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Jeremy Wanderer

Jeremy
Wanderer
Fellowship: 
Mandela Fellow
Term in Residence: 
Fall 2008
Title / Appointment: 
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy
Location: 
Cape Town University, South Africa

Contact Information

E-Mail: 
wanderer@fas.harvard.edu

Biography Information

 In the Fellows Library:

Dr. Jeremy Wanderer is a Senior Lecturer in the philosophy department at the University of Cape Town. Following undergraduate studies in psychology, he completed his PhD at the London School of Economics in 2002, entitled: ‘Contagious Knowledge; A Study in the Epistemology of Testimony.’ Since then, Jeremy has written and/or edited two books and various articles on themes relating to the notion of rationality, the most recent of which is a critical introduction to the work of the contemporary American philosopher Robert Brandom (‘Robert Brandom’ - McGill-Queens University Press; 2008).

His current research explores topics in what could be called ‘epistemic psychology’, paying careful attention to the first-personal deliberative stance of the intellectual inquirer, and to the social and historically situated practices of rational inquiry through which belief and knowledge is acquired. He also has strong interests in questions of philosophical pedagogy, especially those regarding the role that the history of philosophy could and should play in introducing students to the subject.

Project Description

‘Social Power and the Giving and Asking for Reasons’

It has become popular in some circles to think of being rational in terms of the ability to make a move in a particular norm-governed social practice, sometimes dubbed "the game of giving and asking for reasons". Participation in such a social practice depends, in part, on the reciprocal attitudes of other participants. In any actual social practice, these attitudes will be subject to various distortions, due to the pervasive influence of social power and identity relations, resulting in the preclusion of certain groups of people from full participation in these practices. This project aims to explore some philosophically-significant aspects of this particular kind of deformation of rationality.

 

Whilst few will deny that the space of reason is subject to such deformation in practice, some argue that exploration of these issues is an empirical matter with only minimally interesting philosophical import. For others, the effect of viewing these epistemic interactions through a socio-historical lens is a thoroughgoing suspicion of the very category of reason, and a concomitant reduction of rational norms to operations of power. One motivating goal here is to that show that both responses are incorrect, by using this conception of rationality to afford philosophical insight into instances of interpersonal ethical infractions - including prejudice, silencing, ignoring and denial.