Storrs Mansfield, Connecticut, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Virtue Epistemology
Social Epistemology
  •  744
    Harms and Wrongs in Epistemic Practice
    Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 84 1-21. 2018.
    This volume has its roots in two recent developments within mainstream analytic epistemology: a growing recognition over the past two or three decades of the active and social nature of our epistemic lives; and, more recently still, the increasing appreciation of the various ways in which the epistemic practices of individuals and societies can, and often do, go wrong. The theoretical analysis of these breakdowns in epistemic practice, along with the various harms and wrongs that follow as a con…Read more
  •  272
    Hermeneutical Justice for Extremists?
    In Leo Townsend, Ruth Rebecca Tietjen, Michael Staudigl & Hans Bernard Schmid (eds.), The Philosophy of Fanaticism: Epistemic, Affective, and Political Dimensions, Routledge. pp. 88-108. 2022.
    When we encounter extremist rhetoric, we often find it dumbfounding, incredible, or straightforwardly unintelligible. For this reason, it can be tempting to dismiss or ignore it, at least where it is safe to do so. The problem discussed in this paper is that such dismissals may be, at least in certain circumstances, epistemically unjust. Specifically, it appears that recent work on the phenomenon of hermeneutical injustice compels us to accept two unpalatable conclusions: first, that this failur…Read more
  •  198
    In this paper I draw attention to a shortcoming in Miranda Fricker's 2007 account of hermeneutical injustice: that the only hermeneutical resource she acknowledges is a shared conceptual framework. Consequently, Fricker creates the impression that hermeneutical injustice manifests itself almost exclusively in the form of a conceptual lacuna. Considering the negative hermeneutical impact of certain societal taboos, however, suggests that there can be cases of hermeneutical injustice even when an …Read more
  •  85
    Motivational Approaches to Intellectual Vice
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 96 (4): 753-766. 2018.
    Despite the now considerable literature on intellectual virtue, there remains relatively little philosophical discussion of intellectual vice. What discussion there is has been shaped by a powerful assumption—that, just as intellectual virtue requires that we are motivated by epistemic goods, intellectual vice requires that we aren't. In this paper, I demonstrate that this assumption is false: motivational approaches cannot explain a range of intuitive cases of intellectual vice. The popularity …Read more
  •  37
    How we engage in epistemic practice, including our methods of knowledge acquisition and transmission, the personal traits that help or hinder these activities, and the social institutions that facilitate or impede them, is of central importance to our lives as individuals and as participants in social and political activities. Traditionally, Anglophone epistemology has tended to neglect the various ways in which these practices go wrong, and the epistemic, moral, and political harms and wrongs t…Read more
  •  21
    Must We Love Epistemic Goods?
    Philosophical Quarterly 71 (4). 2021.
    It is widely held that for an agent to have any intellectual character virtues, they must be fundamentally motivated by a love of epistemic goods. In this paper, I challenge this ‘strong motivational requirement’ on virtue. First, I call into question three key reasons offered in its defence: that a love of epistemic goods is needed to explain the scope, the performance quality, or the value of virtue. Secondly, I highlight several costs and restrictions that we incur from its acceptance. In so …Read more