Figs in Winter

Below is the first paragraph of a paper I published on the Stoic concept of the dichotomy of control. The paper was written in response to a critical analysis of the dichotomy, as well as of the Stoic principle that we should “live in accordance with nature,” authored by my colleague Christian Coseru. You can download the full paper here.

The ancient Stoics were known for putting forth a number of “paradoxes,” so much so that Cicero wrote a whole treatise to explore them, aptly entitled Paradoxa Stoicorum. Of course, the term “paradox,” in that context, did not have anything to do with logical contradictions, but rather with para doxan, that is, uncommon opinions. Certainly, two of the most uncommon opinions put forth by the Stoics are that we should live “according to nature” and that things in general can neatly be divided into those that are “up to us” and those that are “not up to us.” In my previous article for this two-part symposium, I proposed that these are two cardinal pillars of both ancient and modern Stoicism.

Below are the first two paragraphs of a paper I co-authored with several colleagues in the journal Philosophical Psychology. It’s an unusual entry in my list of publications, because it’s a pointed criticism of the editorial decision by the journal to publish a paper defending “scientific” race theory, a position that is ideologically motivated and flatly contradicted by the actual scientific evidence. You can judge the merits of our argument for yourself by downloading the full paper.

We are addressing this letter to the editors of Philosophical Psychology after reading an article they decided to publish in the recent Volume 33, Issue 1. The article is by Nathan Cofnas and is entitled “Research on group differences in intelligence: A defense of free inquiry” (2020). The purpose of our letter is not to invite Cofnas’s contribution into a broader dialogue, but to respectfully voice our concerns about the decision to publish the manuscript, which, in our opinion, fails to meet a range of academic quality standards usually expected of academic publications.

As we read it, Cofnas’s article is a defense of the pursuit of the hereditarian scientific program that explores the alleged genomic differences in IQ between “racially” defined populations (e.g., “blacks” vs. “whites”), claiming that there is a strong and unfortunate tendency among researchers to ignore this line of research due to moral reservations. Cofnas argues that racial classifications, insofar as these may have discrete genetic correlates, could one day partially explain the differences measured in IQ between various populations; ignoring this hypothesis, Cofnas holds, could have potentially harmful consequences.

Below is the abstract of a paper (download here) that I published in the journal Disputatio. It is about virtue epistemology, an approach to knowledge acquisition and communication that might just be helpful in public discourse about science and pseudoscience.

It is no secret that we inhabit an increasingly irrational world, plagued by rampant pseudoscience, science denialism, post–truths and fake news. Or perhaps, human nature being what it is, we have always lived in such a world and we are now simply more keenly aware of it because of easy and widespread access to social media. Moreover, the stakes are higher, as pseudoscience in the form of the anti–vax movement imperils the lives of many, while climate change denialism literally risks a collapse of the human ecosystem. So how do we deal with the problem? How do we talk to otherwise perfectly reasonable and functional people who nevertheless espouse all sorts of nonsense — and vote accordingly? In this paper I will explore a couple of real life conversations among many that I have had with believers in pseudoscience, and then present and discuss virtue epistemology as one approach to ameliorate the problem. No silver bullets are available, unfortunately, but it is our intellectual and moral duty to keep, as Carl Sagan famously put it, the candle of reason lit even when surrounded by the darkness of unreason.

Below is the abstract of a paper (download here) I published in The Palgrave Handbook of Popular Culture as Philosophy, edited by my friend and colleague David Kyle Johnson. It presents an unusual argument that the figure of Star Trek’s Mr. Spock can be interpreted as telling the story of how one embarks on the path of Stoic sagehood.

It has been suggested that Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the original Star Trek series (TOS), more or less consciously built the equivalent of a philosophical argument in favor of Stoic philosophy by centering his story lines on the interacting and exquisitely complementary characters of Mr. Spock, Captain Kirk, and Doctor McCoy. Spock in particular was apparently purposefully meant by Roddenberry to represent Stoicism as he understood it. Modern prac- titioners of Stoicism, however, tend to see Spock as a “stoic” (lower-s) in the vernacular sense of the term: going through life constantly sporting a stiff upper lip and suppressing his emotions. I argue in this essay that, on the contrary, the evolution of Spock from the young officer serving on the Enterprise NCC-1701 to ambassador to the Romulans in the last movie based on TOS can be understood as the story of someone entering the path to sagehood in the Stoic sense. And yes, Stoicism definitely is about far more than stiff lips and the suppression of emotions.