Peter Boghossian

Peter Boghossian
Born (1966-07-25) July 25, 1966
Nationality American
Website peterboghossian.com
Era Contemporary philosophy
School New Atheism[1]
Institutions Portland State University
Main interests
 Atheism, critical thinking, pedagogy, scientific skepticism, Socratic method

Peter Gregory Boghossian (born July 25, 1966)[2] is an American philosopher and atheism advocate. He is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Portland State University.[3] His primary research areas are critical thinking, philosophy of education, and moral reasoning. Boghossian is a speaker for the Center for Inquiry, the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, and the Secular Student Alliance. He has been nominated as a member of the Global Secular Council.[4]

Career

Boghossian's thesis looks at the use with prison inmates of the Socratic method for critical thinking and moral reasoning with the intention to decrease ongoing criminal behaviour.[5] The research was funded by the State of Oregon. Boghossian was Chairman of the Prison Advisory Committee for the Columbia River Correctional Institution and he is currently a fellow at the Centre of Prison Reform.[6]

As part of his ongoing interest in Prison Reform the Portland State University entered into a partnership with the Columbia River Correctional Institution in 2009 to address the needs of inmates releasing into the community. Details of this partnership have been elaborated in an article titled Prisons, Community Partnerships, and Academia: Sustainable Programs and Community Need.[7]

Views

Boghossian has stated that he wants to be "the type of person who is willing to revise his beliefs, maybe I want to be the type of person who is inquisitive, trustful of reason and treats people well."[8]

Boghossian has called all faith-based beliefs "delusions."[9] In a 2015 interview with Dave Rubin, Boghossian described himself as a classical liberal who has never voted for a Republican candidate, but is "not a fan" of the Democrats. He stated that any of the Republican candidates for the 2016 presidential election "would be an unmitigated disaster." He described Mike Huckabee as a "bonafide lunatic."[8]

According to him, "the regressive left have taken over academia."[8] He has repeatedly stated that cultural relativism and egalitarianism are contradictory values.[8][10][11]

Richard Dawkins stated that "Boghossian's techniques of friendly persuasion are not mine, and maybe I’d be more effective if they were. They are undoubtedly very persuasive—and very much needed."[12]

Thesis

Socratic pedagogy, critical thinking, moral reasoning and inmate education : an exploratory study (Ed.D. thesis). Portland State University. 2004. OCLC 57569353. Retrieved June 5, 2014. 

Articles

Academic articles

Cogent Social Sciences hoax paper

In 2017, Boghossian and his colleague James Lindsay published a hoax paper in the pay-to-publish journal Cogent Social Sciences. They initially submitted the paper to the unranked Norma, where it was rejected, and then submitted, on recommendation from Norma, to Cogent Social Sciences, where it was peer reviewed and accepted. The paper, later revealed as a hoax in Skeptic magazine, intended to highlight a couple of problems: firstly, the "echo-chamber" of morally driven postmodernist social sciences and, secondly, the problem of "lax standards" with pay-to-publish journals.[13] The journal later retracted the paper.[14]

Steven Pinker tweeted about it to his followers,[15] but later linked to a Salon article, saying that the "hoax missed the mark".[16] Others, such as the science communicator Yvette d'Entremont, pointed out that similar hoaxes involving randomly-generated scientific papers have been conducted many times before in pay-to-publish, peer-review scientific journals, yet no one has concluded that these papers undercut science; rather, they merely reveal the problems associated with pay-to-publish platforms.[17]

References

  1. ↑ Schulson, Michael (11 February 2013). "Atheist Philosopher Peter Boghossian’s Guide to Converting Believers". The Daily Beast.
  2. ↑ "United States Public Records, 1970-2009," database, FamilySearch (23 May 2014), Peter Gregory Boghossian, Residence, Las Vegas, Nevada, United States; a third party aggregator of publicly available information.
  3. ↑ "Portland State College of Liberal Arts & Sciences: Department of Philosophy | Peter Boghossian". www.pdx.edu. Retrieved 2016-06-04.
  4. ↑ Secular Global Institute: "Peter Boghossian" .
  5. ↑ Boghossian, Peter (2006-01-01). "Socratic Pedagogy, Critical Thinking, and Inmate Education". Journal of Correctional Education. 57 (1): 42–63. JSTOR 23282687.
  6. ↑ "Center for Prison Reform, Fellows". Center for Prison Reform. 03-06-2016.
  7. ↑ "Federal Probation Journal - June 2012". United States Courts. Retrieved 2016-06-03.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Rubin, Dave (2015-12-18), "Peter Boghossian and Dave Rubin: Critical Thinking, Atheism, and Faith [Full Interview]", The Rubin Report, retrieved 2016-06-03
  9. ↑ Holgate, Tess (20 June 2015). "How do you know? Atheist vs believer debates strike again". Bible Society Australia.
  10. ↑ "One cannot be both a cultural relativist & an egalitarian. You can't simultaneously claim all cultures are relative & equal. #RegressiveLeft". Peter Boghossian on Twitter. 21 November 2015.
  11. ↑ "One cannot simultaneously maintain relativism & egalitarianism. Yet these contradictory values are held by many contemporary leftists.". Peter Boghossian on Twitter. 25 May 2013.
  12. ↑ "Prof. Peter Boghossian: the "How do you know?" tour". Rationalist Society of Australia. 2015.
  13. ↑ "The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct: A Sokal-Style Hoax on Gender Studies". Skeptic. 19 May 2017.
  14. ↑ Lindsay, Jamie; Boyle, Peter; Halsall, Jamie (19 May 2017). "The conceptual penis as a social construct". Cogent Social Sciences. 3 (1). doi:10.1080/23311886.2017.1330439.
  15. ↑ "Steven Pinker on Twitter". Twitter. Retrieved 2017-05-27.
  16. ↑ "Steven Pinker on Twitter". Twitter. Retrieved 2017-05-27.
  17. ↑ "Get Me Off Your F*cking Mailing List, The Penis As A Construct, and Other Predatory Publishing Tales. - SciBabe". SciBabe. 2017-05-23. Retrieved 2017-05-24.
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