Gerry Dunne
Biographic Data
| ID | 4420230 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Gerry Dunne |
| GIVEN NAMES | Gerry |
| FAMILY NAME | Dunne |
| SIGNATURE | DUNNE G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Trinity College Dublin |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0137-8027 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 14 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Silos of the Mind: Epistemic Vices, Institutional Incentives, and Philosophy’s Interdisciplinary Gap
Philosophy lags behind the social sciences and life sciences in terms of interdisciplinary co-authorship, with 2024 data showing that about one paper in six by philosophers can be classified as interdisciplinary, compared with one in three (or more) in the life and social sciences (OpenAlex, 2025).Footnote1 This paper examines how four key epistemic vices: (i) closed-mindedness, (ii) insouciance, (iii) arrogance, and (iv) complacent incuriosity m…
Locus of control differentiation as intellectual virtue
Resisting Edutainment: How Reward Deficiency Syndrome Fuels the Student Attention Crisis
Ideal and Non-Ideal Theory in Epistemology
This special issue is about ideal and non–ideal theory in epistemology. The impetus behind it was a book one of us published in 2023, Non-Ideal Epistemology (McKenna 2023). The aim of this book was
‘Not Guilty Your Honour’: Toward Defending Non-Ideal Epistemology from the Charge of Endorsing Inappropriate Epistemic Satisficing
This paper takes aim at strawman characterisations of non-ideal epistemology. To be precise – I pre-empt one objection to the central argument advanced by Robin McKenna in his book, ‘Non-Ideal Epistemology’. The objection I have in mind is this: all forms of choice in non-ideal epistemological settings constitute, to a greater or less extent, cases of ‘epistemic satisficing’. Epistemic satisficing,Footnote1 on my account, approximates to situatio…
Critical thinking: Stress-testing competing reasons in the practical domain
Harvey Siegel has argued that successful critical thinking requires both a critical mindset and expertise in evaluating reasons. In this article, I focus on the latter, the business of accurately appraising competing reasons in the practical domain. More specifically, I critically examine the limitations inherent in two commonly used epistemic frameworks: the balance account and reasons-for-and-against. I argue neither is suitable for scenarios r…
Why Global Philosophical Perspectives on Teacher Education Matter Introduction To Beyond Epistemic Bubbles and Echo Chambers: Global Perspectives on Philosophy in Teacher Education
Rethinking ‘Thinking Skills’ in 21st-Century Education: Combining Conceptual Clarity with a Novel 4E Cognitive Framework
In education, the concept of ‘thinking skills’ has long been contentious. This article revisits the 2010 debate between Stephen Johnson and Harvey Siegel on whether thinking can be taught as a general skill. To weigh in on this ongoing dispute, it contributes a novel perspective by augmenting key insights from 4E cognition to avoid treating cognition as a purely brain-based computational perspective which treats the brain as separate from the res…
Deliberate Ignorance and Myopic Intellectualist Understandings of Expertise: Are Philosophers of Education Epistemic Trespassers in Initial Teacher Education Programmes
This paper considers in conceptual terms the extent to which pre-service teachers’ disengagement with philosophy of education might usefully be explained in terms of the mistaken charge of (1) ‘epistemic trespassing’ frequently levelled against philosophers of education. This cohort charge philosophers of education with being ultracrepidarians—those who proffer opinions on subjects that they know nothing about. Contra this view, I argue that cast…
The harms of unattainable pedagogical exemplars on social media
This paper scrutinizes the nature and scope of deleterious consequences arising from the pursuit of unattainable pedagogical exemplars on social media. We cash out this phenomenon using exemplarist theory to emphasize the fact that social media (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, TikTok) are platforms in which the vast majority of users present idealized and curated versions of themselves. We focus specifically on educational practitioners and show that …
Epistemic Vice Rehabilitation: Saints and Sinners Zetetic Exemplarism
This paper proposes a novel educational approach to epistemic vice rehabilitation. Its authors Gerry Dunne and Alkis Kotsonis note that, like Quassim Cassam, they remain optimistic about the possibility of improvement with regard to epistemic vice. However, unlike Cassam, who places the burden of minimizing or overcoming epistemic vices and their consequences on the individual, Dunne and Kotsonis argue that vice rehabilitation is best tackled via…
Symposium Introduction: Epistemic Vices: Moving Beyond Saints and Sinners
Perfect epistemic agents do not exist. People are messy. We make mistakes; we are error-prone. We have limited attention spans, sluggish cognitive processing powers, pedestrian interpersonal skills, inefficient and unreliable memories. At times we struggle to get out of our own way — the vagaries of life, relationships, and responsibilities, both individually and collectively, take a toll, especially in dopamine-seeking, split-attention environme…
Carving at the Joints: Distinguishing Epistemic Wrongs from Epistemic Harms in Epistemic Injustice Contexts
This paper examines the relatively underexplored relationship between epistemic wrongs and epistemic harms in the context of epistemic injustice. Does the presence of one always imply the presence of the other? Or, is it possible to have one without the other? Here we aim to establish a prima facie case that epistemic wrongs do not always produce epistemic harms. We argue that the epistemic wrongness of an action should never be evaluated solely …
