Boston, Massachusetts, United States
  • Biodiversity vs. paleodiversity measurements: the incommensurability problem
    European Journal for Philosophy of Science 12 (4): 1-24. 2022.
    Estimating whether the Earth’s biota is in the middle of a crisis relies heavily on comparisons between present and past data about biodiversity or biodiversity surrogates. Although the past is a crucial source of information to assess the severity of the current biodiversity crisis, substantive conceptual and methodological questions remain about how paleodiversity and biodiversity are to be properly compared. I argue that to justify claims of a current biodiversity crisis is harder than it app…Read more
  • Testing for Phenotypic Plasticity
    Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 13 1-23. 2021.
    Phenotypic plasticity, or an organism’s capacity to change its phenotype in response to environmental variation, is a pervasive—perhaps even ubiquitous—feature of the biological world. Accordingly, plasticity research suggests serious implications for biological theory, including evolutionary theory. The theoretical implications of plasticity have growing support from empirical literature documenting the range, extent, and adaptiveness of plasticity. However, the empirical evidence for particula…Read more
  • Model Evaluation: An Adequacy-for-Purpose View
    Philosophy of Science 87 (3): 457-477. 2020.
    According to an adequacy-for-purpose view, models should be assessed with respect to their adequacy or fitness for particular purposes. Such a view has been advocated by scientists and philosophers...
  • If asked whether stereotypes about people have the potential to help overcome injustice, I suspect that many think there is a clear-cut answer to this question, and that answer is “no.” Many stereotypes do have harmful effects, from the blatantly dehumanizing to the more subtly disruptive. Reasonably then, a common attitude toward stereotypes is that they are at best shallow, superficial assumptions, and at worst degrading and hurtful vehicles of oppression. I argue that on a broad account of s…Read more
  • Overcoming Epistemic Injustice: Social and Psychological Perspectives (edited book)
    Stacey Goguen and Benjamin Sherman
    Rowman & Littlefield. 2019.
    The papers collected in this book share a common motivation: All respond to certain kinds of injustice that unfairly and unreasonably prevent the insights and intellectual abilities of vulnerable and stigmatized groups from being given their due recognition. Most people are opposed to injustice in principle, and do not want to have mistaken views about others. But research in the social sciences reveals a disturbing truth: Even people who intend to be fair-minded and unprejudiced are influenced…Read more
  • In philosophy, much attention has rightly been paid to the need to diversify teaching with regard to who teaches, who is taught, and which authors and questions are the focus of study. Less attention, however, has been paid to inclusive pedagogy—the teaching methods that are used, and how they can make or fail to make classes as accessible as possible to the diverse students who enter them. By drawing on experiences from our own teaching as well as research on student-centered, inclusive best pr…Read more