Public Philosophy

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 I hope that philosophy can be of some public service, in helping us understand our world and respond to it in a just and sensible manner. To that end I try to produce publicly accessible and engaging philosophical work on topics that interest me. Mostly that happens at my blog, The Sooty Empiric. And if you really hate yourself you can follow my twitter for microtakes. But sometimes I put work out in other venues, and on this page I will gather together the results of this. 

Podcasts

Appeared on Two for Tea to discuss the nature of truth and self-loathing (related).

Appeared on Enter the Void to discuss logical positivism.

Appeared on PhilosophyBites to discuss verificationism.

Appeared on Mandatory Redistribution Party to discuss economic and political contributors of scientific fraud.

Appeared on Mindscape to discuss knowledge, truth, and scientific method.

​Appeared on NOVC to discuss normative philosophy and the tech world.

Appeared at the LSE Forum to discuss the life and work of WEB Du Bois

Appeared on Ipse Dixit (wiith Remco Heesen) to discuss abolishing pre-publication scientific peer review.

Appeared on What's Left of Philosophy to discuss the politics of logical positivism.

Appeared on History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps to discuss W.E.B Du Bois' philosophy of science.

Appeared on Decoding the Gurus to discuss science reform, guruism, and what unbearable status quo simps the hosts are.

Appeared as part of an LSE Events Panel on the nature of Tranquility. I gave an overview of the Neo-Confucian perspective, illustrated by the journals of Wu Yubi.

Essays

Managing Our Uncertainty in the Crisis (regarding dealing with uncertainty in COVID-19 policy, especially the role of political choice in apparently scientific decisions), with Richard Bradley

A Máscara de Rona (in Portugese, regarding the use of modelling techniques in COVID policy making. translated by Mateus Leite and Samuel Maia) with Richard Bradley.

Immunity Testing: Our passport out of lockdown? (regarding the proposed policy of presenting immunity passports as a means of deciding who should be allowed out of COVID lockdown) with Richard Bradley

A Response to Michael Walzer (regarding the Racial Capitalism thesis) with Olúfémi Táíwò.

Ethical Life (just outlining my own ethical views, and trying to indicate how they interrelate to one another)

Difficult trade-offs in response to
COVID-19: the case for open and
inclusive decision-making - Long Version for WHO (longer version for a World Health Organisation conference of a paper that appeared in Nature Medicine, making the case for more democratic means of making policy decisions in response to pandemics) with Ole F. Norheim, Joelle M. Abi-Rached Kristine Bærøe, Octávio LM Ferraz, Siri Gloppen, and Alex Voorhoeve

Publications By Black Authors in Leiter Top 15 Journals 2003-2012 (short bit of demographic analysis of how often black philosophers were publishing in some fancy journals over the named time period)

Reflection on the image of the veil in Souls  (piece to accompany illustrated description of Du Bois' thinking about racial epistemology in Souls of Black Folk, forthcoming in (ed.) Helen De Cruz 's Philosophy Illustrated.)

Guest Post at Daily Nous on Why We Should Crowd Source Peer Review (a popular explainer to accompany a technical paper.) with Marcus Arvan and Remco Heesen

​Why I Am A Shameless Sophist (Daily Nous post in defence of doing philosophy for pay.)

Two Tendencies (a reflection on what drives me to do philosophy, as well as an attempt to illuminate by way of example what I mean by the categories "Basically Pleasant Bureaucrat" vs "Sexy Murder Poet" as types of philosoper)

Other Media

Appeared on BBC Radio 4 episode to speak about WEB Du Bois and how his views relate to the phenomenon of code switching.

Appeared on BBC Radio 4 episode to discuss WEB Du Bois' views on the nature and role of art.

Had a dialogue I cowrote with Rose Novick ("Free and Easy Conversing") animated and put on YouTube by kind people at the University of Toronto

Public lecture ("Why Do Scientists Lie?") I gave for the Royal Institute of Philosophy available on YouTube

Spoke with Andrea With the Bangs about logical positivism, postmodernism, and the IDW and had a letter exchange with her about critical race theory (followup).

​Weg met de gedachte dat elke filosofiestudent Plato, Descartes en Kant moet kennen (an interview with me in Dutch, regarding my thoughts on abolishing the philosophical canon) the interviewer is Laura Molenaar

My short story "Confessions" appeared in the volume Academ-Fic (2021) Vol.2 No.1

Public lecture ("Why Does Scientific Fraud Happen?") given at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology which looks not just at the causes of scientific fraud but a particular approach to anti-fraud policy pioneered by WEB Du Bois. Available on YouTube.

An interview (with Sara Van Goozen) on why I oppose anything playing the social role of a canon in philosophy.

A short reflection at Aesthetics for Birds on Dark Was The Night, Cold Was the Ground by Blind Willie Johnson.

An introductory guide (with Peter Adamson) to incorporating Africana philosophy into philosophy courses.

A short read with an audio recording (with Remco Heesen) on why we should reform peer review.