Liam Kofi Bright
Biographic Data
| ID | 839788 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Liam Kofi Bright |
| GIVEN NAMES | Liam Kofi |
| FAMILY NAME | Bright |
| SIGNATURE | BRIGHT L K |
| AFFILIATIONS | London School of Economics and Political Science |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5450-8748 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 67 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
A brief observation on the relationship between antecedent status and reviewing incentives
It is often believed that academics are especially harsh in their evaluation of work that critiques their own ideas. I dispute that claim. Rather, I say, consideration of the credit incentives for academics reviewing critique of their own work should lead us to expect them to typically be particularly generous to critique of their own work
On the Stability of Racial Capitalism
What is the connection between capitalism and racial hierarchy? In line with the tradition known as ‘the theory of racial capitalism’ we show that the latter can functionally support the former. As a social construction, race has just those features which allow it to facilitate the sort of stable, inequitable distributions of resources that tend to emerge in capitalist systems. We support this claim using techniques from evolutionary game theory …
What’s the Point of Authors
In this paper, I want to start to untangle some of the philosophical issues associated with our practices of ascribing authorship for collaborative work, with an eye to formulating better guidelines for authorship. I will focus on the following questions: 1. What epistemic, social, and ethical functions are played by our practices of ascribing authorship for academic papers? 2. What ways of ascribing authorship would best address these functions?…
To Be Scientific Is To Be Communist
What differentiates scientific research from non-scientific inquiry? Philosophers addressing this question have typically been inspired by the exalted social place and intellectual achievements of science. They have hence tended to point to some epistemic virtue or methodological feature of science that sets it apart. Our discussion on the other hand is motivated by the case of commercial research, which we argue is distinct from (and often epist…
White psychodrama
I analyse the political, economic, and cultural circumstances that have given rise to persistent political disputes about race (known colloquially as "the culture war") among a subset of Americans. I argue that they point to a deep tension between widely held normative aspirations and pervasive and readily observable material facts about our society. The characterological pathologies this gives rise to are discussed, and a normatively preferable …
Jury Theorems for Peer Review
Peer review is often taken to be the main form of quality control on academic research. Usually journals carry this out. However, parts of math and physics appear to have a parallel, crowd-sourced model of peer review, where papers are posted on the arXiv to be publicly discussed. In this paper we argue that crowd-sourced peer review is likely to do better than journal-solicited peer review at sorting papers by quality. Our argument rests on two …
Difficult trade-offs in response to Covid-19: The case for open and inclusive decision making
We argue that deliberative decision making that is inclusive, transparent and accountable can contribute to more trustworthy and legitimate decisions on difficult ethical questions and political trade-offs during the pandemic and beyond.
Why Do Scientists Lie
It's natural to think of scientists as truth seekers, people driven by an intense curiosity to understand the natural world. Yet this picture of scientists and scientific inquiry sits uncomfortably with the reality and prevalence of scientific fraud. If one wants to get at the truth about nature, why lie? Won't that just set inquiry back, as people pursue false leads? To understand why this occurs – and what can be done about it – we need to unde…
Scientific conclusions need not be accurate, justified, or believed by their authors
We argue that the main results of scientific papers may appropriately be published even if they are false, unjustified, and not believed to be true or justified by their author. To defend this claim we draw upon the literature studying the norms of assertion, and consider how they would apply if one attempted to hold claims made in scientific papers to their strictures, as assertions and discovery claims in scientific papers seem naturally analog…
Risk aversion and elite‐group ignorance
Critical race theorists and standpoint epistemologists argue that agents who are members of dominant social groups are often in a state of ignorance about the extent of their social dominance, where this ignorance is explained by these agents' membership in a socially dominant group (e.g., Mills 2007). To illustrate this claim bluntly, it is argued: 1) that many white men do not know the extent of their social dominance, 2) that they remain ignor…
Vindicating methodological triangulation
Social scientists use many different methods, and there are often substantial disagreements about which method is appropriate for a given research question. In response to this uncertainty about the relative merits of different methods, W. E. B. Du Bois advocated for and applied “methodological triangulation”. This is to use multiple methods simultaneously in the belief that, where one is uncertain about the reliability of any given method, if mu…
Du Bois’ democratic defence of the value free ideal
Logical empiricists on race
Causally Interpreting Intersectionality Theory
Social scientists report difficulties in drawing out testable predictions from the literature on intersectionality theory. We alleviate that difficulty by showing that some characteristic claims of the intersectionality literature can be interpreted causally. The formalism of graphical causal modeling allows claims about the causal effects of occupying intersecting identity categories to be clearly represented and submitted to empirical testing. …
