•  576
    The Philosopher and the Dialectician in Aristotle's Topics
    History and Philosophy of Logic 37 (1): 78-100. 2016.
    I claim that, in the Topics, Aristotle advises dialectical questioners to intentionally argue fallaciously in order to escape from some dialectically awkward positions, and I work through the consequences of that claim. It will turn out that, although there are important exceptions, the techniques for finding arguments described in Topics I–VII are, by and large, locations that Aristotle thought of as appropriate for use in philosophical inquiry. The text that grounds this claim, however, raises…Read more
  •  548
    Forgetting ourselves: epistemic costs and ethical concerns in mindfulness exercises
    with Sahanika Ratnayake
    Journal of Medical Ethics 44 (8): 567-574. 2018.
    Mindfulness exercises are presented as being compatible with almost any spiritual, religious or philosophical beliefs. In this paper, we argue that they in fact involve imagining and conceptualising rather striking and controversial claims about the self, and the self’s relationship to thoughts and feelings. For this reason, practising mindfulness exercises is likely to be in tension with many people’s core beliefs and values, a tension that should be treated as a downside of therapeutic interve…Read more
  •  177
    Intoxication, Death and the Escape from Dialectic in Seneca's EM
    In Philosophical Imagination: Thought Experiments and Arguments in Antiquity, Cambridge Scholars. pp. 99-114. 2021.
  •  20
    Essays on Argumentation in Antiquity (edited book)
    with Joseph Andrew Bjelde and Christopher Roser
    Springer. 2021.
    This book provides a collection of essays representing the state of the art in the research into argumentation in classical antiquity. It contains essays from leading and up and coming scholars on figures as diverse as Parmenides, Gorgias, Seneca, and Classical Chinese "wandering persuaders." The book includes contributions from specialists in the history of philosophy as well as specialists in contemporary argumentation theory, and stimulates the dialogue between scholars studying issues relati…Read more
  •  19
    Trust and responsibility in molecular tumour boards
    with Christoph Schickhardt, Katja Mehlis, and Eva C. Winkler
    Bioethics 32 (7): 464-472. 2018.
    Molecular tumour boards (MTBs) offer recommendations for potentially effective, but potentially burdensome, molecularly targeted treatments to a patient's treating physician. In this paper, we discuss the question of who is responsible for ensuring that there is an adequate evidence base for any treatments recommended to a patient. We argue that, given that treating oncologists cannot usually offer a robust evaluation of the evidence underlying an MTB's recommendation, members of the MTB are res…Read more
  •  18
    Seneca’s Argumentation and Moral Intuitionism
    In Joseph Andrew Bjelde, David Merry & Christopher Roser (eds.), Essays on Argumentation in Antiquity, Springer. pp. 231-243. 2021.
    Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues that moral disagreement and widespread moral bias pose a serious problem for moral intuitionism. Seneca’s view that we just recognise the good could be criticised using a similar argument. His approach to argumentation offers a way out, one that may serve as a model for a revisionary intuitionism.