Maarten Boudry

Maarten Boudry
Born	(1984-08-15)August 15, 1984 Moorslede, Belgium
Website	Maarten Boudry Maarten Boudry's voice Recorded June 2015
School	Scientific skepticism
Main interests	Epistemology, pseudoscience

Maarten Boudry (born 15 August 1984) is a Flemish philosopher and skeptic. He has been active as a researcher and teaching member of the Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences at Ghent University since 2006.^[1] To date, he has published over 30 articles in various scientific journals.^[2]

Academic background

Boudry began his studies in philosophy at Ghent University in 2002, where he graduated cum laude in 2006. Between 2007 and 2011, he conducted research at Ghent University (Logic, History and Philosophy of Science), funded by a research grant from the Flemish foundation Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (FWO). After obtaining his PhD, he became a postdoctoral fellow at Ghent University, again with the financial support of the FWO. In 2013, he was also a postdoctoral fellow at the Konrad Lorenz Institute in Vienna for six months, where he worked on irrationality from an evolutionary and epistemological perspective. Boudry has undertaken many foreign study visits. Additionally, he is a frequent speaker at international conferences and gives guest lectures at academic institutions.

Boudry is a member of a number of scientifically-oriented organizations: the Flemish skeptical organization SKEPP,^[3] the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR),^[4] the Center for Inquiry^[5] and the Imperfect Cognition research network of the Epistemic Innocence Project.^[6] He is also one of the founders of Het Denkgelag,^[7] which organizes skeptical conferences in Flanders.

Boudry's Sokal affair

In 2011, Maarten Boudry pulled a Sokal-style hoax. The original hoax from 1996 perpetrated by Alan Sokal, professor of physics at New York University, was intended to test whether postmodernists would be able to identify a nonsensical text that was written to seem in line with their own ideas. He submitted a hoax article, full of nonsensical reasoning and pseudoscientific jargon to the American academic journal Social Text, which readily accepted and published it. The subsequent revelation of the hoax unleashed a wave of criticism against postmodernism.^[8]

In a similar vein, Boudry wanted to put Christian philosophers to the test by writing a meaningless abstract, full of theological jargon, with the title "The Paradoxes of Darwinian Disorder. Towards an Ontological Reaffirmation of Order and Transcendence".^[9] The abstract contained sentences such as: ‘In the Darwinian perspective, order is not immanent in reality, but it is a self-affirming aspect of reality in so far as it is experienced by situated subjects.’^[8] Under the anagram-pseudonym Robert A. Maundy from the fictitious College of the Holy Cross in Reno, Nevada, Boudry submitted the abstract to the organizers of the Christian philosophical conference "The Future of Creation Order" at the VU University Amsterdam and the Centre of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham, which both accepted it without any reservations.^[9][10] The hoax, which Boudry revealed mid-2012 on Facebook but only became public knowledge when the American scientist Jerry Coyne blogged about it,^[10][11] received attention in a number of Dutch Protestant-Christian newspapers such as Reformatorisch Dagblad, Trouw and Nederlands Dagblad.^{[12][13][14][15]}

When asked in an interview with the Dutch popular philosophy magazine Filosofie Magazine about the reason for the hoax, Boudry said the following:

No one discovered that "Robert A. Maundy" and the "College of the Holy Cross" did not exist. Gerrit Glas, president of the conference at the time, found the text to be odd and said they had hesitated for a long time, but ultimately decided to give "Maundy" the benefit of the doubt.^[12] Glas admitted that he should have been more critical^[8] and defended himself by saying that 'it is not uncommon for texts on process theology, negative theology and postmodernism to be inscrutable'.^[12][12][16] Philosopher of Religion Taede Smedes at the Radboud University Nijmegen considered Boudry's action to be unworthy of an academic, but also found it astonishing that the conference organizers had accepted the text: "Anyone who makes the simple effort to understand the first sentences of Boudry/Maundry’s [sic] abstract (if that is even possible), will immediately notice that it is incomprehensible nonsense."^[15]

Skeptic

Boudry moderating a debate between Pigliucci, Dennett and Krauss (Het Denkgelag 2013).

Maarten Boudry is mainly known for his skepticism and critical attitude toward pseudoscience. As a philosopher of science, one of his main interests is the study of pseudoscience in all its forms and expressions. He studies the fallibility of human reasoning that might underlie pseudoscience and irrationality. Boudry characterizes pseudoscience as "an imitation of real science". In his MA thesis, entitled De naakte Keizers van de Psychoanalyse (The Naked Emperors of Psychoanalysis), he explains why he classifies psychoanalysis as a pseudoscience and which immunizing strategies this school of thought has developed over the years to withstand criticism. Together with philosopher Johan Braeckman he wrote the book De ongelovige Thomas heeft een punt (Doubting Thomas has a point), in which they offer arguments against parascience and pseudoscience, blind faith, wishful thinking, astrology, irrationality, psychokinesis and earth radiation, as they consider these ideas to be grounded in logical fallacies. The title refers to the attitude of Thomas the Apostle who did not believe that Jesus had risen from the dead. In an interview Boudry said...

