intellectual virtues, most notably gratitude, humility, and justice. Acquaintance with the history of philosophy can, therefore, be edifying, in the sense of being conducive to the cultivation and exercise of virtues. These virtues can be cultivated in many ways, but the history of philosophy offers unique means for securing them, and some familiar pedagogical and intellectua…Read more
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70A Pluralist Challenge to 'Integrative Medicine': Feyerabend and Popper on the Cognitive Value of Alternative MedicineStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (3). 2013.This paper is a critique of ‘integrative medicine’ as an ideal of medical progress on the grounds that it fails to realise the cognitive value of alternative medicine. After a brief account of the cognitive value of alternative medicine, I outline the form of ‘integrative medicine’ defended by the late Stephen Straus, former director of the US National Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Straus’ account is then considered in the light of Zuzana Parusnikova’s recent criticism of ‘i…Read more
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23Doing Away With ScientismPhilosophy Now 102 30-31. 2014.Scientism has none of the virtues of science or philosophy, so let's do away with it.
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61Was 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.The aim of this paper is to use Sir William Crookes‘ researches into psychical phenomena as a sustained case study of the role of epistemic virtues within scientific enquiry. Despite growing interest in virtues in science, there are few integrated historical and philosophical studies, and even fewer studies focusing on controversial or ‗fringe‘ sciences where, one might suppose, certain epistemic virtues (like open-mindedness and tolerance) may be subjected to sterner tests. Using the virtue of …Read more
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58Three cheers for science and philosophy!Think 10 (29): 37-41. 2011.Stephen Hawking recently caused controversy by suggesting that philosophy had become obsolete in the face of the advance of modern science. Hawking's The Grand Design is only the latest in a long series of premature notifications of the obsolescence of philosophy. A wide range of writers, including but not limited to scientists and philosophers, have suggested that philosophy, in part or in whole, has been superseded by the sciences in a way that, all things considered, justifies its abandonment…Read more
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91Phenomenology, Naturalism, and Religious ExperienceIn Alasdair Coles & Fraser Watts (eds.), Religion and Neurology, Cambridge University Press. pp. 35-47. 2019.Contemporary philosophical debates about the competing merits of neurological and phenomenological approaches to understanding both psychiatric illness and religious experience—and, indeed, the relationship, if any, between psychiatric illness and religious experience. In this chapter, I propose that both psychiatric illness and religious experiences - at least in some of their diverse forms - are best understood phenomenologically in terms of radical changes in a person's 'existential feelings'…Read more
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1030Epistemic Vices in Public Debate: The Case of New AtheismIn Christopher Cotter & Philip Quadrio (eds.), New Atheism's Legacy: Critical Perspectives from Philosophy and the Social Sciences, Springer. 2017.Although critics often argue that the new atheists are arrogant, dogmatic, closed-minded and so on, there is currently no philosophical analysis of this complaint - which I will call 'the vice charge' - and no assessment of whether it is merely a rhetorical aside or a substantive objection in its own right. This Chapter therefore uses the resources of virtue epistemology to articulate this ' vice charge' and to argue that critics are right to imply that new atheism is intrinsically epistemically…Read more
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60Objectivity, abstraction, and the individual: The influence of Søren Kierkegaard on Paul FeyerabendStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 42 (1): 125-134. 2011.This paper explores the influence of Søren Kierkegaard upon Paul Feyerabend by examining their common criticisms of totalising accounts of human nature. Both complained that philosophical and scientific theories of human nature which were methodologically committed to objectivity and abstraction failed to capture the richness of human experience. Kierkegaard and Feyerabend argued that philosophy and the science were threatening to become obstacles to human development by imposing abstract theori…Read more
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168Charging 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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66Feyerabend 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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397Other 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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61Introduction: 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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130The 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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80Transformative 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