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36Critical Thinking. A Concise GuideRevue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 194 (1): 128-128. 2001.
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31In this paper we argue that while a full-blown virtue-theoretical account of argumentation is implausible, there is scope for augmenting a conventional account of argument by taking a character-oriented turn. We then discuss the characteristics of the good epistemic citizen, and consider approaches to nurturing these characteristics in critical thinking students, in the hope of addressing the problem of lack of transfer of critical thinking skills to the world outside the classroom.
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Anxious attachment is associated with heightened responsivity of a parietofrontal cortical network that monitors peri-personal spaceNeuroimage : Clinical 30 102585. 2021.
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10“But I Have a Pacer…There Is No Point in Engaging in Hypothetical Scenarios”: A Non-Imminently Dying Patient’s Request for Pacemaker DeactivationCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics. forthcoming.In this case report, we describe a woman with advancing dementia who still retained decisional capacity and was able to clearly articulate her request for deactivation of her implanted cardiac pacemaker—a scenario that would result in her death. In this case, the patient had the autonomy to make her decision, but clinicians at an outside hospital refused to deactivate her pacemaker even though they were in unanimous agreement that the patient had capacity to make this decision, citing personal d…Read more
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112Critical Thinking: A Concise GuideRoutledge. 2001._Critical Thinking_ is a much-needed guide to thinking skills and above all to thinking critically for oneself. Through clear discussion, students learn the skills required to tell a good argument from a bad one. Key features include: *jargon-free discussion of key concepts in argumentation *how to avoid confusions surrounding words such as 'truth', 'knowledge' and 'opinion' *how to identify and evaluate the most common types of argument *how to spot fallacies in arguments and tell good reasonin…Read more
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4Defining Patient Advocacy for the Context of Clinical Ethics Consultation: A Review of the Literature and Recommendations for Consultants (review)Journal of Clinical Ethics 27 (2): 176-184. 2016.The idea of patient advocacy as a function of clinical ethics consultation (CEC) has been debated in the bioethics literature. In particular, opinion is divided as to whether patient advocacy inherently is in conflict with the other duties of the ethics consultant, especially that of impartial mediator. The debate is complicated, however, because patient advocacy is not uniformly conceptualized. This article examines two literatures that are crucial to understanding patient advocacy in the conte…Read more
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50Whataboutisms: The Good, the Bad and the UglyInformal Logic 43 (1): 91-112. 2023.The rhetorical function of whataboutism is to redirect attention from the specific case at hand. Although commonly used as a rhetorical move, whataboutisms can appear in arguments. These tend to be weak arguments and are often instances of the tu quoque fallacy or other fallacies of relevance. In what follows, I show that arguments involving a whataboutist move can take a wide variety of forms, and in some cases, they can occur in good arguments. I end by considering how whataboutist arguing in …Read more
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125Virtue and Argument: Taking Character Into AccountInformal Logic 33 (1): 22-32. 2013.In this paper we consider the prospects for an account of good argument that takes the character of the arguer into consideration. We conclude that although there is much to be gained by identifying the virtues of the good arguer and by considering the ways in which these virtues can be developed in ourselves and in others, virtue argumentation theory does not offer a plausible alternative definition of good argument
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56How Can We Get Students to Think Critically about Intransigent Beliefs?Teaching Philosophy 40 (4): 395-405. 2017.Part of the job of the philosophy teacher, and in particular the critical thinking teacher, is to encourage students to critically examine their own beliefs. There are some beliefs that are difficult to think critically about, even for those who have critical thinking skills and are committed to applying them to their own beliefs. These resistant beliefs are not all of a kind, and so a range of different strategies may be needed to get students to think critically about them. In this paper we su…Read more
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2Reconceiving the Human Fetus in Reproductive Bioethics: Perspectives from Cultural Anthropology and BioarchaeologyIn Lisa Campo-Engelstein & Paul Burcher (eds.), Reproductive Ethics Ii: New Ideas and Innovations, Springer Verlag. pp. 139-150. 2018.An important consideration in reproductive bioethics is the question of personhood, which impacts family and medical decision-making as well as policy and law. Anthropology is uniquely suited to provide both a cross-cultural and historical and prehistorical perspective on the status of fetuses. Far from being taken for granted as a natural or biological condition, personhood is a status and identity actively negotiated, ascribed, and contested through social and cultural processes that are the p…Read more
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Growing up in the 2020s: preparing children for the changes and challenges ahead (edited book)Fabian Society. 2018.
