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2Analytic Philosophy: An Interpretive History (edited book)Routledge. 2017.The Problem with (i) -- Illustration -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Index.
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18The Illusion of Analytic Philosophy and Metaphilosophical Eudaimonism as Personalism (Interview w/ Richard Marshall at 3:16)3:16 -- Richard Marshall's Philosophy Interviews After 3:Am. 2023.
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1Persons in 20th and 21st Century Anglophone PhilosophyIn Antonia LoLordo (ed.), Persons: A History, Oxford University Press, Usa. 2019.This chapter surveys the respective influences of Personalism and of analytic philosophy on twentieth-century thought about persons. It shows that personalism promoted a concept of personhood that is supportive of human dignity and conducive to positive moral and social engagement, as exemplified in Personalism’s best-known representative, Martin Luther King, Jr. By contrast, the analytic tradition has exhibited a persistent tendency to undermine personhood as King and the Personalists understoo…Read more
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Review of Stehen P. Schwartz, A Brief History of Analytic Philosophy: From Russell to Rawls (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. 2012.
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The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge, the Death of God, and the Contemporary Crisis of MeaningIn Steven DeLay (ed.), Finding Meaning: Essays on Philosophy, Nihilism and the Death of God, Wipf&stock. 2023.I argue that our present crisis of meaning is grounded in what Dallas Willard called "the disappearance of moral knowledge," and in institutional changes related to this disappearance. Following Frankl, I argue that meaning requires self-transcendence via commitment to "higher" values, but the disappearance of moral knowledge has obscured the reality of such values, and hence has obscured the path to meaningful self-transcendence.
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External Criticisms of Analytic PhilosophyIn Marcus Rossberg (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Analytic Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. forthcoming.This chapter aims to give a thematically organized survey of significant criticisms of analytic philosophy that have come from outside the analytic tradition. However, it is not always clear which critics and criticisms should count as “external” to the analytic tradition, nor is it clear how to gauge the significance of such criticisms. Consequently, the survey is prefaced by a discussion of these methodological challenges which, I show, are deeply connected to features of the analytic traditio…Read more
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Philosophy and Its Past: a Eudaimonistic PerspectiveIn Sandra Lapointe & Erich H. Reck (eds.), Historiography and the Formation of Philosophical Canons, Routledge. 2023.The aim of this volume is to consider connections among issues in metaphilosophy, historiographical method, and the formation of philosophical canons. Here I consider an ancient metaphilosophical position very different from anything accepted in mainstream academic philosophy today, but which, I believe, merits revival in a form appropriate to our era. I call this position “metaphilosophical eudaimonism” because it takes human flourishing to be the ultimate goal of philosophy. I first explain th…Read more
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6Review of Schwartz, A Brief History of Analytic Philosophy: from Russell to Rawls (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. 2012.
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Verstehen Redux: ‘Understanding’ in Contemporary EpistemologyIn Adam Tamas Tuboly (ed.), The history of understanding in analytic philosophy: around logical empiricism, Bloomsbury Academic. 2022.For most of the 20th century, analytic epistemology has been narrowly focused on the concept of knowledge and on closely-related issues like justification. But decades of work on Gettier problems, lottery paradoxes, and the like, have given mainstream analytic epistemology the appearance of a degenerating research program. In response, some analytic epistemologists have begun to investigate other cognitive states, like wisdom and understanding, that many pre-analytic philosophers valued as muc…Read more
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Ayer’s Book or Errors and the Crises of Contemporary Western CultureIn Adam Tamas Tuboly (ed.), The Historical and Philosophical Significance of Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic, Palgrave. pp. 333-364. 2021.This essay takes the position, consistent with Ayer’s own retrospective judgments, that the philosophical significance of Language, Truth and Logic (LTL) was minimal at best, and that its real significance was socio-historical. LTL stands as one of the most influential expressions of an overzealous and simplistic scientism that swept through Western culture in the first half of the twentieth century. This scientism played a crucial role in problematizing the West’s relationship to truth in ways …Read more
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18The Disappearance of Moral KnowledgeRoutledge. 2018.Based on an unfinished manuscript by the late philosopher Dallas Willard, this book makes the case that the 20th century saw a massive shift in Western beliefs and attitudes concerning the possibility of moral knowledge, such that knowledge of the moral life and of its conduct is no longer routinely available from the social institutions long thought to be responsible for it. In this sense, moral knowledge--as a publicly available resource for living--has disappeared. Via a detailed survey of ma…Read more
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40Philosophical Foundations of Contemporary Intolerance: Why We No Longer Take Martin Luther King, Jr. SeriouslyCritical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 34 (1): 99-145. 2022.ABSTRACT A growing body of research suggests that political polarization in the United States is at a forty-year high, and that it is rooted less in disagreements over policy than in hostile attitudes toward political opponents. Such attitudes explain the manifest increase of intolerant behavior in American culture and politics in recent years. But what explains the attitudes themselves? One significant contributor may have been the rise of scientism in the early twentieth century, which undermi…Read more
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40Analytic anachronism in The world philosophy madePhilosophical Studies 179 (6): 2109-2118. 2021.
