Rafael Peels
Biographic Data
| ID | 302302 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rafael Peels |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rafael |
| FAMILY NAME | Peels |
| SIGNATURE | PEELS R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8107-5992 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 26 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Replication and replicability as epistemic opportunity for the humanities: Reflections on a Rembrandt attribution case study
Motivated by the ‘replication crisis’ that deeply impacted the biomedical, natural, and social sciences, we conducted a case study to examine the strengths and limitations of replication in the humanities. Specifically, we replicated an art historical Rembrandt attribution study. In this article we place the methodology and outcomes of the Rembrandt replication within the broader debate on replication in the humanities, with the aim of delving de…
Conceptualizing Extreme Beliefs and Behaviors: Definitions and Relations
This book explores challenging conceptual issues in defining, analyzing, conceptualizing, and operationalizing notions such as extremism, radicalization, fanaticism, and terrorism. The focus is theoretical, but the work is empirically embedded. Rather than adding yet further definitions of phenomena like extremism, it seeks to make progress by addressing underlying conceptual issues. Specifically, it explores four crucial questions about extremis…
The attribution of two portraits of Rembrandt revisited: A replication study in art history
This article presents the results of a replication study in the humanities, more specifically in art history. The initial study was carried out in 1998–99 and concerned the attribution of two similar painted portraits of Rembrandt in the collections of the Mauritshuis in The Hague and the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg. In the replication study, the initial research questions were readdressed: Is the Mauritshuis version painted by Rembr…
Extreme Belief and Extreme Behavior in Context: A Response to James Khalil
Extreme Belief and Extreme Behavior Reconsidered: A Response to Clark McCauley and Sophia Moskalenko
What Is It to Explain Extremism
This article explores what it is to explain extremism.Rather than providing yet another explanation of extremism, it takes a bird's eye point of view at existing explanations of extremism.What is it that scholars are doing in seeking explanations of extremism?This article answers this question by considering four issues.First, exactly what is the explanandum for explanations of extremism, what is it that we seek to explain?Second, what is it to e…
Cognitive and Behavioral Radicalization: An Explanatory Split
This article argues that the general principle that there is an explanatory split between cognitive radicalization and behavioral radicalization does not hold. It first sketches the principle and the evidence adduced in favour of it. The first major problem with the principle is that it is based merely on evidence about beliefs regarding the legitimacy of using violence and evidence about the actual use of violence. The second major problem is th…
Progress in Theology: Does the Queen of the Sciences Advance?
This book explores the intriguing relationship between theology, science, and the ideal of progress from a variety of perspectives. While seriously discussing the obstacles and pitfalls related to the notion of progress in theology, it argues that there are in fact many different kinds of progress in theology. It considers how this sheds positive light on what theologians do and suggests that other disciplines in the humanities can equally profit…
Vice Explanations for Conspiracism, Fundamentalism, and Extremism
In the literature on conspiracism, fundamentalism, and extremism, we find so-called vice explanations for the extreme behavior and extreme beliefs that they involve. These are explanations in terms of people’s character traits, like arrogance, vengefulness, closed-mindedness, and dogmatism. However, such vice explanations face the so-called situationist challenge, which argues based on various experiments that either there are no vices or that th…
Trade unions anticipating alternative futures
Monotheism and Fundamentalism: Prevalence, Potential, and Resilience
This Element explores the relation between monotheism and fundamentalism. It does so from both an empirical perspective and a more theoretical one that combines theological and philosophical insights. The empirical part addresses how as a matter of fact, particularly quantitively, monotheism and fundamentalism relate to one another. The more theoretical part studies the relation between the two by considering the doctrine of God and the issue of …
Mapping the concept of fundamentalism: A scoping review
This scoping review of conceptualizations of fundamentalism scrutinizes the concept's domain of application, defining characteristics, and liability to bias. We find fundamentalism in four domains of application: Christianity, other Abrahamic religions, non-Abrahamic religions, and non-religious phenomena. The defining characteristics which we identify are organized into five categories: belief, behavior, emotion, goal, and structure. We find tha…
What are fundamentalist beliefs
Fundamentalist beliefs are often discussed in relation to extremist, radical, or fanaticist beliefs, or terrorist ideology, as well as in relation to terrorism, radicalization, and violent extremism. Besides, the notion is frequently defined and operationalized, for example in the field of psychology. Despite the frequent recurrence of the notion in the literature, no clear and agreed-upon definition exists. Elements and characteristics that are …
Normativity in studying conspiracy theory belief: Seven guidelines