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4Editor's NoteInformal Logic 42 (4): 81-106. 2021.In this paper, I consider whether there are limits to virtuous argumentation in certain situations. I consider three types of cases: 1) arguing against denier discourses, 2) arguing with people who make bigoted claims, and 3) cases in which marginalised people are expected to exercise virtues of argument from a position of limited agency. For each type of case, I look at where limits to arguing responsibly might be drawn. I argue that there are situations in which we might withdraw from engageme…Read more
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23Transformative Justice in Ethics ConsultationPerspectives in Biology and Medicine 65 (4): 612-621. 2022.ABSTRACT:Clinical ethics consultants bear witness to the direct harms of intersecting axes of oppression—such as racism and classism—as they impinge on elucidating and resolving ethical dilemmas in health care. Health Care Ethics Consultation (HCEC) professional guidance supports recognizing and analyzing power dynamics and social-structural obstacles to good care. However, the most relied upon bioethical principles in clinical ethics have been criticized for insufficiency in this regard. While …Read more
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20Neither the “Devil’s Lettuce” nor a “Miracle Cure:” The Use of Medical Cannabis in the Care of Children and YouthNeuroethics 15 (1): 1-8. 2022.Lack of guidance and regulation for authorizing medical cannabis for conditions involving the health and neurodevelopment of children is ethically problematic as it promulgates access inequities, risk-benefit inconsistencies, and inadequate consent mechanisms. In two virtual sessions using participatory action research and consensus-building methods, we obtained perspectives of stakeholders on ethics and medical cannabis for children and youth. The sessions focused on the scientific and regulato…Read more
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15Editor's NoteInformal Logic 41 (1): 81-106. 2021.In this paper, I consider whether there are limits to virtuous argumentation in certain situations. I consider three types of cases: 1) arguing against denier discourses, 2) arguing with people who make bigoted claims, and 3) cases in which marginalised people are expected to exercise virtues of argument from a position of limited agency. For each type of case, I look at where limits to arguing responsibly might be drawn. I argue that there are situations in which we might withdraw from engageme…Read more
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9Generating Buoyancy in a Sea of Uncertainty: Teachers Creativity and Well-Being During the COVID-19 PandemicFrontiers in Psychology 11. 2021.The global coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused significant uncertainty for students and teachers. During this time, teacher and student creative beliefs and affect play a supportive role in adaptively managing stress, finding joy, and bouncing back from inevitable setbacks with resilience. Developing an adaptive orientation to creativity is a critically important step in helping teachers deal with the challenges and stress of reaching their students through distance learning,…Read more
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109Critical Thinking: A Concise Guide. 5th EditionRoutledge. 2019.Now with Venn Diagrams, expanded Extended Examples (nice work, Robert), and the latest trends in Rhetoric, post-truth etc. (nice work, Tracy).
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12Closed-Loop Frontal Midlineθ Neurofeedback: A Novel Approach for Training Focused-Attention MeditationFrontiers in Human Neuroscience 14. 2020.
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14Modeling Conceptualization and Investigating Teaching EffectivenessScience & Education 27 (9-10): 921-961. 2018.Our research addresses the issue of teaching and learning concepts in science education as an empirical question. We study the process of conceptualization by closely examining the unfolding of classroom lesson sequences. We situate our work within the practice turn line of research on epistemic practices in science education. We also adopt a practice turn approach when it comes to the learning of concepts, as we consider conceptualization as being inherent within epistemic practices. In our wor…Read more
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20On engaging with others: A Wittgensteinian approach to (some) problems with deeply held beliefsEducational Philosophy and Theory 50 (5): 478-488. 2018.My starting point for this paper is a problem in critical thinking pedagogy—the difficult of bringing students to a point where they are able, and motivated, critically to evaluate their own deeply held beliefs. I first interrogate the very idea of a deeply held belief, drawing upon Wittgenstein’s idea of a framework belief—a belief that forms part of a ‘scaffolding’ for our thoughts—or of a belief that functions as a hinge around which other beliefs pivot. I then examine the role of deeply held…Read more
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14Response to the editorial ‘Education in a post-truth world’Educational Philosophy and Theory 49 (6): 582-585. 2017.
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23On engaging with others: A Wittgensteinian approach to problems with deeply held beliefsEducational Philosophy and Theory 1-11. 2016.My starting point for this paper is a problem in critical thinking pedagogy—the difficult of bringing students to a point where they are able, and motivated, critically to evaluate their own deeply held beliefs. I first interrogate the very idea of a deeply held belief, drawing upon Wittgenstein’s idea of a framework belief—a belief that forms part of a ‘scaffolding’ for our thoughts—or of a belief that functions as a hinge around which other beliefs pivot. I then examine the role of deeply held…Read more
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28Measuring Critical Thinking About Deeply Held Beliefs: Can the California Critical Thinking Dispositions Inventory Help?Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 30 (1): 40-50. 2015.The California Critical Thinking Dispositions Inventory is a commonly used tool for measuring critical thinking dispositions. However, research on the efficacy of the CCTDI in predicting good thinking about students’ own deeply held beliefs is scant. In this paper we report on our study that was designed to gauge the usefulness of the CCTDI in this context, and take some first steps towards designing a better method for measuring strong sense critical thinking.
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38The Innsmouth LookJournal of Philosophy: A Cross-Disciplinary Inquiry 6 (14): 44-50. 2011.“The Innsmouth Look: H. P. Lovecraft’s Ambivalent Modernism” explores how horror writing responds to the anxieties and possibilities presented by historical modernity. Lovecraft, in his short story “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” translated contemporary concerns about immigration, industrialization and racial difference into a plot about a young traveler encountering a terrifying alien population in a small New England town. The essay examines the ways that this story both demonstrates how the dehu…Read more
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24Making ManifestTeaching Philosophy 24 (2): 133-142. 2001.This paper considers the use of Derek Jarman’s film “Wittgenstein” as a valuable resource for those writing upon, thinking about, and teaching Wittgenstein’s philosophy, especially in understanding Wittgenstein’s approach to questions about language and its relationship to reality. The paper begins by considering the role biography plays in philosophical scholarship and how, in the case of Wittgenstein, this has a particularly significant role. Next, the paper describes the form and content of t…Read more
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1Latein Für Dummies (edited book)Wiley. 2012.Latein lernen einmal anders. Gemeinhin gilt Lateinunterricht als nur mäßig spannend, die Autoren von "Latein für Dummies" zeigen Ihnen, wie man mit Spaß Latein lernen, auffrischen oder verbessern kann. Zwischen Konjugationen und Deklinationen erfahren Sie viel über die römische Gesellschaft, Literatur und über den ganzen Rest, der Latein auch noch heute für uns interessant macht. Mit einem kleinen Wörterbuch und vielen Tabellen ist dies der ideale Einsteiger- und Auffrischungskurs für die Latein…Read more
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32There are some beliefs that are difficult to think critically about, even for those who have critical thinking skills and are committed to applying them to their own beliefs. These resistant beliefs are not all of a kind, and so a range of different strategies may be needed to get ourselves and others to think critically about them. In this paper we suggest some such strategies.