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446Real friends: How the internet can Foster friendship (review)Ethics and Information Technology 10 (1): 71-79. 2008.Dean Cocking and Steve Matthews’ article “Unreal Friends” argues that the formation of purely mediated friendships via the Internet is impossible. I critique their argument and contend that mediated contexts, including the Internet, can actually promote exceptionally strong friendships according to the very conceptual criteria utilized by Cocking and Matthews. I first argue that offline relationships can be constrictive and insincere, distorting important indicators and dynamics in the formation…Read more
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131Ethics and Science: An IntroductionCambridge University Press. 2012.Who owns your genes? What does climate science imply for policy? Do corporations conduct honest research? Should we teach intelligent design? Humans are creating a new world through science. The kind of world we are creating will not simply be decided by expanding scientific knowledge, but will depend on views about good and bad, right and wrong. These visions, in turn, depend on critical thinking, cogent argument and informed judgement. In this book, Adam Briggle and Carl Mitcham help readers t…Read more
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107The Dedisciplining of Peer ReviewMinerva 50 (1): 3-19. 2012.The demand for greater public accountability is changing the nature of ex ante peer review at public science agencies worldwide. Based on a four year research project, this essay examines these changes through an analysis of the process of grant proposal review at two US public science agencies, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Weaving historical and conceptual narratives with analytical accounts, we describe the ways in which these two agencies …Read more
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60Three Schools of Thought on Freedom in Liberal, Technological SocietiesTechné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 14 (3): 176-193. 2010.Are citizens of contemporary technological society authors of their own lives? With Alasdair MacIntyre, Bruno Latour and Albert Borgmann, we discuss the shortcomings of traditional liberalism in terms of its ability to answer this question. MacIntyre argues that biological vulnerabilities and social interdependencies establish meaningful parameters within which reason and willing emerge. But MacIntyre ignores technologies as a third parameter. Latour defines humans as nodes in a socio-technical …Read more
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54Philosophy in the Age of NeoliberalismSocial Epistemology 26 (3-4): 311-330. 2012.This essay argues that political, economic, and cultural developments have made the twentieth century disciplinary approach to philosophy unsustainable. It (a) discusses the reasons behind this unsustainability, which also affect the academy at large, (b) describes applied philosophy as an inadequate theoretical reaction to contemporary societal pressures, and (c) proposes a dedisciplined and interstitial approach??field philosophy??as a better response to the challenges facing the twenty-first …Read more
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48Taking biology seriously: What biology can and cannot tell us about moral and public policy issues by Immaculada de melo-martìnScience and Engineering Ethics 13 (1): 129-132. 2007.
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46Research Ethics Education in the STEM Disciplines: The Promises and Challenges of a Gaming ApproachScience and Engineering Ethics 22 (1): 237-250. 2016.While education in ethics and the responsible conduct of research is widely acknowledged as an essential component of graduate education, particularly in the STEM disciplines, little consensus exists on how best to accomplish this goal. Recent years have witnessed a turn toward the use of games in this context. Drawing from two NSF-funded grants, this paper takes a critical look at the use of games in ethics and RCR education. It does so by: setting the development of research and engineering et…Read more
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40Love on the internet: a framework for understanding Eros onlineJournal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society 6 (3): 216-232. 2008.PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework to aid in understanding and evaluating love online. The framework maps the territory of online love by identifying important issues and providing a mechanism for combining relevant theoretical perspectives.Design/methodology/approachInterdisciplinary literature is reviewed and related through normative and descriptive conceptual analysis.FindingsA diverse and complex set of practices, technologies, intentions, and behaviors co…Read more
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39Moralizing Technology (review)Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 16 (1): 85-88. 2012.
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37Media and communicationIn Julie Thompson Klein & Carl Mitcham (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity, Oxford University Press. pp. 220. 2010.