In publications and debates, Boudry also criticizes religion, intelligent design and theology. In 2014, during the Dutch Nationale Religiedebat (National Religion Debate), Maarten Boudry and Herman Philipse debated Stefan Paas and Rik Peels on the question of whether belief in a god is reasonable and what the impact of nonbelief on morality is (Boudry: "Never argue that someone is almighty, before you've seen him"). Boudry also debated Christian philosopher Emanuel Rutten during the Denkcafé debate "Does God Exist?" in December 2012, where he said the following:

Awards

• 2007: SKEPP-prize for best thesis on immunizing strategies in psychoanalysis.^[17][18]
• 2011: Liberales book of the year for De ongelovige Thomas heeft een punt^[19]
• 2012: Shortlist ‘Socrates Wisselbeker Filosofie’ for the book De ongelovige Thomas heeft een punt^[20]
• 2013: Shortlist Science Communication Award, Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts^[21]
• 2015, Illusies voor gevorderden. Of waarom waarheid altijd beter is Polis, ISBN 978-94-6310-006-9

Publications (selection)

Cover of Philosophy of Pseudoscience.

Maarten Boudry has published a considerable number of articles in both peer-reviewed scientific journals and in public print media (newspapers and magazines). Some of his conference presentations are publicly available as well.^[22]

• Boudry, M.; Blancke, S.; Braeckman, J. (2010). "Irreducible incoherence and intelligent design: a look into the conceptual toolbox of a pseudoscience." (PDF). Quarterly Review of Biology. 85 (4): 473–482. doi:10.1007/s11406-010-9254-9.  ^[23]
• Boudry, M.; Blancke, S.; Braeckman, J. (2010). "How not to attack Intelligent Design Creationism: Philosophical misconceptions about Methodological Naturalism". Foundations of Science. 15 (3): 227–244. doi:10.1007/s10699-010-9178-7.  ^[24]
• Boudry, M.; De Smedt, J. (2011). "In Mysterious Ways: On Petitionary Prayer and Subtle Forms of Supernatural Causation". Religion. 41 (3): 449–69. doi:10.1080/0048721X.2011.600464.  ^[25]
• Boudry, M.; Braeckman, J. (2011). "Immunizing strategies & epistemic defense mechanisms". Philosophia. 39 (1): 145–161. doi:10.1007/s11406-010-9254-9.  ^[26]
• Boudry, M.; Leuridan, B. (2011). "Where the design argument goes wrong: Auxiliary assumptions and unification". Philosophy of Science. 78 (4): 558–578. doi:10.1086/661753. ^[27]
• Boudry, M.; Braeckman, J. (2012). "How Convenient! The Epistemic Rationale of Self-validating Belief Systems.". Philosophical Psychology. 25: 341–364. doi:10.1080/09515089.2011.579420. ^[28]
• Boudry, M.; Pigliucci, M. (2013). "The mismeasure of machine: Synthetic biology and the trouble with engineering metaphors.". Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. 44 (4): 660–668. doi:10.1016/j.shpsc.2013.05.013. 
• Boudry, M.; Blancke, S.; Pigliucci, M. (2014). "What Makes Weird Beliefs Thrive? The Epidemiology of Pseudoscience.". Philosophical Psychology: 1–22. doi:10.1080/09515089.2014.971946. 
• Edis, T.; Boudry, M. (2014). "Beyond Physics? On the prospects of finding a meaningful oracle". Foundations of Science. 19 (4): 403–422. doi:10.1007/s10699-014-9349-z. 
• Boudry, M.; Vlerick, M. (2014). "Natural Selection Does Care About Truth". International Studies in the Philosophy of Science. 28 (1): 65–77. doi:10.1080/02698595.2014.915651. 
• Buekens, F.; Boudry, M. (2014). "The Dark Side of the Loon. Explaining The Temptations of Obscurantism". Theoria. 81: 126–142. doi:10.1111/theo.12047. 
• De Cruz, H.; Boudry, M.; De Smedt, J.; Blancke, S. (2011). "Evolutionary Approaches to Epistemic Justification". Dialectica. 65 (4): 517–35. doi:10.1111/j.1746-8361.2011.01283.x. 

Bibliography

• 2006, De naakte Keizers van de Psychoanalyse. De Immunisatiestrategieën van een Pseudowetenschap (MA thesis)
• 2011, Here be Dragons. Exploring the Hinterland of Science (PhD dissertation)
• 2011, De ongelovige Thomas heeft een punt (co-author Johan Braeckman), Houtekiet, ISBN 978-9089241887
• 2013, Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem (co-author Massimo Pigliucci), ISBN 978-0226051963
• 2015, Illusies voor gevorderden. Of waarom waarheid altijd beter is Polis, ISBN 978-94-6310-006-9

References

External links

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