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23Was 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
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113Can Illness Be Edifying?Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 55 (5): 496-520. 2012.Abstract Havi Carel has recently argued that one can be ill and happy. An ill person can ?positively respond? to illness by cultivating ?adaptability? and ?creativity?. I propose that Carel's claim can be augmented by connecting it with virtue ethics. The positive responses which Carel describes are best understood as the cultivation of virtues, and this adds a significant moral aspect to coping with illness. I then defend this claim against two sets of objections and conclude that interpreting …Read more
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150Epistemic 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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425Reawakening 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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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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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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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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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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1045Educating 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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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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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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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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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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1040Epistemic 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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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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170Charging 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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62Introduction: 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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404Other 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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81Transformative 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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132The 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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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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426Is 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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766Inevitability, 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.