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5Psychiatry and ethics: insanity, rational autonomy, and mental health care (edited book)Prometheus Books. 1982.
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6A Return to Moral and Religious Philosophy in Early AmericaUniversity Press of America. 1982.A Return to Moral and Religious Philosophy in Early America concentrates especially on three philosophical positions that dominated early American philosophy, Puritanism and Idealism, the Enlightenment or Age of Realism, and Transcendentalism. This book focuses primarily but not exclusively on the best representatives of each. Jonathan Edwards was the most brilliant and philosophically minded of early Puritan thinkers; his thinking was colored by metaphysical idealism. Thomas Jefferson gave us t…Read more
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16A Return to Moral and Religious Philosophy in Early AmericaInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 14 (4): 256-256. 1982.
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25Review of Pleasures and Pains: A Theory of Qualitative Hedonism (review)Ethics 91 (2): 314-317. 1981.
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493Kraus’s Boethian Interpretation of Whitehead’s GodProcess Studies 11 (1): 30-34. 1981.The Metaphysics of Experience: Companion to Whitehead’s Process and Reality by Elizabeth M. Kraus develops very classical, Boethian, atemporal understanding of Whitehead’s God. Kraus contends that Whitehead intended “to infer that the divine actual world includes all actual worlds in unison of becoming” (p. 164). Her position is that even in his consequent nature, God coexists simultaneously and changelessly with the entire past, present, and future of every occasion in every world or cosmic epo…Read more
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416Mental health as rational autonomyJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 6 (3): 309-322. 1981.Rather than eliminate the terms "mental health and illness" because of the grave moral consequences of psychiatric labeling, conservative definitions are proposed and defended. Mental health is rational autonomy, and mental illness is the sustained loss of such. Key terms are explained, advantages are explored, and alternative concepts are criticized. The value and descriptive components of all such definitions are consciously acknowledged. Where rational autonomy is intact, mental hospitals and…Read more
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536Intrinsic and extrinsic value and valuationJournal of Value Inquiry 13 (2): 133-143. 1979.This article critically examines the several definitions of, or elements of a single definition of, Robert S. Hartman's understanding of “intrinsic values,” “intrinsic evaluations,” “extrinsic values,” and “extrinsic valuations”. [I have since changed my mind about what is said in the last few sentences. I now think, with Hartman, that only unique, non-repeatable, conscious individuals have intrinsic worth. Repeatable qualities like pleasure and knowledge are “good for us” properties, but not “g…Read more
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75Pleasures and Pains: A Theory of Qualitative Hedonism (review)Philosophical Review 91 (1): 143-145. 1979.
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25Reason and Religion: An Introduction to the Philosophy of ReligionUpa (Originallly published by Harcourt, 1972, again by Wipf & Stock, 2016). 1979.A constructive attempt to examine the traditional problems of the philosophy of religion in light of recently developed philosophical tools of analysis, concepts, and philosophical perspectives
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243Reasonableness, Murder, and Modern SciencePhi Kappa Phi Journal 58 (1): 24-29. 1979.Originally titled “Is It Murder in Tennessee to Kill a Chimpanzee,” this article argues in some detail that typical legal definitions of “murder” as involving the intentional killing of “a reasonable being” would require classifying the intentional killing of chimpanzees as murder.
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92Review of Freedom and Value (review)International Studies in Philosophy 10 219-221. 1978.This is a review of Robert O. Johann, ed., Freedom and Value, 1976 which consists of nine essays written by members of the Department of Philosophy at Fordham University. These deal with the nature and value of human freedom and its relations with other human values.
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599The Pagan Dogma of the Absolute Unchangeableness of God: REM B. EDWARDSReligious Studies 14 (3): 305-313. 1978.In his Edifying Discourses, Soren Kierkegaard published a sermon entitled ‘The Unchangeableness of God’ in which he reiterated the dogma which dominated Catholic, Protestant and even Jewish expressions of classical supernaturalist theology from the first century A.D. until the advent of process theology in the twentieth century. The dogma that as a perfect being, God must be totally unchanging in every conceivable respect was expressed by Kierkegaard in such ways as: He changes all, Himself unch…Read more
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17Analogies between nature and its partsInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 7 (2). 1976.
