•  979
    Reasoning, Science, and the Ghost Hunt
    Teaching Philosophy 40 (2): 201-229. 2017.
    This paper details how ghost hunting, as a set of learning activities, can be used to enhance critical thinking and philosophy of science classes. We describe in some detail our own work with ghost hunting, and reflect on both intended and unintended consequences of this pedagogical choice. This choice was partly motivated by students’ lack of familiarity with science and philosophic questions about it. We offer reflections on our three different implementations of the ghost hunting activities. …Read more
  •  426
    There has been a recent explosion of undergraduate philosophy conferences across the United States. In this paper, we explore undergraduate conferences along three lines. First, we argue that, as a well-designed learning activity, undergraduate conferences can serve to increase gender parity in philosophical spaces—a widely accepted and important goal for our discipline. Second, we argue that this increase in parity is due, at least in part, to the proper design of undergraduate conferences as H…Read more
  •  289
    Chemical Action: What is it and Why Does it Really Matter?
    with W. John Koolage & Ralph Hall
    Journal of Nanoparticle Research 13 (13): 1401-1427. 2011.
    Nanotechnology, as with many technologies before it, places a strain on existing legislation and poses a challenge to all administrative agencies tasked with regulating technology-based products. It is easy to see how statutory schemes become outdated, as our ability to understand and affect the world progresses. In this article, we address the regulatory problems that nanotechnology posses for the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) classification structure for ‘‘drugs’’ and ‘‘devices.’’ The l…Read more
  •  41
    Affording Disaster: Concealed Carry on Campus
    Public Affairs Quarterly 28 (2). 2014.
    As of March 2012, students with concealed carry permits attending public colleges and universities in the state of Colorado may carry their weapons on campus. Colorado is one of six states with legal provisions permitting guns on public campuses. An additional twenty-two states leave it up to the governing bodies of individual colleges and universities to determine their institution's gun policy, while twenty-two states ban concealed weapons on campuses. The NRA often asserts that "an armed soci…Read more
  •  34
    An infrastructural account of scientific objectivity for legal contexts and bloodstain pattern analysis
    with Lauren M. Williams and Morgen L. Barroso
    Science in Context 34 (1): 101-119. 2021.
    ArgumentIn the United States, scientific knowledge is brought before the courts by way of testimony – the testimony of scientific experts. We argue that this expertise is best understoodfirstas related to the quality of the underlying scienceand thenin terms of who delivers it. Bloodstain pattern analysis (BPA), a contemporary forensic science, serves as the vaulting point for our exploration of objectivity as a metric for the quality of a science in judicial contexts. We argue that BPA fails to…Read more
  •  19
    Climate Modeling
    Environmental Philosophy 12 (2): 221-252. 2015.
    Despite overwhelming evidence that climate change is real and represents a serious challenge for human flourishing, many still hold that climate change is not a credible threat—including a surprising number of broadcast meteorologists. In this article, we look at the logic that underwrites such an attitude, which typically appeals to a distrust of climate models, natural variability, or the presence of a conspiracy. Using a model selection framework, championed by Elliott Sober and Malcolm Forst…Read more
  •  16
    Addressing the Deep Roots of Epistemological Extremism
    Teaching Philosophy 46 (3): 313-339. 2023.
    In this article, we defend the view that problematic epistemological extremism, which presents puzzles for many learners new to philosophy, is a result of earlier learning at the K–12 level. Confirming this hunch serves as a way of locating the problem and suggesting that recent learning interventions proposed by Christopher Edelman (2021) and Galen Barry (2022) are on the right track. Further, we offer that this extremism is plausibly described as what Miranda Fricker (2007) calls an epistemic …Read more