This essay examines the uneasy return of expertise during Covid-19 and asks how much epistemic trust a democracy can sustain without sliding into expert domination. Using the figure of the “Free Nose Guy,” it explores tensions between epistemic self-reliance, equality, and authority, arguing that distrust in experts is inseparable from social inequality while also highlighting the political effects of epistemic hierarchies.

"Bringing a child into existence is one of the most environmentally impactful decisions anyone can make."

"Have you ever woken up feeling like there’s no point in getting out of bed because, after all, nothing really matters?"

"What could justify this difference between the way we treat human beings and the way we treat the other animals?"

"How did human beings ever find it remotely plausible that the world is neatly riven by an ontological divide?"

This is an edited transcript of a talk Professor Anderson gave at an event organized by The Philosopher at Conway Hall, London on 13th...

"Deference epistemology responds to real, morally weighty experiences of being put down, ignored, sidelined, or silenced."

Image © Megan Diddie As the coronavirus pandemic has made a swift advance across Europe, most of us have found ourselves engaging in the...

This semester, I gave my students a confounding assignment. I asked them to write a “non-representative representation” of a community to...

As I write this essay, waves of protest are rolling across America. And not just America: all over the world, people are rising up in...

Of all the major religions, Buddhism enjoys the greatest respect and popularity among those who seek a model for a “spiritual life.” Even...

What follows are the first three installments of Adam Searle and Jonathon Turnbull's Anthropo(s)cene column on "Posthumanisms",...

"African Americans have never been reconciled because America has never acknowledged the truth of what it did to black people."

"Sex/gender is an ontological framework that structures the realities of sexed being into two orders: the biological and the cultural."

Image © William Eckersley To be is to be recognized, Hegel argued. And the reason, by his thinking, was not so much psychological as...

The book that had the greatest impact on my thinking in 2018 was not a philosophy book. It was Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel...

"While it is deeply mistaken to suggest that pessimism is the same as fatalism, the concern behind this is nevertheless a valid one."

"Doesn’t the renunciation of one’s own energetic resources make less of a demand on the energetic resources of the world?"

A good friend, and well-known philosopher, recently told me that the new “Impossible™ WHOPPER® Sandwich” being sold at Burger King will...

The feeling that something is wrong with our way of life has been around for a while – even among those who profit from it. Now, school...