Epistemic injustice in education
Epistemic exploitation in education
‘Epistemic exploitation occurs when privileged persons compel marginalised knowers to educate them [and others] about the nature of their oppression’ (Berenstain, 2016 Berenstain, N. (2016). Epistemic exploitation. Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy, 3, 569–590.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], p. 569). This paper scrutinizes some of the purported wrongs underpinning this practice, so that educators might be better equipp…
Standing by or Standing Up?—How Philosophy Can (In)form Our Understanding of Bystander Behaviours in Workplace Bullying Dynamics
There is increasing awareness of the value of interdisciplinary collaboration within academia. Scholars argue that by drawing upon the conceptual, methodological, and interrogative paradigms of at least two disparate disciplines, researchers are challenged to re-evaluate and reconsider their own discipline-centric assumptions. A consequence of such purposeful boundary-blurring is an increased rigour and richness in the analysis of raw data, as we…
Epistemic injustice in education
Carving at the Joints: Distinguishing Epistemic Wrongs from Epistemic Harms in Epistemic Injustice Contexts
This paper examines the relatively underexplored relationship between epistemic wrongs and epistemic harms in the context of epistemic injustice. Does the presence of one always imply the presence of the other? Or, is it possible to have one without the other? Here we aim to establish a prima facie case that epistemic wrongs do not always produce epistemic harms. We argue that the epistemic wrongness of an action should never be evaluated solely …
Epistemic exploitation in education
‘Epistemic exploitation occurs when privileged persons compel marginalised knowers to educate them [and others] about the nature of their oppression’ (Berenstain, 2016 Berenstain, N. (2016). Epistemic exploitation. Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy, 3, 569–590.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], p. 569). This paper scrutinizes some of the purported wrongs underpinning this practice, so that educators might be better equipp…
Critical thinking: Stress-testing competing reasons in the practical domain
Harvey Siegel has argued that successful critical thinking requires both a critical mindset and expertise in evaluating reasons. In this article, I focus on the latter, the business of accurately appraising competing reasons in the practical domain. More specifically, I critically examine the limitations inherent in two commonly used epistemic frameworks: the balance account and reasons-for-and-against. I argue neither is suitable for scenarios r…
Rethinking ‘Thinking Skills’ in 21st-Century Education: Combining Conceptual Clarity with a Novel 4E Cognitive Framework
In education, the concept of ‘thinking skills’ has long been contentious. This article revisits the 2010 debate between Stephen Johnson and Harvey Siegel on whether thinking can be taught as a general skill. To weigh in on this ongoing dispute, it contributes a novel perspective by augmenting key insights from 4E cognition to avoid treating cognition as a purely brain-based computational perspective which treats the brain as separate from the res…
Deliberate Ignorance and Myopic Intellectualist Understandings of Expertise: Are Philosophers of Education Epistemic Trespassers in Initial Teacher Education Programmes
This paper considers in conceptual terms the extent to which pre-service teachers’ disengagement with philosophy of education might usefully be explained in terms of the mistaken charge of (1) ‘epistemic trespassing’ frequently levelled against philosophers of education. This cohort charge philosophers of education with being ultracrepidarians—those who proffer opinions on subjects that they know nothing about. Contra this view, I argue that cast…
Standing by or Standing Up?—How Philosophy Can (In)form Our Understanding of Bystander Behaviours in Workplace Bullying Dynamics
There is increasing awareness of the value of interdisciplinary collaboration within academia. Scholars argue that by drawing upon the conceptual, methodological, and interrogative paradigms of at least two disparate disciplines, researchers are challenged to re-evaluate and reconsider their own discipline-centric assumptions. A consequence of such purposeful boundary-blurring is an increased rigour and richness in the analysis of raw data, as we…
Standing by or Standing Up?—How Philosophy Can (In)form Our Understanding of Bystander Behaviours in Workplace Bullying Dynamics
There is increasing awareness of the value of interdisciplinary collaboration within academia. Scholars argue that by drawing upon the conceptual, methodological, and interrogative paradigms of at least two disparate disciplines, researchers are challenged to re-evaluate and reconsider their own discipline-centric assumptions. A consequence of such purposeful boundary-blurring is an increased rigour and richness in the analysis of raw data, as we…
Epistemic injustice in education
Epistemic exploitation in education
‘Epistemic exploitation occurs when privileged persons compel marginalised knowers to educate them [and others] about the nature of their oppression’ (Berenstain, 2016 Berenstain, N. (2016). Epistemic exploitation. Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy, 3, 569–590.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], p. 569). This paper scrutinizes some of the purported wrongs underpinning this practice, so that educators might be better equipp…
