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375Is There an Ethics of Creativity?Chromatikon 2 161-173. 2006.Is there an ethics of creativity? Though this question appears innocent enough, it proves surprisingly difficult to answer. A survey of the literature on the topic reveals that process ethics has variously been categorized as or seen as compatible with: moral interest theory, ecological virtue ethics, utilitarianism, Confucian virtue ethics, and even deontology. What can account for such divergent and even contradictory conclusions? On one level we might blame Whitehead, whose sporadic comments …Read more
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244Standing in Livestock's 'Long Shadow': The Ethics of Eating Meat on a Small PlanetEthics and the Environment 16 (2): 63-93. 2011.A primary contribution of this essay is to provide a survey of the human and environmental impacts of livestock production. We will find that the mass consumption of animals is a primary reason why humans are hungry, fat, or sick and is a leading cause behind the depletion and pollution of waterways, the degradation and deforestation of the land, the extinction of species, and the warming of the planet. Recognizing these harms, this essay will consider various solutions being proposed to “shrink…Read more
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242The Ethics of Food, Fuel, and FeedDaedalus 144 (4): 90-98. 2015.As the collective impact of human activity approaches Earth’s biophysical limits, the ethics of food become increasingly important. Hundreds of millions of people remain undernourished, yet only 60 percent of the global harvest is consumed by humans, while 35 percent is fed to livestock and 5 percent is used for biofuels and other industrial products. This essay considers the ethics of such use of edible nutrition for feedstock and biofuel. How humanity uses Earth’s land is a reflection of its v…Read more
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62Riders in the Storm: Ethics in an Age of Climate ChangeAnselm Academic. 2015.With the increase of natural disasters, droughts, and superstorms, it’s clear that climate change isn’t coming—it’s here. The ecological crisis of climate change—and how we handle it—is the challenge of this century. Though policy changes or technological advances may help, they’re not enough. We are in need of new ways of thinking and acting; new ways of understanding our relationship to the world. Riders in the Storm assesses the challenges of climate change through an interdisciplinary study,…Read more
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59Saving Whitehead’s Universe of ValueInternational Philosophical Quarterly 45 (4): 447-465. 2005.While most scholars readily recognize that Alfred North Whitehead had deep and penetrating misgivings about the substantial view of individuality, fewer note that these misgivings stem as much from axiological considerations as ontological ones. I contend that, taken in the context of the “classical interpretation” of his metaphysics, Whitehead’s bold affirmation that actuality and value are coextensive introduces a potentially serious problem for the adequacy and applicability of his axiology. …Read more
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51Beyond Mechanism: Putting Life Back Into BiologyLexington Books. 2013.It has been said that new discoveries and developments in the human, social, and natural sciences hang “in the air” (Bowler, 1983; 2008) prior to their consummation. While neo-Darwinist biology has been powerfully served by its mechanistic metaphysic and a reductionist methodology in which living organisms are considered machines, many of the chapters in this volume place this paradigm into question. Pairing scientists and philosophers together, this volume explores what might be termed “the New…Read more
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46The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering (review)The Pluralist 6 (2): 110-114. 2011.
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45Trusting in the 'efficacy of beauty': A kalocentric approach to moral philosophyEthics and the Environment 14 (1). 2009.Although debates over carbon taxes and trading schemes, over carbon offsets and compact fluorescents are important, our efforts to address the environmental challenges that we face will fall short unless and until we also set about the difficult work of reconceiving who we are and how we are related to our processive cosmos. What is needed, I argue, are new ways of thinking and acting grounded in new ways of understanding ourselves and our relationship to the world, ways of understanding that re…Read more
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44Unearthing the Process Roots of Environment Ethics: Whitehead, Leopold, and the Land EthicBalkan Journal of Philosophy 8 (1): 3-12. 2016.The aim of this essay is twofold. First, I examine the role of Alfred North Whitehead and process thinkers in bringing about and shaping the field of environmental ethics. As we will see, our job is not so much to develop the connections between Whitehead and environmental thought as to recover them. Second, given this genealogical work, I invite process scholars to reconsider their generally hostile reception of Aldo Leopold and his land ethic. I suggest that a version of the land ethic grounde…Read more
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43The Ethics of Creativity: Beauty, Morality, and Nature in a Processive CosmosUniversity of Pittsburgh Press. 2005.A central concern of nearly every environmental ethic is its desire to extend the scope of direct moral concern beyond human beings to plants, nonhuman animals, and the systems of which they are a part. Although nearly all environmental philosophies have long since rejected modernity’s conception of individuals as isolated and independent substances, few have replaced this worldview with an alternative that is adequate to the organic, processive world in which we find ourselves. In this context,…Read more
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43Recovering the Adventure of Ideas: In Defense of Metaphysics as Revisable, Systematic, Speculative PhilosophyJournal of Speculative Philosophy 29 (4): 437-456. 2015.ABSTRACT My aim in this article is twofold. First, I hope to show that, despite its seeming rehabilitation, metaphysics as systematic, speculative philosophy is no less threatened. Second, I will argue that metaphysics as systematic, speculative philosophy is ultimately revisable. That is, metaphysics is not the aim at a closed system of apodictic truths but, rather, an open-ended, fallibilistic pursuit of ever-more-adequate accounts of reality. Specifically, building on the work of Charles Sand…Read more
