Hermione Jean Granger:

Model Skeptic

Dr. Joel Hunter

Phoenix SkeptiCamp

January 26, 2013

PRUBONic plague

PPresumptive

RReader

UUnworthiness

BBased

OOn

NNon-Reading

—James W. Thomas

Repotting Harry Potter

Comportment toward Learning

“An’ they haven’t

invented a spell

our Hermione

can’ do.”

—Rubeus Hagrid

CS 116

BOOKS!

“Oh, honestly, don’t you two read?”

(SS 219)

Determined Curiosity

Professor Binns

History

Discursive Reasoning

“This isn’t magic—it’s logic—a puzzle. A lot of the greatest wizards haven’t got an ounce of logic, they’d be stuck in here forever.”

(SS 285)

Discursive Reasoning

Xenophilius Lovegood

Editor of The Quibbler

and Cryptozoologist

Self-Directed Truth-Seeker

Hermione and Harry tuning into “Potterwatch” on the Wizarding

Wireless News Network

Ethics of Belief

Hermione knows when prudential rationality trumps

epistemic rationality.

She rightly judges when the practical application of her

studies—saving the world from Voldemort’s return—

takes precedence over her desire for knowledge for its

own sake.

Ethics of Belief

Hermione also knows that there are “more important

things—[like] friendship and bravery” than her

knowledge.

She is a skeptic who rejects the ideology of

skepticism—whether Pyrrhonian, Academic or

otherwise—that would dissolve all contention-inspiring

beliefs for the sake of ataraxia or the lesser goods.