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Dr Nicholas Shackel

Overview

Dr Nicolas Shackel Position: Senior Lecturer Email: ShackelN@cf.ac.uk
 Telephone: +44(0)29 208 75664
Fax: +44(0)29 208 74618
Extension: 75664
Location: Humanities Extension, Colum Drive, Cathays, Cardiff, CF10 3EU.

Research Group

Philosophy

Research Interests

Rationality, ethics of belief, logic and paradox, philosophy of science, metaphysics.

Selected Publications

‘Parting smoothly?’ Analysis. Vol. 67 (4) October 2007 pp. 321-24. DOI:10.1111/j.1467-8284.2007.00700.x

‘Bertrand’s Paradox and the Principle of Indifference.’ Philosophy of Science. Vol. 74 (2) April 2007 pp. 150-175. DOI: 0031-8248/2007/7402-0002

‘Shutting Dretske’s door.’ Erkenntnis. (Accompanied by a reply from Dretske) Vol. 64 (3) May 2006 pps. 393-401. DOI 10.1007/s10670-006-9002-5

‘Decision theory, Symmetry and Causal Structure’ (with Michael Clark), Mind Vol. 112 October 2003 pps. 691-701.

‘Pragmatism and sophism.’ Logique et Analyse Forthcoming.

‘Abnormal responses do not show utilitarian bias’ Nature (with Guy Kahane) Forthcoming.

 

Publications

Forthcoming in refereed journals


‘Methodological issues in the scientific study of moral judgement’ Mind and Language

‘Pragmatism and sophism.’ Logique et Analyse

Published in refereed journals


‘An fMRI study measuring analgesia enhanced by religion as a belief system.’ (with Katja Wiech, Miguel Farias, Guy Kahane, Wiebke Tiede, Irene Tracey) Pain. 139 (2), pp. 467-76 October 2008. Online Version here

 ‘Coherentism and the symmetry of epistemic support.’ Analysis. Vol. 68 (3) July 2008 pp. 226-34. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8284.2008.00743.x.

 ‘Do abnormal responses show utilitarian bias?’ (with Guy Kahane) Nature. Vol. 452 (7185)  March 2008. pp. E5-E5.  Online Version here

 ‘Parting smoothly?’ Analysis. Vol. 67 (4) October 2007 pp. 321-24. DOI:10.1111/j.1467-8284.2007.00700.x

‘Bertrand’s Paradox and the Principle of Indifference.’ Philosophy of Science. Vol. 74 (2) April 2007 pp. 150-175. DOI: 0031-8248/2007/7402-0002

 ‘Shutting Dretske’s door.’ Erkenntnis. (Accompanied by a reply from Dretske) Vol. 64 (3) May 2006 pps. 393-401. DOI 10.1007/s10670-006-9002-5

‘The Dr. Psycho Paradox and Newcomb’s Problem.’ (With Michael Clark) Erkenntnis. Vol. 64 (1) January 2006 pps. 85-100.  DOI 10.1007/s10670-005-7515-y

 ‘The Form of the Benardete Dichotomy.’ British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. Vol. 56 (2) June 2005 pps. 397-417. DOI 10.1093/bjps/axi121

‘The Vacuity of Postmodernist Methodology.’ Metaphilosophy. Vol. 36 April 2005 pps. 295-320.

 ‘Decision theory, Symmetry and Causal Structure’ (with Michael Clark), Mind Vol. 112 October 2003 pps. 691-701.

‘The Two-envelope Paradox.’ (with Michael Clark), Mind Vol. 109 July 2000 pps. 415-442.

Chapters in edited books


‘Paradoxes of Probability.’ Handbook of Probability Theory with Applications. Ed. Tamas Rudas, Thousand Oaks: Sage. 2008. pps. 49-66.

 ‘Conceptual problems in the scientific study of belief’ (with Miguel Farias and Guy Kahane) Brain -- Religion -- Experience. Multidiscipline Encounters.  Ed. Christoph  Jaeger, Dordrecht, New York: Springer, Forthcoming.

Proceedings


‘Two Rhetorical Manoeuvres’ Proceedings of the IL@25 conference. Windsor, Ontario, 2003.

Reviews


‘Philosophical Theories of Probability by Donald Gillies’  Philosophical Books. Vol. 44 (1) Jan 2003.

Delivered at conferences


‘Reasons, rationality and externalism.’ Joint Session of the Mind and Aristotelian Societies, Southampton 2006.

 ‘Obligation and rational belief.’ Joint Session of the Mind and Aristotelian Societies, Manchester 2005.

‘Bertrand’s Paradox’ Annual Conference for the British Society for the Philosophy of Science, Belfast, 2003.

 ‘A simple theory containing its own truth predicate’. British Logic Colloquium. Manchester 2001.

Seminar papers

    • ‘Reasons: rationalisers and justifiers’ Colloquium of Professor Thomas Schmidt, Institute of Philosophie, Humboldt University, Berlin.
    • ‘Reasons: rationalisers and justifiers’ Royal Insititue of Philosophy Research Seminar, University of Nottingham 2009
    • ‘Epistemic blame, public knowledge and epistemic duty’ James Martin Advanced Research Seminar, University of Oxford 2006.
    • ‘Pluralism for the normativity of rationality’ University of Oxford seminar on Rationality and Normativity, June 2006.
    • ‘On the obligation to be rational’ University of Oxford Moral Philosophy Seminar, 30 January 2006.
    • ‘Society, artificial persons, rights and responsibility’ James Martin Advanced Research Seminar, University of Oxford 2006.
    •  ‘Reasons and rationality.’ Research Seminar, University of Bristol, 2005.
    •  ‘Two kinds of normativity.’ Research Seminar, University of Stirling, 2005.
    • ‘Obligation and epistemic rationality’ Research Seminar, St Andrews University, 2005.
    • ‘Can Practical Reasons be as Velleman proposes?’
    •  ‘Knowing when inductions are justified’ Research Seminar, University of Nottingham.

Research

I am developing papers from my thesis putting forward my main arguments about the relation of rationality and normativity. I am also writing on the ethics of belief, on the coherence theory of justification and on paradox. I am involved in interdisciplinary research into the neuroscience of normative judgement; currently myself and colleagues at Oxford are running an experiment on moral judgement, in which subjects are scanned by an fMRI machine while deciding on a moral scenario.

Biography

I did my doctorate at the University of Nottingham, giving a Humean answer to the question of why we ought to be rational. I have lectured at the Universities of Nottingham, Warwick and Aberdeen and immediately prior to taking up my lectureship at Cardiff was a research fellow in the faculty of philosophy at Oxford.