【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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Discerning the limits of religious naturalism
In response to my How to Make Naturalism Safe for Supernaturalism: An Evaluation of Willem Drees's Supernaturalistic Naturalism (Rottschaefer 2001), Willem Drees maintains that I have misunderstood his purpose and views and have failed to make the case a
How to make naturalism safe for supernaturalism: An evaluation of Willem Drees's supernaturalis
Naturalism is often considered to be antithetical to theology and genuine religion. However, in a series of recent books and articles, Willem Drees has proposed a scientifically informed naturalistic account of religion, which, he contends, is not only co
Animal rights: Autonomy and redundancy
Even if animal liberation were to be adopted, would rights for animals be redundant - or even deleterious? Such an objection, most prominently voiced by L. W. Sumner and Paul W. Taylor, is misguided, risks an anthropocentric and anthropomorphic conception
A holistically Deweyan feminism
The argument that a holistic analysis of Dewey's work, drawing not only on the major portions subject to extensive commentary (such as Experience and Nature) but also on his aesthetics, provides fuel for feminist theorizing is sustained by advertence to
Engaging Paul Tillich's thinking on reliogion and science - Science and religion: Original unit
Paul Tillich noted the emergence of science by demythologization from its original unity with religion in antiquity. Demythologization can lead to conflict with accepted paradigms and therefore requires the courage to create, as exemplified by Galileo. Ti
A cybernetic theory of morality and moral autonomy
Human morality may be thought of as a negative feedback control system in which moral rules are reference values, and moral disapproval, blame, and punishment are forms of negative feedback given for violations of the moral rules. In such a system, if mor
Ethics, science, and antimicrobial resistance
The issue of regularly feeding low levels of antibiotics to farm animals in order to increase productivity is often portrayed as a dilemma. On the one hand, such antibiotic use is depicted as a necessary condition for producing cheap and plentiful food, s
The ethical anthropic principle and the religious ethics of Emmanuel Levinas
Why did Levinas choose Isaiah 45:7 (I make peace and create evil: I the Lord shall do all that) as a superscription of his essay on evil? This article explores the role of evil in Levinas' religious ethics. The author discusses the structure of evil as r
Group mentoring to foster the responsible conduct of research
This article reports on a method of group mentoring to strengthen responsible research conduct. A key feature of this approach is joint exploration of the issues by trainees and their faculty research supervisors. These interactions not only help particip
Learning from the law to address uncertainty in the precautionary principle
Environmentalists have advocated the Precautionary Principle (PP) to help guide public and private decisions about the environment. By contrast, industry and its spokesmen have opposed this. There is not one principle, but many that have been recommended
Barbour's fourfold way-problems with his taxonomy of science-religion relationships
In this paper several problems are raised concerning Ian Barbour's four ways of interrelating science and religion-Conflict, Independence, Dialogue, and Integration-as put forward in such publications as his highly influential Religion in an Age of Scien
The languid child and the eighteenth-century man-midwife
This article addresses the methods used to preserve the life of a sickly neonate-that is, a child described as languid in the immediate period after birth. By looking at the work of some seventeenth-century midwifery authors, we can see how a fragile baby
Towards a critical theory of transnational justice
This paper argues for a conception of transnational justice that provides an alternative to globalist and statist views. In light of an analysis of the transnational context of justice, a critical theory is suggested that addresses the multiple relations
Defeasible reasoning with variable degrees of justification
The question addressed in this paper is how the degree of justification of a belief is determined. A conclusion may be supported by several different arguments, the arguments typically being defeasible, and there may also be arguments of varying strengths
The bicoherence theory of situational irony
Situational irony concerns what it is about a situation that causes people to describe it as ironic. Although situational irony is as complex and commonplace as verbal and literary irony, it has received nowhere near the same attention from cognitive scie