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Forgiveness: A Consoling and Troubling Virtue

Forgiveness: A Consoling and Troubling Virtue

Posted on 30 July 2018 by

On the evening of April 22nd 1993 Stephen Lawrence was murdered in a racially motivated attack. The nineteen year old had been waiting for a bus in Eltham, South East […]

Speak Up!: Inquiry and Expressing Disagreement

Speak Up!: Inquiry and Expressing Disagreement

Posted on 16 July 2018 by

In 1994, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray published The Bell Curve.  In it, the authors notoriously argued that the difference in performance on IQ tests between members of different races […]

Am I in an echo chamber?

Am I in an echo chamber?

Posted on 2 July 2018 by

Spend enough time tracking the liberal and conservative media worlds, and you’ll notice a certain symmetry in their accusations. Each side thinks that the other is living in an echo […]

Ruminating on Fake News, Online Education, and Intellectual Humility

Ruminating on Fake News, Online Education, and Intellectual Humility

Posted on 18 June 2018 by

From 2015 until last month (May, 2018), I was involved with a project at the University of Edinburgh, which aimed to produce a massive open online course (or MOOC) on […]

The Heart of Justice

The Heart of Justice

Posted on 4 June 2018 by

The ancient Greeks all thought of morality in terms of the virtues: justice, courage, temperance, and wisdom. And they all thought of the virtues as if they are like skills […]

Group membership, moral criticism and self-affirmation

Group membership, moral criticism and self-affirmation

Posted on 21 May 2018 by

Public debates often involve issues that people find distressing, especially if they involve accusations of moral wrongdoing (even in the past) by groups with whom one identifies.  People want to […]

‘Implicit Bias’ in public discourse

‘Implicit Bias’ in public discourse

Posted on 7 May 2018 by

The news has been awash with discussion of implicit bias, and the role it seems to have played in the discriminatory treatment of two black men in a Philadelphia branch […]

Poisonous Words: Arrogance, Bullshit and Accusations of Lying in Public Discourse

Poisonous Words: Arrogance, Bullshit and Accusations of Lying in Public Discourse

Posted on 23 April 2018 by

As is common with international incidents today, the Skripal case, in which a Russian double agent and his daughter were poisoned with a nerve agent in Salisbury, England, has generated […]

TRUST and Trump: investigating sincerity and accuracy in discourse

TRUST and Trump: investigating sincerity and accuracy in discourse

Posted on 9 April 2018 by

When exploring discursive untruthfulness, modern American politics is an obvious example. Donald Trump’s presidency has been continuously criticised for his use of falsity, with the aim of promoting his own […]

Reflections on Transcribing Multimodal Texts

Reflections on Transcribing Multimodal Texts

Posted on 26 March 2018 by

Since the election of Donald Trump in 2017 the media has often seemed to be in a continual state of shock at the brusque manner of the forty-fifth president’s speech. […]

Intellectual Humility and Conviction

Intellectual Humility and Conviction

Posted on 12 March 2018 by

Here is a puzzle. On the one hand, we laud people in public life for their conviction, for sticking to their principles come what may. Indeed, we take to be […]

Explaining the puzzle of national shame

Explaining the puzzle of national shame

Posted on 26 February 2018 by

In the aftermath of the EU Referendum, I encountered many people who said to me, “I am ashamed to be British”, or, when confronted with the fallout of the referendum […]

The Multiple Ways to Criticise Stereotyping

The Multiple Ways to Criticise Stereotyping

Posted on 12 February 2018 by

Do you assume that the person wearing the uniform in the shop is a shop assistant, that the teacher enjoys the company of children, or that the vegan has a […]

Arrogance and the Space of Reasons

Arrogance and the Space of Reasons

Posted on 29 January 2018 by

  A democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoining communicated experience. ---John Dewey   One of the truly baffling […]

Can Exposure to “Fake News” Damage Our Intellectual Character?

Can Exposure to “Fake News” Damage Our Intellectual Character?

Posted on 15 January 2018 by

There is no denying the current widespread interest in the phenomenon of “fake news”. Reflection on the quality of recent political debates has fuelled concerns about the use of inaccurate […]

How to Find Wisdom in a Divided Society

How to Find Wisdom in a Divided Society

Posted on 1 January 2018 by ,

It is not a debate that political division in the U.S., UK and many other European countries is at an all-time high. In the U.S., disagreement on the topics of […]

How Closed-Mindedness Obstructs Effective Inquiry

How Closed-Mindedness Obstructs Effective Inquiry

Posted on 18 December 2017 by

In his recent book Debriefing the President: The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein, John Nixon describes his encounters with the two main protagonists of the 2003 Iraq war. Nixon, a senior […]

What is Google Doing to Us?

What is Google Doing to Us?

Posted on 4 December 2017 by ,

By J. Adam Carter and Emma C. Gordon Suppose you wanted to know who the first pope was after St. Peter (answer: Pope Linus, born 10 AD), or what the […]

What is Closed-Mindedness?

What is Closed-Mindedness?

Posted on 20 November 2017 by

On March 7 2017, Jason Chaffetz who was then a member of the US House of Representatives (R-Utah) told a CNN anchor: “Americans have choices….rather than getting that new iPhone…they should […]

How Empathy Inhibits Trust

How Empathy Inhibits Trust

Posted on 6 November 2017 by

In my previous blog post, “How empathy promotes trust,” I argued that empathy can furnish an important source of trust in other people’s testimony (testifying simply being the act of […]