【Philosophy】African philosophy cannot be a thing
This essay unpacks several arguments about the metaphilosophic nature of African philosophy and charts a way through the problems these arguments enco... [more]
【Philosophy】Fusion Philosophy and Epistemic Injustice
I use the concept of epistemic injustice to think through the practice and methodology of comparative, or fusion, philosophy. I make two related claim... [more]
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Darwinian ethics and error
Suppose that the human tendency to think of certain actions and omissions as morally required - a notion that surely lies at the heart of moral discourse - is a trait that has been naturally selected for. Many have thought that from this premise we can ju
Adaptation and moral realism
Conventional wisdom has it that evolution makes a sham of morality, even if morality is an adaptation. I disagree. I argue that our best current adaptationist theory of meaning offers objective truth conditions for signaling systems of all sorts. The obje
The engagement of religion and biology: A case study in the mediating role of metaphor in the sociob
I claim that explanations of human behaviour by Edward O. Wilson and Charles Lumsden are constituted by a religiously functioning metaphysics: emergent materialism. The constitutive effects are identified using six criteria, beginning with a metaphorical
Functional complexity in organisms: Parts as proxies
The functional complexity, or the number of functions, of organisms has figured prominently in certain theoretical and empirical work in evolutionary biology. Large-scale trends in functional complexity and correlations between functional complexity and o
Richard Rorty: Philosophy by other means
Richard Rorty's argumentative strategy variously termed pragmatist, postmodernist, and postphilosophical is examined in some detail in the context of his treatment of philosophical issues in general and of the views of other philosophers in particular, f
Women, evil, and gray zones (Resistance in coercive institutions)
Gray zones, which develop wherever oppression is severe and lasting, are inhabited by victims of evil who become complicit in perpetrating on others the evils that threaten to engulf themselves. Women, who have inhabited many gray zones, present challenge
Ethics naturalized: Feminism's contribution to moral epistemology
A survey of Western feminist ethics over the past thirty years reveals considerable diversity; nonetheless, much recent work in this area is characterized by its adoption of a naturalistic approach. Such an approach is similar to that found in contemporar
Henkin quantifiers and the definability of truth
Henkin quantifiers have been introduced in Henkin (1961). Walkoe (1970) studied basic model-theoretical properties of an extension L-1 (H) of ordinary first-order languages in which every sentence is a first-order sentence prefixed with a Henkin quantifie
Fuzzy health, illness, and disease
The notions of health, illness, and disease are fuzzy-theoretically analyzed. They present themselves as non-Aristotelian concepts violating basic principles of classical logic. A recursive scheme for defining the controversial notion of disease is propos
On the value-neutrality of the concepts of health and disease: Unto the breach again
A number of philosophers of medicine have attempted to provide analyses of health and disease in which the role that values play in those concepts is restricted. There are three ways in which values can be restricted in the concepts of health and disease.
On the value of the panentheistic analogy: A response to Willem Drees
The author expresses appreciation to Professor Drees for his careful and mostly accurate reading of God and Contemporary Science. The exchange provides che opportunity to step back from the specifics of the debate and clarify what it is that gives rise to
Cosmological singularity and the creation of the universe
One of the most important and most frequently discussed theological problems related to cosmology is the creation problem. Unfortunately, it is usually considered in a context of a rather simplistic understanding of the initial singularity (often referred
God, freedom, and evil: Perspectives from religion and science
This paper develops analogies concerning the evolution of dissipative structures in nonequilibrium thermodynamics to interpret irrational human behavior in which one finds a lack of correspondence between the invested means and the consequences observed.
Higher pantheism
Romantic sensibility and political necessity led Humphry Davy, Britain's most prominent scientist in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, to pantheism: nature worship, involving for him a fervent belief in the immortality of the soul. Rapt with a
Crossing the Olentangy River: The figure of the earth and the military-industrial-academic-complex,
This paper explores the history of a unique assemblage of researchers in the geodetic and allied sciences organised at Ohio State University (OSU) in 1947 at the beginning of the Cold War. From about 1950 to 1970, the OSU geodetic sciences group was the m