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9Intellectual Virtue in Critical Thinking and Its InstructionInformal Logic 44 (1): 167-172. 2023.How is intellectual virtue related to critical thinking? Can one be a critical thinker without exercising intellectual virtue? Can one be intellectually virtuous without thereby being a critical thinker? How should our answers to these questions inform the instruction of critical thinking? These were the questions informing the 2023 Charles McCracken endowed lectureships given at Michigan State University by Professors Harvey Siegel and Jason Baehr. This brief commentary introduces their respect…Read more
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20Intellectual Virtue in Critical Thinking and Its InstructionInformal Logic 43 (2): 167-172. 2023.How is intellectual virtue related to critical thinking? Can one be a critical thinker without exercising intellectual virtue? Can one be intellectually virtuous without thereby being a critical thinker? How should our answers to these questions inform the instruction of critical thinking? These were the questions informing the 2023 Charles McCracken endowed lectureships given at Michigan State University by Professors Harvey Siegel and Jason Baehr. This brief commentary introduces their respect…Read more
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33Environmental Ethics in the Midwest: Interdisciplinary Approaches (edited book)Michigan State University Press. 2022.This volume brings scholarly attention to the Midwest and to how broader concerns of environmental ethics manifest. Consisting of eight essays, a wide range of topics is covered, such as agrarian ethics and Stoicism, the Dakota access pipeline and Indigenous women's activism, philosophy of law and species classification, environmental justice and the Flint water crisis, hog farming and anti-microbial drug resistance, science education standards and climate change education, virtue ethics and eco…Read more
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10Lisa Kretz, Ethics, Emotion, Education, and EmpowermentEnvironmental Values 31 (6): 754-756. 2022.
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46How and Why We Should Argue with Angry Uncle: A Defense of Fact Dumping and Consistency CheckingSocial Epistemology 35 (5): 533-545. 2021.How should we talk to Angry Uncle, or attempt to persuade any very ignorant audience? This paper discusses several strategies, including fact dumping, consistency checking, pandering, and just being friendly. It defends the continued value of fact dumping and consistency checking despite skeptical doubts rooted in recent cognitive science literature about their strategic efficacy. Pandering and friendliness often fail to confront our audience with epistemic resistance and so face serious limitat…Read more
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2971A comparison of approaches to virtue for nursing ethicsEthical Perspectives 26 (3): 427-457. 2019.As in many other fields of practical ethics, virtue ethics is increasingly of interest within nursing ethics. Nevertheless, the virtue ethics literature in nursing ethics remains relatively small and underdeveloped. This article aims to categorize which broad theoretical approaches to virtue have been taken, to undertake some initial comparative assessment of their relative merits given the peculiar ethical dilemmas facing nurse practitioners, and to highlight the prob- lem areas for virtue ethi…Read more
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35A developmental theory for Aristotelian practical intelligenceJournal of Moral Education 49 (1): 111-128. 2020.In Aristotelian virtue theories, phronesis is foundational to being good, but to date accounts of how this particularly important virtue can emerge are sketchy. This article plumbs recent thinking in Aristotelian virtue ethics and developmental theorizing to explore how far its emergence can be understood developmentally, i.e., in terms of the growth in ordinary conditions of underlying psychological capacities, dispositions, and the like. The purpose is not to explicate Aristotle, nor to assimi…Read more
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60The Moral Limits of Open‐MindednessEducational Theory 69 (4): 403-419. 2019.Epistemologists have long worried that the willingness of open-minded people to reconsider their beliefs in light of new evidence is both a condition of improving their beliefs and a risk factor for losing their grip on what they already know. In this paper I introduce and attempt to resolve a moral variation of this puzzle: A willingness to engage people having strange or (to us) repugnant moral ideals looks like a condition of broadening our moral horizons, but also a risk factor for doing the…Read more
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18Open‐Mindedness from the Public Sphere to the ClassroomEducational Theory 69 (4): 377-381. 2019.