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41Getting Substance to Go All the Way: Norris Clarke’s Neo-Thomism and the Process TurnModern Schoolman 81 (3): 215-225. 2004.Perhaps more than any other aspect of his thought, Alfred North Whitehead’s rejection of the notion of “independent existence” or substance has been taken to define his philosophy of organism. Moreover, it is this rejection of substances which has been the source of some of the most significant objections to Whitehead’s thought. Many commentators often indicate sympathy with Whitehead’s project but ask, if the world is composed exclusively of microscopic events which neither endure nor have hist…Read more
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40On the Possibility of a Whiteheadian Aesthetics of MoralsProcess Studies 31 (2): 97-114. 2002.Process philosophy has traditionally focused predominantly on ontology and cosmology. However, in the closing decades of the twentieth century, the scope of its application broadened significantly to include areas such as theology, physics, biology, psychology, and even education. But, one area that was not so fortunate is ethics. Process philosophy, nonetheless, has the potential to make a unique contribution to the state of ethical theory, which, having the support of a process ontology, could…Read more
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37Moral VegetarianismProcess Studies 45 (2): 236-249. 2016.In this article the work of a recent critic of moral vegetarianism (and veganism) is analyzed: Andrew F. Smith. Smith s work is significant for process thinkers who defend moral vegetarianism for various reasons. One of these is that he forces process thinkers to consider in more depth Whitehead’s view of plant ontology; another is that Smith adds insightfully to the conversation within process thought regarding the relationship between claims regarding animal rights and the ecoholistic concerns…Read more
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36Alfred North Whitehead and Yi Yulgok (review)Newsletter of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy 35 (106): 72-74. 2007.
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34Radical Axiology (review)Newsletter of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy 33 (101): 42-45. 2005.
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34Animals, Ethics, and Process Thought: Hierarchy without AnthroparchyProcess Studies 42 (2): 221-239. 2013.Hierarchical views of nature have for centuries been used to justify the enslaving of peoples perceived as inferior, the often violent and coercive “reeducation” of indigenous peoples, the patriarchal subjugation of women, the cruel use of nonhuman animals for often trivial purposes, and the wanton destruction of the natural world. I join those who condemned the oppressive nature of these forms of hierarchical thinking. Yet, I fear that, in their effort to right past wrongs, too many thinkers ar…Read more
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31Consenting to God and Nature: Toward a Theocentric, Naturalistic, Theological EthicsProcess Studies 38 (1): 139-142. 2009.
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29The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering (review)The Pluralist 6 (2): 110-114. 2011.
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28Whitehead at Harvard, 1924–1925 (edited book)Edinburgh University Press. 2019.In these newly commissioned essays, leading Whitehead scholars ask a range of important questions about Whitehead's first year of philosophy lectures. Do these lectures challenge or confirm previous understandings of Whitehead's published works? What is revealed about the development of Whitehead's thought in the crucial period after London but before the publication of Science and the Modern World? What should we make of concepts and terms that were introduced in these lectures but were never i…Read more
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26From the Anthropocene to the Ecozoic: Philosophy and Global Climate ChangeMidwest Studies in Philosophy 40 (1): 284-295. 2016.
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25A Genuine Ethical Universe: Beauty, Morality, and Nature in a Processive CosmosDissertation, Fordham University. 2003.This project develops and defends a holistic, organic ethical theory grounded firmly in Whitehead's aesthetico-metaphysics of process. The seminal insight of this ethic, which I refer to as the Ethics of Creativity, is the fundamental sense of beauty and value at the base of existence; there is no vacuous, valueless existence. As a result of this starting point, it is this project's contention that it is not enough for an ethical theory merely to prescribe how we ought to interact with other hum…Read more
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22Climate Change Ethics and the Non-Human World (edited book)Routledge. 2020.This book examines from different perspectives the moral significance of non-human members of the biotic community and their omission from climate ethics literature. The complexity of life in an age of rapid climate change demands the development of moral frameworks that recognize and respect the dignity and agency of both human and non-human organisms. Despite decades of careful work in non-anthropocentric approaches to environmental ethics, recent anthologies on climate ethics have largely omi…Read more
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22The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering (review) (review)The Pluralist 6 (2): 110-114. 2011.
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22Making Morality (review)Newsletter of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy 31 (96): 21-23. 2003.
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Spokane, Washington, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Environmental Ethics, Misc |
Metaphysics |
Process Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Environmental Ethics, Misc |
Metaphysics |
Process Philosophy |
Alfred North Whitehead |