"Finding Normality in Abnormality: On the Ascription of Normal Functions to Cancer" Philosophy of Science (2023)
Abstract: Cancer biologists ascribe normal functions to parts of cancer. Normal functions are activities that parts of systems are in some minimal sense supposed to perform. Goldwasser argues that cancer biologists’ finding normality within the abnormality of cancer poses difficulties for two main approaches to normal function. One approach claims that normal functions are activities for which parts are selected. However, some parts of cancers that have normal functions aren’t selected to perform them. The other approach claims that normal functions are part-activities that (typically) contribute to the survival or reproduction of the relevant system. However, cancers are too heterogeneous to establish what (typically) contributes to their progression across a type.
"Trusting Traumatic Memory: Considerations from Memory Science" Philosophy of Science (2023)
Co-authored with Alison Springle (Professor at the University of Miami) and Rebecca Dreier
Abstract: Court cases involving sexual assault and police violence rely heavily on victim testimony. We consider what we call the “Traumatic Untrustworthiness Argument (TUA)” according to which we should be skeptical about victim testimony because people are particularly liable to misremember traumatic events. The TUA is not obviously based in mere distrust of women, people of color, disabled people, poor people, etc. Rather, it seeks to justify skepticism on epistemic and empirical grounds. We consider how the TUA might appeal to the psychology and neuroscience of memory for empirical support. However, we argue that neither support the TUA.
"Trauma, Trust, & Competent Testimony" Philosophical Psychology (2023).
Co-authored with Alison Springle (Professor at University of Miami)
Abstract: Public discourse implicitly appeals to what we call the “Traumatic Untrustworthiness Argument” (TUA). To motivate, articulate, and assess the TUA, we appeal to Hawley’s (2019) commitment account of trust and trustworthiness. On Hawley’s account, being trustworthy consists in the successful avoidance of unfulfilled commitments and involves three components: the actual avoidance of unfulfilled commitments, sincerity in one’s taking on elective commitments, and competence in fulfilling commitments one has incurred. In contexts of testimony, what’s at issue is the speaker’s competence and sincere intention to speak truthfully. The TUA targets trauma victims’ competence rather than their sincerity. According to the TUA, empirical evidence shows that trauma undermines victims’ trustworthiness with regard to speaking truthfully about their trauma by undermining their competence to remember the relevant event. We argue that what the evidence shows is rather that remembering traumatic events involves a distinct “mode of manifesting” the competence to remember particular events from the personal past. Trauma victims are competent to speak truthfully about their trauma and ought to be trusted at least with regard to the central details of the event. By suggesting otherwise, the TUA threatens an insidious form of epistemic injustice which Hawley’s account helps us locate.