• Virginia Tech
    Department of Science and Technology in Society
    Assistant Professor
Emory University
Department of Philosophy
PhD
Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America
  •  81
    Traditionally, the debate between epistemological internalists and externalists has centered on the value of knowledge and its justification. A value pluralist, virtue-theoretic approach to epistemology allows us to accept what I shall call the insight of externalism while still acknowledging the importance of internalists’ insistence on the value of reflection. Intellectual virtue can function as the unifying consideration in a study of a host of epistemic values, including understanding, wisdo…Read more
  •  868
    Three Independent Factors in Epistemology
    with Guy Axtell
    Contemporary Pragmatism 6 (2). 2009.
    We articulate John Dewey’s “independent factors” approach to moral philosophy and then adapt and extend this approach to address contemporary debate concerning the nature and sources of epistemic normativity. We identify three factors (agent reliability, synchronic rationality, and diachronic rationality) as each making a permanent contribution to epistemic value. Critical of debates that stem from the reductionistic ambitions of epistemological systems that privilege of one or another of these …Read more
  •  13
    Domesticating Deathcare: The Women of the U.S. Natural Deathcare Movement
    Journal of Medical Humanities 39 (2): 195-215. 2018.
    This article examines the women-led natural deathcare movment in the early 21st century U.S., focusing upon the movement’s non-coincidental epistemological and gender-political similarities to the natural childbirth movement. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach and drawing upon the author’s intensive interviews with pioneers and leaders of the U.S. natural deathcare movement, as well as from the author’s own participation in the movement, this article argues that the political similarities be…Read more
  •  52
    Knowing “Necro-Waste”
    Social Epistemology 30 (3): 326-345. 2016.
    Adopting a waste-directed study of the dead human body, and various practices of body preparation and body disposition in funerary contexts, I argue that necro-waste is a ubiquitous but largely unknown presence. To know necro-waste is to examine the ways in which the dead human body is embedded in particular personal, social, historical, political, and environmental contexts. This study focuses on funerary practices in the US and Canada, where embalming has been routinely practiced. Viewing dead…Read more
  •  42
    Flush and bone: Funeralizing alkaline hydrolysis in the United States
    Science, Technology, and Human Values 39 (5): 666-693. 2014.
    This article examines the political controversy in the United States surrounding a new process for the disposition of human remains, alkaline hydrolysis. AH technologies use a heated solution of water and strong alkali to dissolve tissues, yielding an effluent that can be disposed through municipal sewer systems, and brittle bone matter that can be dried, crushed, and returned to the decedent’s family. Though AH is legal in eight US states, opposition to the technology remains strong. Opponents …Read more
  •  28
    A pragmatist philosophy of democracy (review)
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 47 (4). 2009.
    In this, his second book, Robert Talisse “attempts to make explicit the pragmatist roots and motivations of the concept of democracy” developed in his 2005 book, Democracy after Liberalism: Pragmatism and Deliberative Politics . Inspired by the work of the classical American pragmatist, Charles Sanders Peirce, Talisse defends a substantive, epistemic conception of democracy, which he calls “epistemic perfectionism.” Pragmatists, political philosophers, and social epistemologists alike will disco…Read more