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32Intellectualist Aristotelian Character Education: An Outline and AssessmentEducational Theory 64 (6): 567-587. 2014.Since its resurgence in the 1990s, character education has been subject to a bevy of common criticisms, including that it is didactic and crudely behaviorist; premised on a faulty trait psychology; victim‐blaming; culturally imperialist, racist, religious, or ideologically conservative; and many other horrible things besides. Matt Ferkany and Benjamin Creed examine an intellectualist Aristotelian form of character education that has gained popularity recently and find that it is largely not susc…Read more
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120Recognition, Attachment, and the Social Bases of Self-WorthSouthern Journal of Philosophy 47 (3): 263-283. 2009.Recognition theorists have claimed that a culturally egalitarian societal environment is a crucial social basis of a sense of self-worth. In doing so they have often drawn on noncogntivist social-psychological theorizing. This paper argues that this theorizing does not support the recognition theorist's position. It is argued that attachment theory, together with recent empirical evidence, support a more limited vision of self-worth's social bases according to which associational ties, basic rig…Read more
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186The Objectivity of WellbeingPacific Philosophical Quarterly 93 (4): 472-492. 2012.Subjective theories of wellbeing place authority concerning what benefits a person with that person herself, or limit wellbeing to psychological states. But how well off we are seems to depend on two different concerns, how well we are doing and how well things are going for us. I argue that two powerful subjective theories fail to adequately account for this and that principled arguments favoring subjectivism are unsound and poorly motivated. In the absence of more compelling evidence that how …Read more
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44Is it Arrogant to Deny Climate Change or is it Arrogant to Say it is Arrogant? Understanding Arrogance and Cultivating Humility in Climate Change Discourse and EducationEnvironmental Values 24 (6): 705-724. 2015.This paper assesses the charge that climate change denial is arrogant and considers the educational priorities most appropriate to fostering greater humility about the climate change problem. I argue that even denial formed in ignorance of the organised misinformation campaign often constitutes a kind of arrogance, but that it is quite possible to humbly doubt the climate change problem. In some cases denial flows from other more or less serious errors or vices, such as ignorance, sincere but mi…Read more
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92The educational importance of self-esteemJournal of Philosophy of Education 42 (1): 119-132. 2008.Some philosophers of education have recently argued that educators can more or less ignore children's global self-esteem without failing them educationally in any important way. This paper draws on an attachment theoretic account of self-esteem to argue that this view is mistaken. I argue that understanding self-esteem's origins in attachment supports two controversial claims. First, self-esteem is a crucial element of the confidence and motivation children need in order to engage in and achieve…Read more
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27In What Sense of 'Respect' Should We Respect Nature? A Comment on David Schmidtz's 'Respect for Everything'Ethics, Policy and Environment 14 (2). 2011.Ethics, Policy & Environment, Volume 14, Issue 2, Page 155-157, June 2011
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27The Educational Importance of Self-EsteemJournal of Philosophy of Education 42 (1): 119-132. 2008.Some philosophers of education have recently argued that educators can more or less ignore children’s global self-esteem without failing them educationally in any important way. This paper draws on an attachment theoretic account of self-esteem to argue that this view is mistaken. I argue that understanding self-esteem’s origins in attachment supports two controversial claims. First, self-esteem is a crucial element of the confidence and motivation children need in order to engage in and achieve…Read more
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34Mercy as an Environmental VirtueEnvironmental Values 20 (2). 2011.Recent work on environmental virtue tends to focus on the role of virtues like love, care, respect, humility and wonder for nature. This essay considers the merits of regarding mercy for nature as an environmental virtue. It argues that mercy for nature is neither conceptually confused nor unacceptably anthropocentric, is exhibited by an important exemplar of environmental virtue, and is compatible with virtues of love, care, respect and humility. It also argues that efforts to inculcate environ…Read more
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79The Importance of Participatory Virtues in the Future of Environmental EducationJournal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 25 (3): 419-434. 2012.Participatory approaches to environmental decision making and assessment continue to grow in academic and policy circles. Improving how we understand the structure of deliberative activities is especially important for addressing problems in natural resources, climate change, and food systems that have wicked dimensions, such as deep value disagreements, high degrees of uncertainty, catastrophic risks, and high costs associated with errors. Yet getting the structure right is not the only importa…Read more
East Lansing, Michigan, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Pluralistic Virtue Ethics |
Virtues and Vices |
Moral Education |
Moral Rationality |