This paper aims to provide clear guidelines for researchers studying conspiracy theory belief. It examines the meta-linguistic question about how we should conceptaulize 'conspiracy theory' and its relationship to the evaluative question of how we should evaluate beliefs in conspiracy theories, addressing normative issues surrounding the meaning, use, and conceptualization of ‘conspiracy theory’, as well as how these issues might impact how resea…
On defining ‘fundamentalism’
This article combines two things: it explores how one should undertake the project of defining ‘fundamentalism’ and, based on the ensuing desiderata, it actually provides such a definition. After a few preliminary comments on ‘fundamentalism’ and the value of defining it, five goals of definitions are distinguished and elucidated: accuracy, precision, fairness, clarity, and fecundity. After that, various kinds of definitions and their interrelati…
Towards a fruitful concept of radicalisation: A synthesis
The term 'radicalisation' is relatively new. It is mostly the result of the political climate since 2005, but now widely used in work on extremism, fundamentalism, conspiracism, fanaticism, terrorism, and counter-terrorism. But exactly what is radicalisation and can we still properly use the term in the face of the many objections that have been levelled against it? I defend a conception of radicalisation that combines the fourmain approaches in …
Normativity in analysing extremism and fundamentalism: A reply to Quassim Cassam’s Extremism
This article reflects on the role of normativity in defining extremism and evaluates Cassam’s understanding of fundamentalism
Introduction: The philosophical foundations of the study of extremism – A symposium on Quassim Cassam’s Extremism
TEST 02 - Elsevier's Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Search and access research from the science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts and humanities fields
Scientism and scientific fundamentalism: What science can learn from mainstream religion
An increasing number of scientists, philosophers, and popular science writers claim that science is the measure of all. They assert that science can answer all questions, that there are no limits to science, or that only science provides reliable knowledge, either in a particular realm, such as morality, or about any subject matter whatsoever. This view is often referred to as ‘scientism’. But what exactly is scientism? What is to be said in favo…
Educating for ignorance
It is widely thought that education should aim at positive epistemic standings, like knowledge, insight, and understanding. In this paper, we argue that, surprisingly, in pursuit of this aim, it is sometimes necessary to also cultivate ignorance. We examine several types of case. First, in various circumstances educators should present students with defeaters for their knowledge, so that they come to lack knowledge, at least temporarily. Second, …
Responsibility for Fundamentalist Belief
The aim of this chapter is to answer the question of how people can be responsible for holding fundamentalist beliefs, say, about the social position of minorities such as women, homosexuals, and people of other faiths or ideologies. It sets out by exploring what fundamentalist beliefs are. After providing a family resemblance account of fundamentalist beliefs, the chapter moves on to scrutinize how people can be responsible for such beliefs. Of …
Scientism
Can only science deliver genuine knowledge about the world and ourselves? Is science our only guide to what exists? Adherents of scientism tend to answer both questions with yes. Scientism is increasingly influential in popular scientific literature and intellectual life in general, but philosophers have hitherto largely ignored it. This collection is one of the first to develop and assess scientism as a serious philosophical position. It feature…
Does Evolution Conflict with God's Character
The core question that this article addresses is how the Darwinian evolutionary process of random mutation and natural selection relates to God's character, especially as portrayed in the Christian tradition. The main challenge is that the process of random mutation and natural selection generally favours well‐adapted individuals, whereas, in the Christian tradition, God is said to favour the weak and poor. I first spell out the problem in more d…
Samuel M. Powell. The Impassioned Life: Reason and Emotion in the Christian Tradition
Samuel M. Powell. The Impassioned Life: Reason and Emotion in the Christian Tradition
Responsible belief and epistemic justification
What Kind of Ignorance Excuses? Two Neglected Issues
The philosophical literature displays a lively debate on the conditions under which ignorance excuses. In this paper, I formulate and defend an answer to two questions that have not yet been discussed in the literature on exculpatory ignorance. First, which kinds of propositional attitudes that count as ignorance provide an excuse? I argue that we need to consider four options here: having a false belief, suspending judgement on a true propositio…
Towards a fruitful concept of radicalisation: A synthesis
The term 'radicalisation' is relatively new. It is mostly the result of the political climate since 2005, but now widely used in work on extremism, fundamentalism, conspiracism, fanaticism, terrorism, and counter-terrorism. But exactly what is radicalisation and can we still properly use the term in the face of the many objections that have been levelled against it? I defend a conception of radicalisation that combines the fourmain approaches in …
Responsible belief and epistemic justification
Against Doxastic Compatibilism
William Alston has argued that the so‐called deontological conception of epistemic justification, on which epistemic justification is to be spelled out in terms of blame, responsibility, and obligations, is untenable. The basic idea of the argument is that this conception is untenable because we lack voluntary control over our beliefs and, therefore, cannot have any obligations to hold certain beliefs. If this is convincing, however, the argument…