The harms of unattainable pedagogical exemplars on social media
This paper scrutinizes the nature and scope of deleterious consequences arising from the pursuit of unattainable pedagogical exemplars on social media. We cash out this phenomenon using exemplarist theory to emphasize the fact that social media (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, TikTok) are platforms in which the vast majority of users present idealized and curated versions of themselves. We focus specifically on educational practitioners and show that …
Epistemic Vice Rehabilitation: Saints and Sinners Zetetic Exemplarism
This paper proposes a novel educational approach to epistemic vice rehabilitation. Its authors Gerry Dunne and Alkis Kotsonis note that, like Quassim Cassam, they remain optimistic about the possibility of improvement with regard to epistemic vice. However, unlike Cassam, who places the burden of minimizing or overcoming epistemic vices and their consequences on the individual, Dunne and Kotsonis argue that vice rehabilitation is best tackled via…
Symposium Introduction: Epistemic Vices: Moving Beyond Saints and Sinners
Perfect epistemic agents do not exist. People are messy. We make mistakes; we are error-prone. We have limited attention spans, sluggish cognitive processing powers, pedestrian interpersonal skills, inefficient and unreliable memories. At times we struggle to get out of our own way — the vagaries of life, relationships, and responsibilities, both individually and collectively, take a toll, especially in dopamine-seeking, split-attention environme…
Carving at the Joints: Distinguishing Epistemic Wrongs from Epistemic Harms in Epistemic Injustice Contexts
This paper examines the relatively underexplored relationship between epistemic wrongs and epistemic harms in the context of epistemic injustice. Does the presence of one always imply the presence of the other? Or, is it possible to have one without the other? Here we aim to establish a prima facie case that epistemic wrongs do not always produce epistemic harms. We argue that the epistemic wrongness of an action should never be evaluated solely …
Ideal and Non-Ideal Theory in Epistemology
This special issue is about ideal and non–ideal theory in epistemology. The impetus behind it was a book one of us published in 2023, Non-Ideal Epistemology (McKenna 2023). The aim of this book was
‘Not Guilty Your Honour’: Toward Defending Non-Ideal Epistemology from the Charge of Endorsing Inappropriate Epistemic Satisficing
This paper takes aim at strawman characterisations of non-ideal epistemology. To be precise – I pre-empt one objection to the central argument advanced by Robin McKenna in his book, ‘Non-Ideal Epistemology’. The objection I have in mind is this: all forms of choice in non-ideal epistemological settings constitute, to a greater or less extent, cases of ‘epistemic satisficing’. Epistemic satisficing,Footnote1 on my account, approximates to situatio…
Critical thinking: Stress-testing competing reasons in the practical domain
Harvey Siegel has argued that successful critical thinking requires both a critical mindset and expertise in evaluating reasons. In this article, I focus on the latter, the business of accurately appraising competing reasons in the practical domain. More specifically, I critically examine the limitations inherent in two commonly used epistemic frameworks: the balance account and reasons-for-and-against. I argue neither is suitable for scenarios r…
Why Global Philosophical Perspectives on Teacher Education Matter Introduction To Beyond Epistemic Bubbles and Echo Chambers: Global Perspectives on Philosophy in Teacher Education
Rethinking ‘Thinking Skills’ in 21st-Century Education: Combining Conceptual Clarity with a Novel 4E Cognitive Framework
In education, the concept of ‘thinking skills’ has long been contentious. This article revisits the 2010 debate between Stephen Johnson and Harvey Siegel on whether thinking can be taught as a general skill. To weigh in on this ongoing dispute, it contributes a novel perspective by augmenting key insights from 4E cognition to avoid treating cognition as a purely brain-based computational perspective which treats the brain as separate from the res…
Deliberate Ignorance and Myopic Intellectualist Understandings of Expertise: Are Philosophers of Education Epistemic Trespassers in Initial Teacher Education Programmes
This paper considers in conceptual terms the extent to which pre-service teachers’ disengagement with philosophy of education might usefully be explained in terms of the mistaken charge of (1) ‘epistemic trespassing’ frequently levelled against philosophers of education. This cohort charge philosophers of education with being ultracrepidarians—those who proffer opinions on subjects that they know nothing about. Contra this view, I argue that cast…
Silos of the Mind: Epistemic Vices, Institutional Incentives, and Philosophy’s Interdisciplinary Gap
Philosophy lags behind the social sciences and life sciences in terms of interdisciplinary co-authorship, with 2024 data showing that about one paper in six by philosophers can be classified as interdisciplinary, compared with one in three (or more) in the life and social sciences (OpenAlex, 2025).Footnote1 This paper examines how four key epistemic vices: (i) closed-mindedness, (ii) insouciance, (iii) arrogance, and (iv) complacent incuriosity m…
Locus of control differentiation as intellectual virtue
Resisting Edutainment: How Reward Deficiency Syndrome Fuels the Student Attention Crisis
Epistemology (13 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (5 works) · Feminist Epistemology and Gender Studies (5 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (5 works) · Law (4 works)