What Is the State of Blacks in Philosophy
This research note is meant to introduce into philosophical discussion the preliminary results of an empirical study on the state of blacks in philosophy, which is a joint effort of the American Philosophical Association's Committee on the Status of Black Philosophers (APA CSBP) and the Society of Young Black Philosophers (SYBP). The study is intended to settle factual issues in furtherance of contributing to dialogues surrounding at least two ph…
Vindicating methodological triangulation
Social scientists use many different methods, and there are often substantial disagreements about which method is appropriate for a given research question. In response to this uncertainty about the relative merits of different methods, W. E. B. Du Bois advocated for and applied “methodological triangulation”. This is to use multiple methods simultaneously in the belief that, where one is uncertain about the reliability of any given method, if mu…
Du Bois’ democratic defence of the value free ideal
Causally Interpreting Intersectionality Theory
Social scientists report difficulties in drawing out testable predictions from the literature on intersectionality theory. We alleviate that difficulty by showing that some characteristic claims of the intersectionality literature can be interpreted causally. The formalism of graphical causal modeling allows claims about the causal effects of occupying intersecting identity categories to be clearly represented and submitted to empirical testing. …
Risk aversion and elite‐group ignorance
Critical race theorists and standpoint epistemologists argue that agents who are members of dominant social groups are often in a state of ignorance about the extent of their social dominance, where this ignorance is explained by these agents' membership in a socially dominant group (e.g., Mills 2007). To illustrate this claim bluntly, it is argued: 1) that many white men do not know the extent of their social dominance, 2) that they remain ignor…
What Is the State of Blacks in Philosophy
This research note is meant to introduce into philosophical discussion the preliminary results of an empirical study on the state of blacks in philosophy, which is a joint effort of the American Philosophical Association's Committee on the Status of Black Philosophers (APA CSBP) and the Society of Young Black Philosophers (SYBP). The study is intended to settle factual issues in furtherance of contributing to dialogues surrounding at least two ph…
What’s the Point of Authors
In this paper, I want to start to untangle some of the philosophical issues associated with our practices of ascribing authorship for collaborative work, with an eye to formulating better guidelines for authorship. I will focus on the following questions: 1. What epistemic, social, and ethical functions are played by our practices of ascribing authorship for academic papers? 2. What ways of ascribing authorship would best address these functions?…
White psychodrama
I analyse the political, economic, and cultural circumstances that have given rise to persistent political disputes about race (known colloquially as "the culture war") among a subset of Americans. I argue that they point to a deep tension between widely held normative aspirations and pervasive and readily observable material facts about our society. The characterological pathologies this gives rise to are discussed, and a normatively preferable …
Jury Theorems for Peer Review
Peer review is often taken to be the main form of quality control on academic research. Usually journals carry this out. However, parts of math and physics appear to have a parallel, crowd-sourced model of peer review, where papers are posted on the arXiv to be publicly discussed. In this paper we argue that crowd-sourced peer review is likely to do better than journal-solicited peer review at sorting papers by quality. Our argument rests on two …
Logical empiricists on race
What Is the State of Blacks in Philosophy
This research note is meant to introduce into philosophical discussion the preliminary results of an empirical study on the state of blacks in philosophy, which is a joint effort of the American Philosophical Association's Committee on the Status of Black Philosophers (APA CSBP) and the Society of Young Black Philosophers (SYBP). The study is intended to settle factual issues in furtherance of contributing to dialogues surrounding at least two ph…
Causally Interpreting Intersectionality Theory
Social scientists report difficulties in drawing out testable predictions from the literature on intersectionality theory. We alleviate that difficulty by showing that some characteristic claims of the intersectionality literature can be interpreted causally. The formalism of graphical causal modeling allows claims about the causal effects of occupying intersecting identity categories to be clearly represented and submitted to empirical testing. …
Logical empiricists on race
Du Bois’ democratic defence of the value free ideal
Vindicating methodological triangulation
Social scientists use many different methods, and there are often substantial disagreements about which method is appropriate for a given research question. In response to this uncertainty about the relative merits of different methods, W. E. B. Du Bois advocated for and applied “methodological triangulation”. This is to use multiple methods simultaneously in the belief that, where one is uncertain about the reliability of any given method, if mu…
Difficult trade-offs in response to Covid-19: The case for open and inclusive decision making
We argue that deliberative decision making that is inclusive, transparent and accountable can contribute to more trustworthy and legitimate decisions on difficult ethical questions and political trade-offs during the pandemic and beyond.