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28The Institution of Philosophy: Escaping Disciplinary CaptureMetaphilosophy 47 (1): 26-38. 2016.Philosophers view themselves as critical thinkers par excellence. But they have overlooked the institutional arrangements that govern their lives. The early twentieth-century research university disciplined philosophers, placing them in departments, where they wrote for and were judged by their disciplinary peers. Oddly, this change has been unremarked upon, or has been treated as simply part of the necessary professionalization of an academic field of research. The department has been tacitly a…Read more
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26Visions of NantucketEnvironmental Philosophy 2 (1): 54-67. 2005.Natural science and economics are regularly used as means for adjudicating environmental controversies. But can these become stalking-horses for other concerns? Might some environmental controversies be aesthetic in nature and likely to resist resolution unless and until we acknowledge this? This paper uses the case study of a proposed wind farm to examine the relationships between the humanities, sciences, and stakeholders in environmental decision making. After providing background on wind pow…Read more
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24Beware of the Toll Keepers: The Ethics of Geoengineering EthicsEthics, Policy and Environment 21 (2): 187-189. 2018.At the origins of bioethics, Daniel Callahan argued that if these newfangled bioethicists were going to be useful to physicians and policymakers, they would need to offer something like a recipe fo...
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23Strawmen at the Symposium: A ResponsePhilosophy of the Social Sciences 48 (1): 80-94. 2018.In this essay, we reply to the five commentaries offered of our 2016 book, Socrates Tenured: The Institutions of 21st Century Philosophy. We argue that, in a recursive fashion, those commentaries exemplify the thesis of our book – that contemporary philosophy has a blind spot concerning the philosophical priors of its status as an institution. That is, 20th and now 21st century philosophy has limited metaphilosophy to being an exclusively theoretical exercise, neglecting to also pursue a ‘philos…Read more
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21Opening the Black Box: The Social Outcomes of Scientific ResearchSocial Epistemology 28 (2): 153-166. 2014.No abstract
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19Representation in digital systemsIn P. Brey, A. Briggle & K. Waelbers (eds.), Current Issues in Computing and Philosophy, Ios Press. pp. 175--116. 2008.
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17Retail Sanity, Wholesale MadnessPhilosophy in the Contemporary World 16 (1): 14-24. 2009.This paper looks at the question of sustainability through the prism of a collective action problem fundamentally driven by human desires and needs. It ftrst characterizes the problem of non-sustainability by combining environmental ethics with the philosophy of technology. The paper then considers four basic strategies for resolving the collective action problem: virtue, regulation, price, and innovation. Each solution has its own set of weaknesses and strengths, meaning that achieving sustaina…Read more
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16Field Philosophy East and West: An Introduction to the Special IssueSocial Epistemology 35 (4): 337-344. 2020.Field philosophy is both a collaborative practice of engaged scholarship and a theory of knowledge that contrasts with the model of disciplinary knowledge production. I briefly describe the origins...
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15The Good Life in a Technological Age (edited book)Routledge. 2012.Modern technology has changed the way we live, work, play, communicate, fight, love, and die. Yet few works have systematically explored these changes in light of their implications for individual and social welfare. How can we conceptualize and evaluate the influence of technology on human well-being? Bringing together scholars from a cross-section of disciplines, this volume combines an empirical investigation of technology and its social, psychological, and political effects, and a philosophi…Read more
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15Review of Fred Pearce, The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature's Salvation (review)Environmental Values 25 (1): 118-120. 2016.
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15Thinking Through Climate Change: A Philosophy of Energy in the AnthropoceneSpringer Verlag. 2020.In this creative exploration of climate change and the big questions confronting our high-energy civilization, Adam Briggle connects the history of philosophy with current events to shed light on the Anthropocene. Briggle offers a framework to help us understand the many perspectives and policies on climate change. He does so through the idea that energy is a paradox: changing sameness. From this perennial philosophical mystery, he argues that a high-energy civilization is bound to create more a…Read more
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10Current Issues in Computing and Philosophy (edited book)IOS Press. 2008.The theme of this volume is the multi-faceted 'computational turn' that is occurring through the interaction of the disciplines of philosophy and computing. In computer and information sciences, there are significant conceptual and methodological questions that require reflection and analysis. Moreover, digital, information and communication technologies have had tremendous impact on society, which raises further philosophical questions. This book tries to facilitate the task to continuously wor…Read more
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8Socrates Tenured: The Institutions of 21st-Century PhilosophyRowman & Littlefield International. 2015.This book diagnoses a crisis facing philosophy – and the humanities more broadly – and sketches a path toward institutionalizing socially engaged approaches to philosophical research.
Denton, Texas, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |