Peter Boghossian | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Boghossian in 2024 | |
| Born | Peter Gregory Boghossian (1966-07-25)July 25, 1966 (age 59) Boston,Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Education | |
| Education | Marquette University (BA)[1] Fordham University (MA)[1] Portland State University (EdD) |
| Philosophical work | |
| School | New Atheism |
| Institutions | Portland State University |
| Main interests | Atheism,critical thinking,pedagogy,scientific skepticism,Socratic method |
| Notable ideas | Socraticpedagogy,street epistemology |
| Website | peterboghossian |
Peter Gregory Boghossian (/bəˈɡoʊʒən/; born July 25, 1966)[1] is an American philosopher and college professor. He was anassistant professor of philosophy atPortland State University for ten years, and his areas of academic focus includeatheism,critical thinking,pedagogy,scientific skepticism, and theSocratic method.[2][3] He is the author ofA Manual for Creating Atheists, and (withJames A. Lindsay) ofHow to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide.
Boghossian was involved in thegrievance studies affair (also called "Sokal Squared" in media coverage) with collaboratorsJames A. Lindsay andHelen Pluckrose, which entailed submitting bogus papers to academic journals related togender studies and other fields in order to testpeer-reviews.[4] This project generated significant media and academic attention, including both praise and condemnation, as well as ethical and methodological criticism. After an investigation, Portland State University restricted Boghossian's future work on the basis ofresearch misconduct. In September 2021, Boghossian resigned his position from Portland State University, citing harassment and a lack of intellectual freedom.[5]
Boghossian coined the termstreet epistemology for a set of conversational techniques he described, which are designed to enable examination of strongly held beliefs, especially of the religious kind, in a non-confrontational manner.
Boghossian was born and raised inBoston, Massachusetts.[6] He is ofArmenian descent;[7] his paternal grandparents were Armenian immigrants.[6]
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Boghossian received aBachelor of Arts degree in psychology fromMarquette University in 1988, and later earned aMaster of Arts degree in philosophy fromFordham University in 1992.[1][6] He later received hisDoctor of Education in 2004 fromPortland State University.[1] His primary interests arecritical thinking,philosophy of education, andmoral reasoning. His thesis looked at the use of theSocratic method with prison inmates for critical thinking and moral reasoning with the intention of decreasing ongoing criminal behavior.[8] The research was funded by theState of Oregon. Boghossian was Chairman of the Prison Advisory Committee for the Columbia River Correctional Institution. He is a fellow at the Center for Prison Reform.[9] He was employed as an assistant professor at Portland State University, quitting in protest due to what he viewed as a culture of illiberalism.[10][11]
Boghossian is the author of two books,A Manual for Creating Atheists (2013),[12] a book with a foreword byMichael Shermer,[13] andHow to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide (2019).[14] He also contributed a foreword towhite supremacist[15] commentatorStefan Molyneux's bookAgainst the Gods.[16][17] He has characteized his collaborations with Molyneux as being based only on his agreement on matters ofmetaphysics, and not with Molyneux's political views.[17]
In 2017, Boghossian was featured inReasons to Believe, a documentary focusing on psychology and the science of belief.[18]
He has been a speaker for theCenter for Inquiry, theRichard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, and theSecular Student Alliance.[19]
In September 2021, Boghossian resigned his position from Portland State University.[5] In his resignation letter,[20] he called the university a "Social Justice factory" and said that he faced harassment and retaliation for speaking out.[5] The letter also accuses the university of creating a culture where students are "afraid to speak openly and honestly", of training students to "mimic the moral certainty of ideologues", and of "[driving] intolerance of divergent beliefs and opinions".[20]
In November 2021, Boghossian was among the founders of theUniversity of Austin, a school whose mission is "to create a 'fiercely independent' school that offers an alternative to what founders see as a rise in “illiberalism” on college campuses."[21]
On February 17, 2022, he gave a conference on"wokism" at theMathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) in Budapest, Hungary.[22]
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Boghossian has called all faith-based beliefs "delusions".[23] He has been described byThe Daily Beast as aligned with theNew Atheist movement.[13] He advocates using theSocratic method to dissuade religious believers, though he recommends focusing on criticism offaith as a way of knowing (he calls it an "unreliableepistemology"), rather than the outward trappings of religious communities.[13]
In a 2015 interview withDave Rubin, Boghossian described himself as aclassical liberal who has never voted for aRepublican candidate, but is "not a fan" of theDemocrats. He stated that any of theRepublican candidates for the 2016 presidential election "would be an unmitigated disaster".[24] He donated to and endorsedAndrew Yang for the2020 United States presidential election.[25] He has stated that the US Republican Party is "the most powerful, anti-science political movement in the world". He wrote that it was "not alarmist" to state that they "could destroy the world" since many "refuse to even acknowledge that climate change is happening", and stated that their "denialist attitude is due partly to the religious convictions".[26]
According to Boghossian, "theregressive left have taken over academia".[24] He has often stated thatcultural relativism andegalitarianism are contradictory values.[24][27][28]
In the grievance studies affair, also referred to as the "Sokal Squared" scandal, Boghossian,James A. Lindsay andHelen Pluckrose submitted a series of hoax academic papers for peer-review to journals in academic fields which they termed "grievance studies"—race, gender, feminist and sexuality studies which they believed were characterized by low scientific standards. They prepared 20 papers, of which 7 were accepted by the time theWall Street Journal called their bluff.[29][30][31]
In 2017, Boghossian and Lindsay published a hoax paper titled "The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct".[32] The paper, which the authors said was intentionally absurd and written in a way that imitated the style of "poststructuralist discursive gender theory", argued that the penis should be seen "not as an anatomical organ but as a social constructisomorphic toperformativetoxic masculinity".[32][33] Boghossian and Lindsay initially submitted the paper toNorma, where it was rejected.[34][35] They later submitted the paper toCogent Social Sciences, aTaylor & Francis open access journal which has been criticized as apay-to-publish operation.[32] The authors later revealed the hoax inSkeptic magazine. Boghossian and Lindsay stated that they intended to demonstrate that "gender studies is crippled academically by an overriding almost-religious belief that maleness is the root of all evil", and also to highlight problems with the review processes ofopen-access journals.
A number of critics questioned whether Boghossian and Lindsay's paper demonstrated a problem in the field of gender studies.[33]Alan Sokal, a mathematics professor who was responsible for a similar hoax in 1996, noted thatCogent Social Sciences was a low-tiered open access journal that did not specialize in gender studies, and said that it seemed unlikely the paper would have been accepted at a mainstream gender studies journal.[36] While the journal did conduct a postmortem, Boghossian and Lindsay concluded the "impact [of the hoax] was very limited, and much criticism of it was legitimate".[37]
Beginning in August 2017, Boghossian, Lindsay, and Pluckrose began a much larger attempt in which they wrote 20 hoax papers, submitting them to peer-reviewed journals under a variety of pseudonyms as well as the name of Richard Baldwin, a professor emeritus at Florida'sGulf Coast State College and friend of Boghossian. The project was halted early after one of the papers in the feminist geography journalGender, Place & Culture was criticized on social media, and then its authenticity questioned on Campus Reform.[38]
After this, the trio revealed the full extent of their work in aYouTube video created and released by documentary filmmakerMike Nayna, alongside an investigation byThe Wall Street Journal.[39][40] By the time of the revelation seven of their twenty papers had been accepted, seven were still under review, and six had been rejected. One paper, which was accepted by feminist social work journalAffilia, transposed up-to-date jargon into passages lifted fromAdolf Hitler'sMein Kampf.[41]
Tom Whipple ofThe Times wrote that academic reviewers had praised the studies prior to the revelation of the hoax as "a rich and exciting contribution to the study of ... the intersection between masculinity and anality", "excellent and very timely", and "important dialogue for social workers and feminist scholars".[42]
The project drew both praise and criticism, with authorYascha Mounk dubbing it 'Sokal squared' in reference to theSokal Affair hoax perpetrated by Alan Sokal and saying "The result is hilarious and delightful. It also showcases a serious problem with big parts of academia."Harvard psychologistSteven Pinker said the project posed the question "is there any idea so outlandish that it won't be published in a Critical/PoMo/Identity/'Theory' journal?"[43] Daniel Engber of online magazineSlate criticised the project, saying "one could have run this sting on almost any empirical discipline and returned the same result".[44] In an open but anonymous letter, eleven of Boghossian's colleagues at Portland State University wrote that the hoaxes "violat[ed] acceptable norms of research", and were "fraudulent, time-wasting, anti-intellectual activities".[45][46] Joel P. Christensen and Matthew A. Sears said it was "the academic equivalent of the fraudulent hit pieces onPlanned Parenthood" produced in 2015.[16]Carl Bergstrom claimed "the hoaxers appear woefully naïve about how the [peer review] system actually works".[47]
A 2021 study assessing the grievance studies affair concluded, (1) journals with higherimpact factors were more likely to reject papers submitted as part of the project; (2) the chances were better, if the manuscript was allegedly based on empirical data; (3) peer reviews can be an important asset in the process of revising a manuscript; and (4) when the project authors, with academic education from neighboring disciplines, closely followed the reviewers' advice, they were able to learn relatively quickly what is needed for writing an acceptable article. The boundary between a seriously written paper and a "hoax" gradually became blurred. Finally (5), the way the project ended showed that in the long run, the scientific community will uncover fraudulent practices."[48]
In 2018, Boghossian's employer, Portland State University, initiated aresearch misconduct inquiry relating to thegrievance studies affair. According to theChronicle of Higher Education, the university'sinstitutional review board (IRB) concluded in December that Boghossian violated the ethical guidelines by conducting research on human subjects without approval. Consequently, he was banned from doing research until he had "completed training and could demonstrate that he understood how to protect the rights of human subjects". The University also said it was "considering a further charge that he had falsified data".[49]
After news of the research conduct investigation broke, a number of prominent academics wrote letters defending Boghossian, including evolutionary biologistRichard Dawkins, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, mathematician and physicist Alan Sokal, philosopherDaniel Dennett, social psychologistJonathan Haidt, and psychologistJordan Peterson.[50] Pinker wrote that Portland State University's investigation struck him and his colleagues "as an attempt to weaponize an important [principle] of academic ethics in order to punish a scholar for expressing an unpopular opinion".[51] Dawkins suggested that the investigation could be politically motivated: "If the members of your committee of inquiry object to the very idea of satire as a form of creative expression, they should come out honestly and say so. But to pretend that this is a matter of publishing false data is so obviously ridiculous that one cannot help suspecting an ulterior motive."[49] Peterson said that those pursuing allegations against Boghossian, and not Boghossian himself, were guilty of academic misconduct.[51]
On the other hand, IRB experts interviewed byJesse Singal forNew York magazine agreed that Boghossian should have sought IRB approval for the study.[52]
Street epistemology (often abbreviated toSE) is a term coined by Boghossian in his bookA Manual for Creating Atheists.[53] This is a set of non-confrontational conversational techniques for discussing a strongly-held belief, designed to promote thoughtful reflection and open-mindedness in a participant regarding the belief. Boghossian outlined the method and its application in helping religious believers to reflect on the reliability offaith as an epistemology. However, it has also been found effective in many other contexts, and Boghossian later co-authored with James LindsayHow to Have Impossible Conversations, which describes the application of street epistemology to an examination of a wider range of beliefs including nonreligious ones.[14]
...a third paper, published in a journal of feminist social work and titled "Our Struggle Is My Struggle," simply scattered some up-to-date jargon into passages lifted from Hitler's "Mein Kampf. ... "They set out to write 20 papers that started with "politically fashionable conclusions," which they worked backward to support by aping the relevant fields' methods and arguments, and sometimes inventing data.
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