Ben Almassi
Governors State University, Liberal Arts, Faculty Member
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Epistemology, Bioethics, Disability Studies, Feminist Philosophy, and 29 moreEnvironmental Philosophy, Philosophy of Physics, Medical Ethics, Social Epistemology, Feminist Disability Studies, Feminist Epistemology, Philosophy of Science, History of the Philosophy of Science, Epistemology of Experimentation, History of the Human sciences, Virtue Epistemology, Philosophy Of Climate Change, Science Epistemology, Feminist science and technology studies, Medical and Research ethics, Epistemology of Disagreement, Applied Epistemology, Social Justice, Social Change, Social Inclusion, Practice Based Approaches to the Study of Knowing, Learning and Change In Organisations, Higher Education Feminist Studies of Science and Technology, Collaborative Action Research Methodologies, History of Science, Applied Ethics, Environmental Ethics, Business Ethics, Science and Technology Studies, Computer Networks, Databases, and Softwareedit
- I am happy to share that my new book Nontoxic: Masculinity, Allyship, and Feminist Philosophy was published earlier t... moreI am happy to share that my new book Nontoxic: Masculinity, Allyship, and Feminist Philosophy was published earlier this year as part of the Palgrave Pivots series. The book is completely free and available open access! https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-13071-7
In other welcome news: my first book, Reparative Environmental Justice in a World of Wounds (Lexington Books 2020) is now available in paperback! https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498592079/Reparative-Environmental-Justice-in-a-World-of-Wounds
Generally speaking, I am interested in philosophical issues that arise at the intersection of social epistemology and practical ethics especially concerning matters of trust. For me, this includes epistemology of expertise, public trust in scientific practice, standpoint theory and situated knowledge, scientific misconduct and research ethics; community based participatory research, knowledge across difference, allyship across difference, and relational repair.
I am a Professor of Philosophy at Governors State University, on Chicago's far southside. I am also program coordinator for Interdisciplinary Studies, affiliate faculty in Gender & Sexuality Studies, Political & Social Justice Studies, and for new graduate certificate in Restorative Justice at GSU.
Before joining the GSU faculty in 2013, I spent four years at the College of Lake County in northern Chicagoland. I completed my doctorate at the University of Washington in 2009 before moving from Seattle to Chicago. I miss the coffee and mountains, but the Chicago plains do allow for easier biking!edit
Though many of us have constructed our lives (or have had them constructed for us) such that it is easy to ignore or forget, human lives are entangled with other animals in many ways. Some interspecies relations would arguably exist in... more
Though many of us have constructed our lives (or have had them constructed for us) such that it is easy to ignore or forget, human lives are entangled with other animals in many ways. Some interspecies relations would arguably exist in some form or another even under an ideal model of animal ethics. Others have an inescapably non-ideal character-these relationships exist as they do because things have gone wrong. In such circumstances we have reparative duties to animals we have wronged because we have wronged them. Here I draw upon Christine Korsgaard's Fellow Creatures (2018) and other nonideal approaches to animal ethics to critically assess the United States Fish & Wildlife Service practice of killing barred owls to protect endangered spotted owls in the old growth forest of the Pacific Northwest. This is a difficult case to be sure, but one that can benefit from non-ideal moral assessment in terms of interspecies relational repair. I argue for increased spotted owl habitat preservation and forest restoration as an alternative to barred owl removal that better aligns with both nonideal relational animal ethics and stated US Fish & Wildlife Service values.
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Social epistemologists often operationalize the task of indirectly assessing experts' trustworthiness to identifying whose beliefs are more reliably true on matters in an area of expertise. Not only does this neglect the philosophically... more
Social epistemologists often operationalize the task of indirectly assessing experts' trustworthiness to identifying whose beliefs are more reliably true on matters in an area of expertise. Not only does this neglect the philosophically rich space between belief formation and testimonial utterances, it also reduces trustworthiness to reliability. In ethics of trust, by contrast, explicitly relational views of trust include things like good will and responsiveness. One might think that relational aspects can be safely set aside for social epistemology of trust in experts, that such considerations may be relevant for personal relationships but not for expert trustworthiness. Against these claims I argue for the social-epistemic relevance of relational aspects of trust in experts, and to that end I discuss three sorts of considerations-responsively positive, neutral, and negative factors-that can make a difference for expert trustworthiness.
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As a practice to facilitate the recovery of degraded ecosystems, ecological restoration is an inherently value-laden endeavor. Urban ecological restoration further underlines the complexity of value-ladenness involved by situating... more
As a practice to facilitate the recovery of degraded ecosystems, ecological restoration is an inherently value-laden endeavor. Urban ecological restoration further underlines the complexity of value-ladenness involved by situating restoration in politically, ethically, epistemically, and otherwise normatively heterogenous social contexts. One such context that is particularly rich in opportunities for both significant restoration projects and social disputes about the value of such projects is the Chicago Wilderness, a region comprised of a variety of ecosystems on public and private lands across Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. Here I offer a close reading of value disputes in the Chicago Wilderness among ecologists, practitioners, policymakers, activists, and journalists over the aims, methods, and constitutive activities of urban ecological restoration.
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Bruno Latour is not the only scholar to reflect on his earlier contributions to science studies with some regret and resolve over climate skepticism and science denialism. Given the ascendency of merchants of doubt, should those who share... more
Bruno Latour is not the only scholar to reflect on his earlier contributions to science studies with some regret and resolve over climate skepticism and science denialism. Given the ascendency of merchants of doubt, should those who share Latour's concerns join the scientists they study in circling the wagons, or is there a productive role still for science studies to question and critique scientists and scientific institutions? I argue for the latter, looking to post-positivist feminist philosophy as exemplified by Alison Wylie and Lynn Nelson among others as a guide. A feminist philosopher of science who grounds her analysis in a detailed understanding of scientific practice is not science's champion nor its antagonist, but she does stand in a distinct relationship to science. If not a merchant of doubt, is she a scientific gadfly or perhaps in scientific loyal opposition? Though these notions can underwrite useful approaches science studies, neither captures the distinctive interdependency and interestedness of feminist philosophers and science. I suggest that we would be better served by the notion of trustworthy science criticism, building on the analyses of trust and trustworthiness by Annette Baier, among others, attendant to the dynamics of interdependency in trust relationships.
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Does expertise have a place in ethics? As this question has been raised in moral philosophy and bioethics literatures over the past twenty years, skepticism has been a common theme, whether metaphysical (there is no such thing as ethics... more
Does expertise have a place in ethics? As this question has been raised in moral philosophy and bioethics literatures over the past twenty years, skepticism has been a common theme, whether metaphysical (there is no such thing as ethics expertise), epistemological (we cannot know who has ethics expertise) or social-political (we should not treat anyone as having ethics expertise). Here I identify three common, contestable assumptions about ethics expertise which underwrite skepticism of one form or another: (1) a singular conception of ethics expertise constituted by a core property or unity among multiple properties, (2) equivocation of ethics expertise and ethicists' expertise, and (3) priority of moral deference as an unavoidable implication of ethics expertise. Taken separately, each assumption can have unpalatable implications for ethics expertise that make skepticism seem more attractive; taken together, the resulting picture of ethics expertise is that much worse. Each of these assumptions is vulnerable to criticism, however, and jettisoning them enables a pluralist approach to ethics expertise less prone to skepticism and better suited for the ranging functions of ethics expertise in healthcare and other contexts.
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The role of trust in financial investment has been a matter of some contention , one often obscured by two misconceptions: (1) that financial relationships are fit only for wary predictive reliance where trust has no rational basis, and... more
The role of trust in financial investment has been a matter of some contention , one often obscured by two misconceptions: (1) that financial relationships are fit only for wary predictive reliance where trust has no rational basis, and (2) that in those relationships where trust is operative it must be worth preserving. Following Baier's contention that trust, like air, is more easily seen when polluted, here I consider Ponzi schemes as exemplars of corrupt and polluted trust. Without attending to the role of trust in financial relationships, I argue, we can not make sense of how Ponzi schemes work, why investors are fooled, what it is that makes Ponzi schemes distinctively wrong, and what differentiates them from structurally similar yet legitimate financial practices.
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Recent works by feminist and social epistemologists have carefully mapped the contours of epistemic injustice, including gaslighting and prejudicial credibility deficits, preju-dicial credibility excesses, willful hermeneutical ignorance,... more
Recent works by feminist and social epistemologists have carefully mapped the contours of epistemic injustice, including gaslighting and prejudicial credibility deficits, preju-dicial credibility excesses, willful hermeneutical ignorance, discursive injustices, contributory injustice, and epistemic exploitation. As we look at this burgeoning literature, attention has been concentrated mainly in four areas in descending order of emphasis: (1) phenomena of epistemic injustice themselves, including the nature of wrongdoings involved, (2) attendant consequences and repercussions, (3) individual and structural changes for prevention or mitigation, and (4) restorative, restitutive, or retributive responses. This project urges greater attention to the last of these, and to that end offers a relational approach to epistemic justice drawing upon Margaret Walker's work on moral repair and reparative justice. In developing and enacting better epistemic practices, how can such practices be made meaningfully restorative: not only recognizing the prospects for epistemic improvement, but responding to the perpetration and experience of epistemic injustice with effective epistemic amelioration?
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The value of ecological restoration has seen considerable criticism and defense in environmental ethics over the past three decades. Its proponents point to the human and ecological benefits of restoration projects, while its critics... more
The value of ecological restoration has seen considerable criticism and defense in environmental ethics over the past three decades. Its proponents point to the human and ecological benefits of restoration projects, while its critics characterize restoration as impossible, arbitrary, delusional, or domination. In this paper, I draw attention to the theoretical and practical merits of conceiving ecological restoration as practices of environmental moral repair, building upon and extending Margaret Urban Walker's work on moral repair and reparative justice. This analysis identifies several notable benefits of a reparative-justice model of ecological restoration while also taking up some significant theoretical and practical challenges.
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Draft syllabus for upcoming Spring 2016 course
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This book is available open access via Springer Link:
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-13071-7
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-13071-7
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https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498592079/Reparative-Environmental-Justice-in-a-World-of-Wounds Podcast Interview, Thought About Food: https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-vgrp2-f419b7 Interview with Raquel Garcia-Alvarez, Forest Preserves of Cook... more
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498592079/Reparative-Environmental-Justice-in-a-World-of-Wounds
Podcast Interview, Thought About Food:
https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-vgrp2-f419b7
Interview with Raquel Garcia-Alvarez, Forest Preserves of Cook County:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yvdsh68zuzeeuw0/Book%20Conservation%20with%20Ben%20Almassi%20author%20of%20Reparative%20Environment%20Justice.mp4?dl=0
Podcast Interview, Thought About Food:
https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-vgrp2-f419b7
Interview with Raquel Garcia-Alvarez, Forest Preserves of Cook County:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yvdsh68zuzeeuw0/Book%20Conservation%20with%20Ben%20Almassi%20author%20of%20Reparative%20Environment%20Justice.mp4?dl=0