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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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135The 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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82Transformative 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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11Paul 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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434Is 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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778Inevitability, 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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158Epistemic 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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18Dean Rickles, The Ashgate Companion to Contemporary Philosophy of Physics Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 30 (3): 212-214. 2010.
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50Biopiracy 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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85Wittgenstein 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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68The 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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75Oswald 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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73Feyerabend 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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858Phenomenology 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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91Was 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