What Is It to Explain Extremism
This article explores what it is to explain extremism.Rather than providing yet another explanation of extremism, it takes a bird's eye point of view at existing explanations of extremism.What is it that scholars are doing in seeking explanations of extremism?This article answers this question by considering four issues.First, exactly what is the explanandum for explanations of extremism, what is it that we seek to explain?Second, what is it to e…
Scientism and scientific fundamentalism: What science can learn from mainstream religion
An increasing number of scientists, philosophers, and popular science writers claim that science is the measure of all. They assert that science can answer all questions, that there are no limits to science, or that only science provides reliable knowledge, either in a particular realm, such as morality, or about any subject matter whatsoever. This view is often referred to as ‘scientism’. But what exactly is scientism? What is to be said in favo…
Cognitive and Behavioral Radicalization: An Explanatory Split
This article argues that the general principle that there is an explanatory split between cognitive radicalization and behavioral radicalization does not hold. It first sketches the principle and the evidence adduced in favour of it. The first major problem with the principle is that it is based merely on evidence about beliefs regarding the legitimacy of using violence and evidence about the actual use of violence. The second major problem is th…
What are fundamentalist beliefs
Fundamentalist beliefs are often discussed in relation to extremist, radical, or fanaticist beliefs, or terrorist ideology, as well as in relation to terrorism, radicalization, and violent extremism. Besides, the notion is frequently defined and operationalized, for example in the field of psychology. Despite the frequent recurrence of the notion in the literature, no clear and agreed-upon definition exists. Elements and characteristics that are …
Normativity in analysing extremism and fundamentalism: A reply to Quassim Cassam’s Extremism
This article reflects on the role of normativity in defining extremism and evaluates Cassam’s understanding of fundamentalism
Does doxastic responsibility entail the ability to believe otherwise
Civil Society Involvement in International Development Cooperation: In Search for Data
The ethics of belief and Christian faith as commitment to assumptions
In this paper I evaluate Brian Zamulinski's recent attempt to rebut an argument to the conclusion that having any kind of religious faith violates a moral duty. I agree with Zamulinski that the argument is unsound, but I disagree on where it goes wrong. I criticize Zamulinski's alternative construal of Christian faith as existential commitment to fundamental assumptions. It does not follow that we should accept the moral argument against religiou…
Is omniscience impossible
In a recent paper, Dennis Whitcomb argues that omniscience is impossible. But if there cannot be any omniscient beings, then God, at least as traditionally conceived, does not exist. The objection is, roughly, that the thesis that there is an omniscient being, in conjunction with some principles about grounding, such as its transitivity and irreflexivity, entails a contradiction. Since each of these principles is highly plausible, divine omniscie…
Does doxastic responsibility entail the ability to believe otherwise
Against Doxastic Compatibilism
William Alston has argued that the so‐called deontological conception of epistemic justification, on which epistemic justification is to be spelled out in terms of blame, responsibility, and obligations, is untenable. The basic idea of the argument is that this conception is untenable because we lack voluntary control over our beliefs and, therefore, cannot have any obligations to hold certain beliefs. If this is convincing, however, the argument…
Are naturalism and moral realism incompatible
In a recent paper, Alvin Plantinga has argued that there is good reason to think that naturalism and moral realism are incompatible. He has done so by arguing that the most important argument for the compatibility of these two theses, which has been provided by Frank Jackson, fails and that any other argument that serves the same purpose is likely to fail for the same reason. His argument against the compatibility of naturalism and moral realism,…
Hume’s Law Violated
What Kind of Ignorance Excuses? Two Neglected Issues
The philosophical literature displays a lively debate on the conditions under which ignorance excuses. In this paper, I formulate and defend an answer to two questions that have not yet been discussed in the literature on exculpatory ignorance. First, which kinds of propositional attitudes that count as ignorance provide an excuse? I argue that we need to consider four options here: having a false belief, suspending judgement on a true propositio…
The Epistemic Dimensions of Ignorance
Ignorance is a neglected issue in philosophy. This is surprising for, contrary to what one might expect, it is not clear what ignorance is. Some philosophers say or assume that it is a lack of knowledge, whereas others claim or presuppose that it is an absence of true belief. What is one ignorant of when one is ignorant? What kinds of ignorance are there? This neglect is also remarkable because ignorance plays a crucial role in all sorts of contr…
Samuel M. Powell. The Impassioned Life: Reason and Emotion in the Christian Tradition
Samuel M. Powell. The Impassioned Life: Reason and Emotion in the Christian Tradition
Responsible belief and epistemic justification
Scientism
Can only science deliver genuine knowledge about the world and ourselves? Is science our only guide to what exists? Adherents of scientism tend to answer both questions with yes. Scientism is increasingly influential in popular scientific literature and intellectual life in general, but philosophers have hitherto largely ignored it. This collection is one of the first to develop and assess scientism as a serious philosophical position. It feature…
Does Evolution Conflict with God's Character
The core question that this article addresses is how the Darwinian evolutionary process of random mutation and natural selection relates to God's character, especially as portrayed in the Christian tradition. The main challenge is that the process of random mutation and natural selection generally favours well‐adapted individuals, whereas, in the Christian tradition, God is said to favour the weak and poor. I first spell out the problem in more d…
Responsibility for Fundamentalist Belief
The aim of this chapter is to answer the question of how people can be responsible for holding fundamentalist beliefs, say, about the social position of minorities such as women, homosexuals, and people of other faiths or ideologies. It sets out by exploring what fundamentalist beliefs are. After providing a family resemblance account of fundamentalist beliefs, the chapter moves on to scrutinize how people can be responsible for such beliefs. Of …
Educating for ignorance
It is widely thought that education should aim at positive epistemic standings, like knowledge, insight, and understanding. In this paper, we argue that, surprisingly, in pursuit of this aim, it is sometimes necessary to also cultivate ignorance. We examine several types of case. First, in various circumstances educators should present students with defeaters for their knowledge, so that they come to lack knowledge, at least temporarily. Second, …
Normativity in analysing extremism and fundamentalism: A reply to Quassim Cassam’s Extremism
This article reflects on the role of normativity in defining extremism and evaluates Cassam’s understanding of fundamentalism
Introduction: The philosophical foundations of the study of extremism – A symposium on Quassim Cassam’s Extremism
TEST 02 - Elsevier's Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Search and access research from the science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts and humanities fields
Scientism and scientific fundamentalism: What science can learn from mainstream religion
An increasing number of scientists, philosophers, and popular science writers claim that science is the measure of all. They assert that science can answer all questions, that there are no limits to science, or that only science provides reliable knowledge, either in a particular realm, such as morality, or about any subject matter whatsoever. This view is often referred to as ‘scientism’. But what exactly is scientism? What is to be said in favo…
Normativity in studying conspiracy theory belief: Seven guidelines
This paper aims to provide clear guidelines for researchers studying conspiracy theory belief. It examines the meta-linguistic question about how we should conceptaulize 'conspiracy theory' and its relationship to the evaluative question of how we should evaluate beliefs in conspiracy theories, addressing normative issues surrounding the meaning, use, and conceptualization of ‘conspiracy theory’, as well as how these issues might impact how resea…
On defining ‘fundamentalism’
This article combines two things: it explores how one should undertake the project of defining ‘fundamentalism’ and, based on the ensuing desiderata, it actually provides such a definition. After a few preliminary comments on ‘fundamentalism’ and the value of defining it, five goals of definitions are distinguished and elucidated: accuracy, precision, fairness, clarity, and fecundity. After that, various kinds of definitions and their interrelati…
Towards a fruitful concept of radicalisation: A synthesis
The term 'radicalisation' is relatively new. It is mostly the result of the political climate since 2005, but now widely used in work on extremism, fundamentalism, conspiracism, fanaticism, terrorism, and counter-terrorism. But exactly what is radicalisation and can we still properly use the term in the face of the many objections that have been levelled against it? I defend a conception of radicalisation that combines the fourmain approaches in …
Progress in Theology: Does the Queen of the Sciences Advance?
This book explores the intriguing relationship between theology, science, and the ideal of progress from a variety of perspectives. While seriously discussing the obstacles and pitfalls related to the notion of progress in theology, it argues that there are in fact many different kinds of progress in theology. It considers how this sheds positive light on what theologians do and suggests that other disciplines in the humanities can equally profit…
Vice Explanations for Conspiracism, Fundamentalism, and Extremism
In the literature on conspiracism, fundamentalism, and extremism, we find so-called vice explanations for the extreme behavior and extreme beliefs that they involve. These are explanations in terms of people’s character traits, like arrogance, vengefulness, closed-mindedness, and dogmatism. However, such vice explanations face the so-called situationist challenge, which argues based on various experiments that either there are no vices or that th…
Trade unions anticipating alternative futures
Monotheism and Fundamentalism: Prevalence, Potential, and Resilience
This Element explores the relation between monotheism and fundamentalism. It does so from both an empirical perspective and a more theoretical one that combines theological and philosophical insights. The empirical part addresses how as a matter of fact, particularly quantitively, monotheism and fundamentalism relate to one another. The more theoretical part studies the relation between the two by considering the doctrine of God and the issue of …
Philosophy (28 works) · Epistemology (24 works) · Political science (19 works) · Law (18 works) · Psychology (12 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Politics (10 works) · Fundamentalism (9 works) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (8 works) · Terrorism (8 works)