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4Reflections on Dallas Willard’s Knowing Christ TodayJournal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care 2 (2): 265-272. 2009.
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8Redeeming Moral Formation: The Unity of Spiritual and Moral Formation in Willardian ThoughtJournal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care 3 (2): 206-229. 2010.This paper offers an interpretation of Dallas Willard's views on the relation of morality to spirituality by way of a critique of a recent article by John Coe–-or perhaps a critique of Coe by way of an interpretation of Willard. Coe has argued that a certain erroneous view of the relationship between moral and spiritual formation poses a serious threat to the latter by encouraging believers to hide spiritual and moral failures behind their moral successes. In this he is correct, but his own appr…Read more
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8New Companion to Russell Studies [review of Russell Wahl, ed., The Bloomsbury Companion to Bertrand Russell ] (review)Russell: The Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies 40 75-86. 2020.
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5Intuition in Analytic PhilosophyTeorema: International Journal of Philosophy 3 (34): 37-55. 2015.
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100Soames on ethics: A new vision for the future of analytic philosophy?Philosophical Studies 176 (5): 1347-1355. 2019.
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Early Analytic Philosophy: The History of an IllusionDissertation, University of Southern California. 2001.In Early Analytic Philosophy, I argue that scientism and the scientistic worldview played a much more substantial role in the origination and early development of Analytic Philosophy than is usually acknowledged. By focusing on the drive toward scientism as the principal motive underlying the origination and development of Analytic Philosophy, we can see how the various figures and factions which are usually counted as the main contributors to the origination and early development of Analytic Ph…Read more
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24Conformism in Analytic PhilosophyThe Monist 88 (2): 292-319. 2005.The first of the two epigraphs selected for this paper comes from G. J. Warnock’s book, English Philosophy Since 1900. As one might expect given the title, Warnock’s subject is what has come to be known as analytic philosophy, and the hostility to metaphysics he mentions is that peculiar hostility which, for a time at least, seemed to be part and parcel of the analytic movement. What is important about this quotation in the present context is the pregnant suggestion that what was for a long time…Read more
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Interpreting the Analytic TraditionIn Analytic Philosophy: An Interpretive History, Routledge. pp. 1-19. 2017.
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4Two wrongs don't make a right: a response to Glock's" What is analytical philosophy?"Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 30 (1): 53-64. 2011.
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124Quality instances and the structure of the concrete particularAxiomathes 15 (2): 267-292. 2005.In this paper, I examine a puzzle that emerges from what J. P. Moreland has called the traditional realist view of quality instances. Briefly put, the puzzle is to figure out how quality instances fit into the overall structure of a concrete particular, given that the traditional realist view of quality instances prima facie seems incompatible with what might be called the traditional realist view of concrete particulars. After having discussed the traditional realist views involved and the puzz…Read more
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Implications of Recent Work in the History of Analytic PhilosophyThe Bertrand Russell Society Quarterly 127. 2005.
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106Prolegomena to any future history of analytic philosophyMetaphilosophy 35 (4): 445-465. 2004.The careful historical and metaphilosophical attention recently bestowed upon analytic philosophy has revealed that traditional ways of defining it are inadequate. In the face of this inadequacy, contemporary authors have proposed new definitions that detach analytic philosophy from its turn of the twentieth century origins. I argue that this contemporary trend in defining analytic philosophy is misguided, and that it diminishes the likelihood of our coming to an accurate historical and metaphil…Read more
Valparaiso, Indiana, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
20th Century Philosophy |
Metaphilosophy |
Ethics |
Areas of Interest
20th Century Philosophy |
Metaphilosophy |
Ethics |