Peter Gregory Boghossian (; born July 25, 1966) is an American philosopher and pedagogist. Born in Boston, he was a non-tenure track assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University for ten years, and his areas of academic focus include atheism, critical thinking, pedagogy, scientific skepticism, and the Socratic method. He is the author of A Manual for Creating Atheists and (with James Lindsay) How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide. Boghossian was involved in the grievance studies affair (also called "Sokal Squared" in media coverage) with collaborators James A. Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose, in which they published four hoax papers (of twenty submitted) in low-impact academic journals which put forth intentionally preposterous ideas as a way of demonstrating the ease of having ideologically leftist papers published in relation to gender studies and other fields. After an investigation, Portland State University restricted Boghossian's future work on the basis of research misconduct, including failure to adhere to institutional review board (IRB) processes. In September 2021, Boghossian resigned his position from Portland State University, citing harassment and a lack of intellectual freedom.Boghossian coined the term street epistemology for a set of conversational techniques he described which are designed to enable …
Peter Boghossian
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- July 25, 1966
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Peter Gregory Boghossian (; born July 25, 1966) is an American philosopher and pedagogist. Born in Boston, he was a non-tenure track assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University for ten years, and his areas of academic focus include atheism, critical thinking, pedagogy, scientific skepticism, and the Socratic method. He is the author of A Manual for Creating Atheists and (with James Lindsay) How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide. Boghossian was involved in the grievance studies affair (also called "Sokal Squared" in media coverage) with collaborators James A. Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose, in which they published four hoax papers (of twenty submitted) in low-impact academic journals which put forth intentionally preposterous ideas as a way of demonstrating the ease of having ideologically leftist papers published in relation to gender studies and other fields. After an investigation, Portland State University restricted Boghossian's future work on the basis of research misconduct, including failure to adhere to institutional review board (IRB) processes. In September 2021, Boghossian resigned his position from Portland State University, citing harassment and a lack of intellectual freedom.Boghossian coined the term street epistemology for a set of conversational techniques he described which are designed to enable examination of strongly held beliefs, especially of the religious kind, in a non-confrontational manner.
