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10Weaving: An Analysis of the Constitution of ObjectsRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1991.In this moderate realist account of the whole range of issues facing contemporary analytic philosophy, J. K. Swindler aims to fill the gap in the literature between extreme realism and extreme nominalism. He discusses such fundamental concepts as existence, property, universality, individual, and necessity; analyzes the paradoxes of negative existentials and the substitutivity of co-referential terms; and defends objectivity in philosophy. The study moves through three phases: first, an argument…Read more
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51Parmenides' Paradox: Negative Reference and Negative ExistentialsReview of Metaphysics 33 (4). 1980.IN THE beginning Parmenides sought to deny the void. But he found himself trapped by his language and his thought into admitting what he sought to deny. Wisely, he counseled others to avoid the whole region in which the problem arises, lest they too be unwarily ensnared. Plato, being less easily intimidated and grasping for the first time the urgency of the paradox, unearthed each snare in turn until he felt he had found a safe path through the forbidden terrain in a new conception of being and …Read more
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1Fathering for FreedomIn Fritz Allhoff, Lon S. Nease & Michael W. Austin (eds.), Fatherhood ‐ Philosophy for Everyone, Wiley‐blackwell. 2010.This chapter contains sections titled: Why a Philosophy of Fatherhood? Role Responsibilities Autonomy Autonomy and Fatherhood Conclusion Notes.
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47The Permanent Heartland of SubjectivityIdealistic Studies 25 (3): 221-229. 1995.One aim of that type of transcendental argument known to us as the cogito is to reveal a self about which there can be no contention, neither about its existence nor its nature. Serious doubts are, of course, perennial over whether there is any such thing as the self, if that is meant to imply that all selves have some essence or structure in common, and whether selves are best understood in terms of their intrinsic nature or external influences. Here is a dialectic that tosses us to and fro bet…Read more
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3Constructivist Moral RealismThe Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 42 147-153. 1998.We are social animals in the sense that we spontaneously invent and continuously re-invent the social realm. But, not unlike other artifacts, once real, social relations, practices, institutions, etc., obey prior laws, some of which are moral laws. Hence, with regard to social reality, we ought to be ontological constructivists and moral realists. This is the view sketched here, taking as points of departure Searle's recent work on social ontology and May's on group morality. Moral and social se…Read more
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40Does Strawson’s “Reconciliation” Apply to Groups?Southwest Philosophy Review 28 (1): 135-142. 2012.
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73Brian Epstein, The Ant Trap: Rebuilding the Foundations of the Social Sciences. Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 36 (3): 103-108. 2016.In The Ant Trap, Brian Epstein proposes a bold new systematic strategy for developing social ontology. He explores the history and current state of the art and provides pointed critiques of leading theories in the field. His framework, incompassing frames that provide principles for grounding social facts, is developed in some detail across a variety of social practices and applied to revealing real world as well as hyporthetical examples. If Epstein's account holds, it should provide new direct…Read more
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26Commentary on Scott Aikin’s “Modest (but not Self-Effacing) Transcendental Arguments”Southwest Philosophy Review 31 (2): 11-14. 2015.
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15Simplicity: A Meta-Metaphysics by Craig Dilworth (review)Review of Metaphysics 68 (3): 649-651. 2015.
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22Commentary on Paul Gowder: “Institutional Values, or How to Say What Democracy Is”Southwest Philosophy Review 30 (2): 71-74. 2014.
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40The Morality of Groups: Collective Responsibility, Group-Based Harm, and Corporate Rights (review)Noûs 24 (3): 497-500. 1990.
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39Piper on Respect for Personal Autonomy and Prudential ValueSouthwest Philosophy Review 25 (2): 63-67. 2009.
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18Induction, Probability and Skepticism (review)Review of Metaphysics 46 (2): 394-396. 1992.Pyrrho of Elis followed Alexander into the Indus Valley where he contracted the skepticism which has ever since goaded Western thought. In this masterful study of the limits of human knowledge, D. P. Chattopadhyaya, one of India's brightest philosophical lights, revitalizes the westward flow of skepticism by putting our major epistemologies and philosophies of science to the test of his "anthropological rationalism". Often echoing Western pragmatists as well as Indians like Nägärjuna and Samkara…Read more
Normal, Illinois, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Meta-Ethics |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
Meta-Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |