Ben Almassi

Governors State University
  •  668
    As a moral foundation for vegetarianism and other consumer choices, act consequentialism can be appealing. When we justify our consumer and dietary choices this way, however, we face the problem that our individual actions rarely actually precipitate more just agricultural and economic practices. This threshold or individual impotence problem engaged by consequentialist vegetarians and their critics extends to morally motivated consumer decision-making more generally, anywhere a lag persists bet…Read more
  •  384
    Relationally Responsive Expert Trustworthiness
    Social Epistemology 36 (5): 576-585. 2022.
    Social epistemologists often operationalize the task of indirectly assessing experts’ trustworthiness to identifying whose beliefs are more reliably true on matters in an area of expertise. Not only does this neglect the philosophically rich space between belief formation and testimonial utterances, it also reduces trustworthiness to reliability. In ethics of trust, by contrast, explicitly relational views of trust include things like good will and responsiveness. One might think that relational…Read more
  •  321
    Climate Change and the Ethics of Individual Emissions: A Response to Sinnott-Armstrong
    Perspectives: International Postgraduate Journal of Philosophy 4 (1): 4-21. 2012.
    Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues, on the relationship between individual emissions and climate change, that “we cannot claim to know that it is morally wrong to drive a gas guzzler just for fun” or engage in other inessential emissions-producing individual activities. His concern is not uncertainty about the phenomenon of climate change, nor about human contribution to it. Rather, on Sinnott-Armstrong’s analysis the claim of individual moral responsibility for emissions must be grounded in a defe…Read more
  •  250
    Disability, functional diversity, and trans/feminism
    International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 3 (2): 126. 2015.
    I propose that a feminist analysis of contemporary conversations on normalfunctioning and functional-diversity approaches to understanding disability can locate in some people’s resistances to disability an attitude compatible with respect for functional diversity. The history of feminist work in collaboration with transgender work offers an evocative model for an approach to disability that enables solidarity with those seeking functional alteration. This approach provides one way to understand…Read more
  •  222
    Climate Change, Epistemic Trust, and Expert Trustworthiness
    Ethics and the Environment 17 (2): 29-49. 2012.
    The evidence most of us have for our beliefs on global climate change, the extent of human contribution to it, and appropriate anticipatory and mitigating actions turns crucially on epistemic trust. We extend trust or distrust to many varied others: scientists performing original research, intergovernmental agencies and those reviewing research, think tanks offering critique and advocating skepticism, journalists transmitting and interpreting claims, even social systems of modern science such as…Read more
  •  198
    Trust in expert testimony: Eddington's 1919 eclipse expedition and the British response to general relativity
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 40 (1): 57-67. 2009.
  •  168
    Epistemic Injustice and Its Amelioration
    Social Philosophy Today. 2018.
    Recent works by feminist and social epistemologists have carefully mapped the contours of epistemic injustice, including gaslighting and prejudicial credibility deficits, prejudicial credibility excesses, willful hermeneutical ignorance, discursive injustices, contributory injustice, and epistemic exploitation. As we look at this burgeoning literature, attention has been concentrated mainly in four areas in descending order of emphasis: phenomena of epistemic injustice themselves, including the …Read more
  •  162
    Experts, Evidence, and Epistemic Independence
    Spontaneous Generations 1 (1): 58-66. 2007.
    Throughout his work on the rationality of epistemic dependence, John Hardwig makes the striking observation that he believes many things for which he possesses no evidence (1985, 335; 1991, 693; 1994, 83). While he could imagine collecting for himself the relevant evidence for some of his beliefs, the vastness of the world and constraints of time and individual intellect thwart his ability to gather for himself the evidence for all his beliefs. So for many things he believes what others tell him…Read more
  •  117
    ‘Feminist masculinity’ might seem like a contradiction in terms. One might have assumed that we can embrace feminism or embrace masculinity, but not both. If traditional masculinity is contrary to feminist values, a pressing query for feminist men is whether repudiation of traditional masculinity should move one to reject normative masculinity entirely, or to reframe and reclaim it instead. bell hooks and Michael Kimmel each counsel against discarding manhood and masculinity. hooks envisions fem…Read more
  •  97
    Trust and the Duty of Organ Donation
    Bioethics 28 (6): 275-283. 2014.
    Several recent publications in biomedical ethics argue that organ donation is generally morally obligatory and failure to do so is morally indefensible. Arguments for this moral conclusion tend to be of two kinds: arguments from fairness and arguments from easy rescue. While I agree that many of us have a duty to donate, in this article I criticize these arguments for a general duty of organ donation and their application to organ procurement policy. My concern is that these arguments neglect th…Read more
  •  84
    Conflicting expert testimony and the search for gravitational waves
    Philosophy of Science 76 (5): 570-584. 2009.
    How can we make informed decisions about whom to trust given expert disagreement? Can experts on both sides be reasonable in holding conflicting views? Epistemologists have engaged the issue of reasonable expert disagreement generally; here I consider a particular expert dispute in physics, given conflicting accounts from Harry Collins and Allan Franklin, over Joseph Weber’s alleged detection of gravitational waves. Finding common ground between Collins and Franklin, I offer a characterization o…Read more
  •  52
    Climate Change and the Need for Intergenerational Reparative Justice
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 30 (2): 199-212. 2017.
    Environmental philosophies concerning our obligations to each other and the natural world too rarely address the aftermath of environmental injustice. Ideally we would never do each other wrong; given that we do, as fallible and imperfect agents, we require non-ideal ethical guidance. Margaret Walker’s work on moral repair and Annette Baier’s work on cross-generational communality together provide useful hermeneutical tools for understanding and enacting meaningful responses to intergenerational…Read more
  •  49
    Medical Error and Moral Repair
    International Journal of Applied Philosophy 32 (2): 143-154. 2018.
    One limitation of medical ethics modeled on ideal moral theory is its relative silence on the aftermath of medical error: not just on the recognition and avoidance of malpractice, wrongdoing, or other such failures of medical ethics, but on how to respond given medical wrongdoing. Ideally, we would never do each other wrong; but given that inevitably we do, as fallible, imperfect agents we require non-ideal ethical guidance. For such non-ideal contexts, Nancy Berlinger’s analysis of medical erro…Read more
  •  43
    Medical Ghostwriting and Informed Consent
    Bioethics 28 (9): 491-499. 2013.
    Ghostwriting in its various forms has received critical scrutiny from medical ethicists, journal editors, and science studies scholars trying to explain where ghostwriting goes wrong and ascertain how to counter it. Recent analyses have characterized ghostwriting as plagiarism or fraud, and have urged that it be deterred through stricter compliance with journal submission requirements, conflict of interest disclosures, author-institutional censure, legal remedies, and journals' refusal to publis…Read more
  •  42
    Ecological Restorations as Practices of Moral Repair
    Ethics and the Environment 22 (1): 19-40. 2017.
    The value of ecological restoration has seen considerable criticism and defense in environmental ethics over the past thirty years. Proponents stress the human and ecological benefits of restoration projects at their best; critics characterize restoration as impossible, arbitrary, domination or delusional. As ethical debates on ecological restoration developed and sometimes threatened to devolve into scholastic quibbling, pragmatists contributed a welcome perspective, as Light and others urged t…Read more
  •  41
    This book argues for allyship masculinity as an open-ended, intersectional model for feminist men. It provides a roadmap for navigating between toxic masculinity on one side, and feminist androgyny on the other. Normative visions for what men should be take many forms. For some it is love and mindfulness; for others, wildness and heroic virtue. For still others the desire to separate a healthy manhood from toxic masculinity is a mistake: better to refuse to be men and salvage our humanity. Thoug…Read more
  •  31
    Bruno Latour is not the only scholar to reflect on his earlier contributions to science studies with some regret and resolve over climate skepticism and science denialism. Given the ascendency of merchants of doubt, should those who share Latour's concerns join the scientists they study in circling the wagons, or is there a productive role still for science studies to question and critique scientists and scientific institutions? I argue for the latter, looking to postpositivist feminist philosop…Read more
  •  30
    Conflict of interest disclosure has become a routine requirement in communication of scientific information. Its advocates defend COI disclosure as a sensible middle path between the extremes of categorical prohibition on for-profit research and anything-goes acceptance of research regardless of origin. To the extent that COI information is meant to aid reviewer and reader evaluation of research, COIs must be epistemologically significant. While some commentators treat COIs as always relevant to…Read more
  •  26
    What’s Wrong With Ponzi Schemes? Trust and Its Exploitation in Financial Investment
    International Journal of Applied Philosophy 32 (1): 111-126. 2018.
    The role of trust in financial investment has been a matter of some contention, one often obscured by two misconceptions: (1) that financial relationships are fit only for wary predictive reliance where trust has no rational basis, and (2) that in those relationships where trust is operative it must be worth preserving. Following Baier’s contention that trust, like air, is more easily seen when polluted, here I consider Ponzi schemes as exemplars of corrupt and polluted trust. Without attending …Read more
  •  24
    Skepticism and Pluralism on Ethics Expertise
    Social Philosophy Today 35 143-158. 2019.
    Does expertise have a place in ethics? As this question has been raised in moral philosophy and bioethics literatures over the past twenty years, skepticism has been a common theme, whether metaphysical, epistemological or social-political. Here I identify three common, contestable assumptions about ethics expertise which underwrite skepticism of one form or another: a singular conception of ethics expertise constituted by a core property or unity among multiple properties, equivocation of ethic…Read more
  •  20
    Toxic Funding? Conflicts of Interest and their Epistemological Significance
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 34 (2): 206-220. 2016.
    Conflict of interest disclosure has become a routine requirement in communication of scientific information. Its advocates defend COI disclosure as a sensible middle path between the extremes of categorical prohibition on for-profit research and anything-goes acceptance of research regardless of origin. To the extent that COI information is meant to aid reviewer and reader evaluation of research, COIs must be epistemologically significant. While some commentators treat COIs as always relevant to…Read more
  •  17
    Reparative Environmental Justice in a World of Wounds examines how we can repair human and biotic relationships damaged by environmental injustice, climate change, animal exploitation, and ecological destruction by arguing for the merits of a reparative approach to environmental justice and critically assessing challenges that come with it.
  •  16
    The role of trust in financial investment has been a matter of some contention, one often obscured by two misconceptions: (1) that financial relationships are fit only for wary predictive reliance where trust has no rational basis, and (2) that in those relationships where trust is operative it must be worth preserving. Following Baier’s contention that trust, like air, is more easily seen when polluted, here I consider Ponzi schemes as exemplars of corrupt and polluted trust. Without attending …Read more
  •  15
    Value disputes in urban ecological restoration: Lessons from the Chicago Wilderness
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 87 (C): 93-100. 2021.
  •  14
    Skepticism and Pluralism on Ethics Expertise
    Social Philosophy Today 35 143-158. 2019.
    Does expertise have a place in ethics? As this question has been raised in moral philosophy and bioethics literatures over the past twenty years, skepticism has been a common theme, whether metaphysical (there is no such thing as ethics expertise), epistemological (we cannot know who has ethics expertise) or social-political (we should not treat anyone as having ethics expertise). Here I identify three common, contestable assumptions about ethics expertise which underwrite skepticism of one form…Read more
  •  4
    Experts in the Climate Change Debate
    In Kasper Lippert‐Rasmussen, Kimberley Brownlee & David Coady (eds.), A Companion to Applied Philosophy, Wiley. 2016.
    Contemporary public debates about global climate change may be usefully understood as debates on the epistemology of expertise. The scope of this essay is to offer an overview of significant epistemic challenges facing climate experts and those with whom they are epistemically interdependent, with attention to the implications of various accounts of expertise, trust, and credibility for practical and social issues raised in contemporary public debates about climate change.