Bad Beliefs

Why do people come to reject climate science or the safety and efficacy of vaccines, in defiance of the scientific consensus? A popular view explains bad beliefs like these as resulting from a range of biases that together ensure that human beings fall short of being genuinely rational animals. This book presents an alternative account. It argues that bad beliefs arise from genuinely rational processes. We’ve missed the rationality of bad beliefs because we’ve failed to recognize the ubiquity of the higher-order evidence that shapes beliefs, and the rationality of being guided by this evidence. The book argues that attention to higher-order evidence should lead us to rethink both how minds are best changed and the ethics of changing them: we should come to see that nudging—at least usually—changes belief (and behavior) by presenting rational agents with genuine evidence, and is therefore fully respectful of intellectual agency. We needn’t rethink Enlightenment ideals of intellectual autonomy and rationality, but we should reshape them to take account of our deeply social epistemic agency.

Understanding the industry/state interface in creative industries studies

It is time to transcend the cultural studies vs. media industries debate in media industries studies. To take advantage of the exemplary focus on real-world behavior of media industries that Stuart Cunningham brought to the field, scholars need to articulate the normative values informing their media industries research. This is necessary in order to preserve academics’ intellectual autonomy, and to maintain scholarly rigor.

Unruly Memory and Historical Order

This paper explores the complex history of “undisciplined histories” by looking at the tension between political engagement and scientific detachment in revolutionary scholarship, a field perpetually torn between historicist methods and presentist purposes. From the controversies surrounding the 1889 Jubilee to the patriotic uses of history during the Great War, the historiography of the French Revolution continuously challenged the principles and methods of history as an academic discipline. This period’s omnipresence in nineteenth-century “memory wars” delayed its academization, which became effective only in the aftermath of the Centenary when newly implemented university chairs, scholarly journals, and historical societies established the history of the French Revolution as a central research topic. However, the advent of the First World War challenged the historians’ impartiality and detachment as they committed to defend their homeland in their historical writings while striving to preserve their intellectual autonomy.

Addressing the Challenge of Epistemicide and African Self-Understanding through a Study of Chinweizu’s Ubuntology: Groundwork for the Intellectual Autonomy of the Black Race

In this article, I explore the forms of knowledge available among contemporary African intellectuals to identify their possible outcomes. I examine Chinweizu’s concerted effort in Ubuntology: Groundwork for the Intellectual Autonomy of the Black Race (2004). Through a critical review of this monograph, I suggest other ways to address the challenge of knowledge creation and consumption in Africa. I examine the work through the notion of epistemicide. First, I discuss epistemicide – a major claim that the knowledge design in Africa presently is against the intellectual well-being of the African people. I provide justifications of the claim to epistemicide. Thereafter, I provide a critical intervention to the challenge of epistemicide Chinweizu discussed in Ubuntology: Groundwork for the Intellectual Autonomy of the Black Race (2004). Subsequently, I argue for the need to go beyond epistemicide, and to pursue a system of knowledge creation (or knowledge acquisition, or knowledge application) that will liberate Africa.

Autonomy

Drawing from examples ranging from the suffrage movement to the Scientific Revolution, this chapter explores the nature of intellectual autonomy, the virtue we need in order to think for ourselves. The chapter identifies autonomy as a virtue that stands between the vices of servility (a deficiency of independence) and isolation (an excess). It argues that, surprisingly, virtuous autonomy requires us to rely on others—a fact illustrated by both the suffragists and the scientific revolutionaries. Autonomy is a matter of thinking for ourselves, but not a matter of thinking by ourselves. The chapter includes a discussion of the relationship between autonomy and deference to experts. It closes with exercises designed to prompt the reader toward virtuous, autonomous thinking.