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2335Do pleasures and pains differ qualitatively?Journal of Value Inquiry 9 (4): 270-81. 1975.Traditional hedonists like Epicurus, Bentham and Sidgwick were quantitative hedonists who assumed that pleasures and pains differ, not just from each other, but also from other pleasures and pains only in such quantitatively measurable ways as intensity, duration, and nearness or remoteness in time. They also differ with respect to their sources or causes. John Stuart Mill introduced an interesting and important complication into the modern theory of hedonism by insisting that pleasures also dif…Read more
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132The Human Self: An Actual Entity or a Society?Process Studies 5 (3): 195-203. 1975.This article asks: Is the human self, the stream of human consciousness, a single unique enduring actual entity or whole (like Alfred North Whitehead’s God) or a society of transient actual occasions (like Charles Hartshorne’s God)? It argues forcefully for the former and against the latter and concludes that both God and human selves are enduring but constantly developing actual entities who are constantly being enriched by new events, experiences, and activities in time.
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482The Human SelfProcess Studies 5 (3): 195-203. 1975.This is a serious critique of Whitehead's epochal theory of time. It argues that human selves and perhaps all actual entities are in continuous concrescence, like Whitehead's God.
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Reason and Religion. An Introduction to the Philosophy of ReligionReligious Studies 10 (4): 503-504. 1974.
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219The value of man in the Hartman value systemJournal of Value Inquiry 7 (2): 141-147. 1973.This article summarizes and critique’s Robert S. Hartman’s four alleged “proofs for the infinite value of man.” Each “proof” assumes that all individual human beings actually contain within themselves an infinite number of good-making properties, and that this accounts for the literal infinite worth of each. Hartman developed four variations on this central theme. This critique shows that none of his arguments are plausible and none succeed in “proving” their conclusion.
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279Existential experience, and limiting questions and answersInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 4 (2). 1973.This article critically examines the positions taken by Stephen E. Toulmin, Robert C. Coburn, and and Gordon D. Kaufman on existential experience and limiting questions and answers.
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392The Validity of Aquinas’ Third WayNew Scholasticism 45 (1): 117-126. 1971.This article argues for the formal validity of and the truth of the premises and conclusion of a version of Aquinas' "Third Way" that says: If each of the parts of nature is contingent, the whole of nature is contingent. Each of the parts of nature is contingent. Therefore, the whole of nature is contingent--where "contingent" means having a cause and not existing self-sufficiently.
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4Freedom, responsibility and obligationM. Nijhoff. 1970.This work is conceived as a modem study of the relationships of the concept of human freedom with the moral concepts of responsibility and obligation and other closely allied notions. One pitfall into which writers on my sub jects have occasionally fallen has been that of spending too much time in critically examining positions and arguments which no sane philosopher has ever offered. In order to guard against the danger of debating with "straw men," I have attempted to engage in critical conver…Read more
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Freedom, Responsibility and Obligation (review)Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 26 (1): 140-143. 1969.
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Freedom, Responsability and ObligationRevue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 163 219-220. 1969.
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578Composition and the cosmological argumentMind 77 (305): 115-117. 1968.This article argues that not all arguments from parts to wholes commit the informal logical fallacy of composition,and especially not the cosmological argument for God which moves from the contingent existence of all the parts of the cosmos to the contingent existence of the whole.
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201On Being 'Rational' About NormsSouthern Journal of Philosophy 5 (3): 180-186. 1967.The theses of this paper are that: 1. the attempt to found absolute norms on rationality presupposes the availability of a single universal absolute conception of rationality, but no such conception is available; and 2. any conception of rationality which might be available for justifying one's ultimate normative commitments is itself evaluative. “Rationality” itself is a value-laden concept, as are all its philosophical sub-divisions—logic, ethics, aesthetics, axiology, etc. Choosing ultimate v…Read more
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382On Being ‘Rational’ About NormsSouthern Journal of Philosophy 5 (3): 180-186. 1967.The theses of this paper i: I. that the attempt to found absolute norns on rationality presupposes the availability of a single universal absolute conception of rationality but that no such conception is available; and II. that any conception of rationality which might be available for justifying one's ultimate normative commitments is itself evaluative. “Rationality” itself is a value-laden concept, as are all its philosophical sub-divisions—logic, ethics, aesthetics, axiology, etc. Choosing ul…Read more
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430Discussion: The truth and falsity of definitionsPhilosophy of Science 33 (1/2): 76. 1966.This article examines several answers to the question, can lexical definitions be true or false.
Emory University
PhD, 1962
APA Eastern Division
Knoxville, Tennessee, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
2 more
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Religion |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Value Theory |
Areas of Interest
1 more
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Religion |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Value Theory |