Why Do Scientists Lie
It's natural to think of scientists as truth seekers, people driven by an intense curiosity to understand the natural world. Yet this picture of scientists and scientific inquiry sits uncomfortably with the reality and prevalence of scientific fraud. If one wants to get at the truth about nature, why lie? Won't that just set inquiry back, as people pursue false leads? To understand why this occurs – and what can be done about it – we need to unde…
Scientific conclusions need not be accurate, justified, or believed by their authors
We argue that the main results of scientific papers may appropriately be published even if they are false, unjustified, and not believed to be true or justified by their author. To defend this claim we draw upon the literature studying the norms of assertion, and consider how they would apply if one attempted to hold claims made in scientific papers to their strictures, as assertions and discovery claims in scientific papers seem naturally analog…
Risk aversion and elite‐group ignorance
Critical race theorists and standpoint epistemologists argue that agents who are members of dominant social groups are often in a state of ignorance about the extent of their social dominance, where this ignorance is explained by these agents' membership in a socially dominant group (e.g., Mills 2007). To illustrate this claim bluntly, it is argued: 1) that many white men do not know the extent of their social dominance, 2) that they remain ignor…
Jury Theorems for Peer Review
Peer review is often taken to be the main form of quality control on academic research. Usually journals carry this out. However, parts of math and physics appear to have a parallel, crowd-sourced model of peer review, where papers are posted on the arXiv to be publicly discussed. In this paper we argue that crowd-sourced peer review is likely to do better than journal-solicited peer review at sorting papers by quality. Our argument rests on two …
To Be Scientific Is To Be Communist
What differentiates scientific research from non-scientific inquiry? Philosophers addressing this question have typically been inspired by the exalted social place and intellectual achievements of science. They have hence tended to point to some epistemic virtue or methodological feature of science that sets it apart. Our discussion on the other hand is motivated by the case of commercial research, which we argue is distinct from (and often epist…
White psychodrama
I analyse the political, economic, and cultural circumstances that have given rise to persistent political disputes about race (known colloquially as "the culture war") among a subset of Americans. I argue that they point to a deep tension between widely held normative aspirations and pervasive and readily observable material facts about our society. The characterological pathologies this gives rise to are discussed, and a normatively preferable …
What’s the Point of Authors
In this paper, I want to start to untangle some of the philosophical issues associated with our practices of ascribing authorship for collaborative work, with an eye to formulating better guidelines for authorship. I will focus on the following questions: 1. What epistemic, social, and ethical functions are played by our practices of ascribing authorship for academic papers? 2. What ways of ascribing authorship would best address these functions?…
On the Stability of Racial Capitalism
What is the connection between capitalism and racial hierarchy? In line with the tradition known as ‘the theory of racial capitalism’ we show that the latter can functionally support the former. As a social construction, race has just those features which allow it to facilitate the sort of stable, inequitable distributions of resources that tend to emerge in capitalist systems. We support this claim using techniques from evolutionary game theory …
A brief observation on the relationship between antecedent status and reviewing incentives
It is often believed that academics are especially harsh in their evaluation of work that critiques their own ideas. I dispute that claim. Rather, I say, consideration of the credit incentives for academics reviewing critique of their own work should lead us to expect them to typically be particularly generous to critique of their own work
Epistemology (11 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Political science (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Feminist Epistemology and Gender Studies (6 works) · Philosophy and History of Science (6 works) · Mathematics (5 works) · Law (4 works)